ITunes Australia Goes Live

daria42 writes "ITunes Australia has finally gone live, after more than a year of waiting. Apple is holding a press conference in Sydney this morning to officially launch the service to the media, but the store has already opened. Like the Japanese ITunes store, it looks like Sony-BMG is not participating."

Global store?

[bugbeak]

I'm sure there are numerous world branches of just about every major record label out there. What's stopping Apple from running a global iTunes Music Store?

iTunes store is helping legitimize online music

[mattnuzum]

I have a friend in India who says that he would use iTunes store if it were available, but because it isn't he simply uses peer-to-peer.

As the iTunes store becomes available across the world it will help legitimize the online music industry. I think there are a lot of people in the world who don't have the option to go and buy the music they want to listen to. If they could, they would.

Of course there are a lot of people who will jump at the opportunity to get something for free if they can, but no one is stopping these now, so it's not really the point. But if you give everyone the opportunity to pay for the music, many will. I think this is a good thing.

Speaking of online music sales, I'm really looking forward to another price war. Come on guys, we need a legit iTunes competitor to drive down the prices!

Re:No Fair Use

[TeraCo]

Fair use is irrelevant here, as Apple have permission from the record companies to publish it in the relevant format.

Apple, how about NZ?

[mdew]

how about Itunes service that includes NZ too?

Re:iTunes store is helping legitimize online music

[pintomp3]

itunes prices aren't based on competition, but what the riaa charges. apple doesn't make much on the store, thier money comes from ipod sales. unless the riaa is going to take a smaller cut from a competitor, the competitor isn't going to be able to charge much less than itunes. i believe riaa gets 71/99 per track. not much room to undercut there.

Suicidal pricing

[caitsith01]

The pricing is just ridiculous. $1.69 per track for lossy recordings that, in Australia at least, you cannot necessarily legally burn to a CD or otherwise duplicate is simply outrageous.

The record companies (I don't think this is Apple's fault) need to realise that they are competing with FREE on the Internet, not with each other. They also need to realise that when they have ZERO manufacturing costs they are going to need to reduce their prices accordingly.

This is a perfect example of what a sheltered and monopoly/oligopoly dominated market Australia is. Other examples are air travel (two airlines), print media (one and a half newspaper conglomerates, most major cities have no media competition) and telecommunications (one major telco). The record company execs have obvious sat down and decided that they think Australia is sheltered enough that they can continue to screw us, iTunes or no iTunes.

Send them a message: do not use this service. Buy a physical CD instead - it'll work out about the same price if you shop somewhere decent anyway (10-12 tracks = $17-$21 on iTunes, which is crazy). Alternatively, if you have a UK or US bank account, use the services in those countries to encourage Apple to put more pressure on the record companies in Australia.

Re:Suicidal pricing

[Thrudheim]

"Send them a message: do not use this service. Buy a physical CD instead - it'll work out about the same price if you shop somewhere decent anyway (10-12 tracks = $17-$21 on iTunes, which is crazy)."

No! The record labels would absolutely love for people to buy physical CDs. They want to keep that tired, old model going as long as possible. If you want to send a message, boycott them altogether.

Re:Suicidal pricing

[skingers6894]

"Send them a message: do not use this service. Buy a physical CD instead"

Actually that is EXACTLY the message they want...

IF you want to send them a message go and buy DRM-free 192K VBR MP3s from emusic.com for 33 Aussie cents each.

Re:True fans don't rip off their artists.

[Anarchitect_in_oz]

the dude from Tool also wrote
"i sold my sole to make a record"
"then you brought one"

Yes true fans don't ripe off the band.
Which is why true fans support CDBaby, iTunes, and the little independant Record store so the next gen of Artists can be free of the crude we know today.

Some Day down the track we will have the market driven by the culture not a culture driven by marketing like we have now.

That day will come, the record compaines will disappear. The fans don't need them anymore, the artists don't need them anymore.

The only ones left are the techinical support people but i'm sure they will learn how to break free soon enough.

Re:Global store?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to say something as stupid as "outdated business practices," you might as well go the full distance and put the blame where it really belongs: national sovereignty.

See, different countries have different laws regarding taxation, contracts, royalties and licenses. If you buy a copy of the latest Limozeen album in Taiwan, the retailer has to handle the local taxes differently and the record company has to pay royalties differently than if you bought it in Topeka.

Why? Because the people of Taiwan have decided that they want different laws than those the people of Kansas have.

So really, the problem is sovereignty. If we could just conquer the world and force everybody to use the same laws, Apple would be able to have one big iTunes store.

(Fucking idiot.)

Re:Global store?

[Phroggy]

Says the record companies. When is a distribution company going to put the record companies in their place and do what what everybody wants?

Um, yeah, well see, the record companies own the copyrights to the music people want to listen to, so distribution companies can't do anything.

Unless, of course, a distribution company becomes a powerful monopoly, and the balance of power shifts because the record labels wouldn't be able to sell their music if that company refused to sell it. That's exactly what they're afraid of happening with Apple, which is why they're so reluctant to cooperate - they don't WANT Apple to become too successful, because that would mean Apple would become more powerful than they are.

If it were anybody else, this wouldn't be hysterically funny, but think about it:

Record companies are terrified of Apple becoming a monopoly.

That just cracks me up.

Re:Suicidal pricing

[GaryPatterson]

The price is steep compared to the US, but the message should not be to stay with physical media. We're seeing more and more "copy-controlled" discs these days, and they just don't rip so easily.

Also, despite parallel imports being around for ten years or so, I still see new release discs at $25-$35, much higher than the iTMS album price of $16.99. I think the music industry would absolutely *love* it if only physical media were sold and the Internet distribution model failed.

I'm going to give iTMS a good go and buy music from there. I'm no audiophile, and I think the sound quality is very good (except for some music with higher-pitched harmonics, but that's not so common).

I'll also investigate other options like emusic, which I'd never heard of before this topic came up. I absolutely won't buy anything in WMA format though (not so hot on the iBook), so my options are not huge.

Re:No Fair Use

[mmj638]

It is true that there isn't a 'fair use policy' in Australia equivalent to the US. However, this has nothing to do with lack of Australian TiVO models. We have plenty of personal video recorders, both for free-to-air and pay (cable) TV. Most of those are more permissive than the TiVO - we have no broadcast flag issue here, and we can freely copy files from PVRs to computers via USB. As for why TiVO doesn't seem to be available here, you'd have to ask them about it. They probably have their own reasons for not producing an Australian model.