The Insanely Great Songs Apple Won't Let You Hear 341
FunkeyMonk writes "Slate.com has an article by Paul Collins explaining that the iTunes music store has thousands of tracks that you can't buy in the U.S. From the article: 'The iTunes Music Store has a secret hiding in plain sight: Log out of your home account in the page's upper-right corner, switch the country setting at the bottom of the page to Japan, and you're dropped down a rabbit hole into a wonderland of great Japanese bands that you've never even heard of. And they're nowhere to be found on iTunes U.S.' The article goes on to mention a few workarounds if you want to purchase foreign tunes. But this brings up a good point — why shouldn't iTunes be the great mythical omniscient music repository where all the world's music is available instantly? Is this simply a marketing decision?"
Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:5, Informative)
What makes it even more retarded is that the remix / version you want is always on the other label which you're not allowed to buy.
Most of the other stores are smarter, unfortunately, and you just can't go and change your location. So, you get to have fun finding a proxy that truly is in the territory from where you want to pretend to be.
Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:4, Funny)
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For instance, I was just yesterday digging in Beatport for an Armin Van Buuren track that was released on Nebula. They had exactly what I wanted but wouldn't sell it to me due to region.
I figured I had two options: steal it from somewhere or buy the physical record from a store in the states. I bought the record and, as it was on a different label (but still imported), b
Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:4, Interesting)
What they need is a separate "local top rated" in addition to the "[absolute] top rated."
Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't really bother me much, but makes me curious about their business sense.
As an aside, Apple/iTunes/publishers also do the same thing with video content that's available to US customers only, and not to people from other geographic regions. The reason? Who knows, but I do know that it's costing them money from people like me that would prefer to purchase it easily rather than using alternatives...
Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:4, Interesting)
All the marketing, none of the support, and no overhead.
But if the pirates actually create a following, you can then offer media via existing channels, and make a buck.
Doesn't really bother me much, but makes me curious about their business sense.
Don't market in a place where a market does not exist. Wait for a market to apear, then take advantage of it. Nothing could be more brilliant.
Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:4, Interesting)
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Correction.
This is just the way the music business worked or has worked.
I doubt today that there is anything on iTunes US or Japan that I can't get in hours or at most a week for less than $0.99.
Does anybody here think this is a hard challenge?
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This is just another example of the insane way the music business works
FYP. If you can make any sense out of the notion that you have to get (read: buy) permission to hear song X in each region in which your ears happen to find themselves, you need your head (and prolly ears) examined.
Region-specific DVDs are the more familiar example; did we as a society just decide to surrender completely to that one?
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No, we all went out and bought DVD players with publicly-available "no region" hacks and an in-built capability to skip the bits that the DVD makers try and force us to watch ("Millions of people who wouldn't think of driving a combine-harvester through a puppy-farm, setting fire to a children's hospital after welding all the doors shut, or launching an ICBM at Finland commit the immeasu
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that's not what's going on. what happens is that whoever has rights to the music can sell rights to distribute the music to different distributors. you don't need to buy rights to hear music in different regions, but distributors have to sign contracts so that they are the official distributor of a specified region. this helps a label gain distribution because a large distributor will be more likely to pick up a label if they know that they will be the exclusive distributor for that label in the region they
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Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:5, Interesting)
True, of course, but iTMS really highlights the problem. Back when the way of selling music was to press it to a record (or other physical medium) and sell it in a shop, it made sense to have different distribution deals for different countries. Company A might have access to retail channels in the USA, while company B might have access to retail channels in the UK. Giving either a worldwide licensing deal would be a problem, since neither would be able to exploit it. Giving both a worldwide deal might cause them to step on each other's toes in some areas, which would be bad for business.
Amazon started to change the rules. They had almost the same store in a large number of countries. You could even get them to ship products to you from their stores in another country using the same account. They were not bound by the distribution contracts, since they were buying from the authorised distributor and selling them elsewhere.
The movie industry tried to 'fix' this, rather than embracing it, by introducing region codes. Now, the DVD you bought from the USA wouldn't play on your player (although most stand-alone DVD players sold in the UK are now region-free, laptop drives are often not, which is irritating).
A bigger problem than music and film, however, is TV shows. These are typically broadcast in one country up to a year before they are syndicated elsewhere. There is no option to buy them legally through any channel[1], but you can download them from the Internet within a few hours of their original release. The movie industry woke up to this and started launching things at the same time worldwide, but the music and TV industries are still stuck in the regional distribution model.
iTMS simply serves to highlight the fact that entire industries are clinging to an obsolete business model. Now that worldwide distribution is a reality, they are still trying to enforce regional supply chains.
[1] This, to my mind, means that they should not be protected by copyright. If you intentionally exclude a region, then it is not in the best interests of that region to grant you a monopoly on distribution.
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While I agree with most of what you said, this is obviously wrong. US movies still mostly take a few months to get to the UK, and any UK movies often take more than 6 months to get here. Sure a few very big movies have world wide releases, but then that was happening 10 years ago.
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Oh, come on. This has been plainly visible since stores started selling online at all. It's not like very many Americans are lining up to buy Japanese music that's not available overseas, but Terry Pratchett fans in the US were complaining for years about the way his novels were available exclusively in the UK for months before that got changed.
(BTW, it's just iTS now.)
Back when the way of selling music was to press it to a record (or other physical m
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How can this be? I thought that the CSS license required the players to obey the regional restrictions.
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Speaking for all Americans, I apologize.
Re:so you're a fan of emminent domain? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you think about copyright as being executed for the benefit of the culture, then artistic works don't really EVER intrisically belong to the creator (or copyright owner) - they belong to the culture that created them. Extending this idea, if a copyright owner decides to actually distribute their work, they're giving the people their due payment in exchange for the monopoly on distribution. It doesn't seem to make sense to then turn around and say "Well, I'll go ahead and repay YOU people, but NOT you guys over there!" because aren't we all supposed to uphold the same copyright?
Doesn't it then seem backwards for a region to uphold a copyright... on a product from which they receive no benefit? From that line of reasoning it seems that the only time a copyright owner should be able to do this is if they do not distribute the item to anyone.. anywhere.
This isn't a simple question. But it's definitely an interesting one.
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Copyright is more than just a monopoly on distribution: it also protects unpublished works.
Yes, I consider this a flaw. Trade secrets should cover unpublished works. If you don't publish something, then you can enforce your control via contract law on the few people you show it to (e.g. publishers). Copyright is a social contract between society and the creator; society agrees to enforce a temporary monopoly on distribution for the creator in exchange for the work eventually entering the public domain. If a work is not published, then it can never enter the public domain, so copyright can no
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Or to take the petty theft out of the equation, if you throw away an early draft of a manuscript you're working on, am I allowed to publish it?
Current US Copyright law says "no," and as a musician, I think that's reasonable.
An example more pertinent to my own life is that my band will be working on another album soon, but we've got some new songs already. If someone bootlegged
Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Licensing, licensing, licensing (Score:5, Insightful)
credit card foreign fees (Score:2, Insightful)
If that's not hyperbole, then you should look at getting another credit card. The two cards I use for foreign transactions both charge me 2.89% of the purchase price (which is high in my opinion) plus a slightly-higher than market exchange rate for such transactions. I think paying an extra $0.0
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Just get a handful of them for whatever country you want, create an account in that country's iTunes store, with any old address, as long as it's in that country. Log in, and you can get whatever music you want, no credit card needed! Or even forego the gift card if you're just looking for free downloads.
(I think you can get Japanese iTunes gift cards from jlist.com, but the site's acting up right now so I can't confirm this.)
Nothing new... (Score:5, Insightful)
British had "With the Beatles" while an album with slightly different tracks called "Meet the Beatles" came out in the US.
The British version of "Are You Experienced?" by Hendrix had additional songs, such as "Red House" which the record company felt would go over better in Britain than the US, even though it was a straight blues track and blues was born in the US. *shrugs*
So while in the age of the internet, this seems silly, it's nothing new.
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British had "With the Beatles" while an album with slightly different tracks called "Meet the Beatles" came out in the US.
The British version of "Are You Experienced?" by Hendrix had additional songs, such as "Red House" which the record company felt would go over better in Britain than the US, even though it was a straight blues track and blues was born in the US. *shrugs*
So while in the age of the internet, this seems silly, it's nothin
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If that is true (I doubt it), that is a poor marketing decision. The label does not make any more money off of imports, the markup is really because it is imported. Remember, label's customers are distribution outlets, not you. You are there just to consume, be sued, or do nothing...
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Actually I remember my older sisters having boxes of 45 rpm singles. It wasn't until cassettes and 8-track became predominate in the early 70's that you almost had to buy the whole collection of songs that comprised an album.
Re:Nothing new... (Score:4, Interesting)
Singles were a marketed item until the advent of the CD. Now that we have digital formats, the record labels simply don't want to sell singles at all. They even fought Apple, the leader in MP3 player sales, to "let" them sell MP3 singles, and then would only let them do it at a high price with DRM. Buying a Beatles single is still either impossible or very limited.
An interesting piece of trivia here. Albums, with respect to music, mean a collection (like a photo album). Back "in the day" an album was a few 78 RPM discs bundled together. It wasn't until the advent of the 12" LP (long play) 33.3 RPM discs that an album was able to fit on one consumer playable media. That is why albums, records, vinyl, etc are synonymous.
Re:Nothing new... (Score:5, Insightful)
Three generations are gathered together at a reunion. The youngest is preparing dinner, a fine potroast. She takes the roast, dutifully cuts off each end of the roast as taught years ago by her mom, and puts it in the pan. She asks her mother "Mom, I never really understood that part, why do we always cut off the ends of the roast? It's perfectly good meat we're just throwing away."
And the mother responds, "I don't know really, I always do it because that's the way Grandma taught *me*". So they decide to go out into the living room, and ask Grandma. And she replies... "I used to cut the ends off so the damn roast so it would fit inside the pan, you idiots".
It is still the same old behaviour, but the physical constraints that legitimized that behaviour are now gone, and the behaviour should change accordingly.
I see this all the time in various ways. Online stores, software, you name it, various industries or designs clinging to behaviours that used to have physical limitations still doing things the same old way, even though they no longer have to.
My wife and I just raise our eyebrows and whisper "potroast" to each other.
Devil's in the Contracts (Score:5, Informative)
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Possibly because the label itself doesn't have rights to distribute the material in the US. There's often different publishers for different regions on the same medium.
Re:Devil's in the Contracts (Score:4, Funny)
OR, think of the outrage from the industry if a Japanese track made #1 on the US charts.
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Re:Japanese track made #1 on the US charts (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.maddmansrealm.com/sukiyaki/ [maddmansrealm.com]
"His biggest hit, Ue o Muite Aruko (I Look Up When I Walk; "Sukiyaki" in the West), was released in Japan in 1961. After its release in the U.S. in 1963, the song's earnestness and melodic beauty proved irresistible despite its incomprehensible lyrics. Against all odds, on June 15, 1963, the song ousted Leslie Gore's "It's My Party" to become the No. 1 popular song in the U.S."
Japan has lots of great music. While I was there I bought a few albums. Some I could not even tell you who the artist is or the name of the album because there is not any english printing on it. The record stores would frequently play albums and display the album playing. This is how I found and bought some great music.
Re:MP3 is in the link (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe iTunes doesn't sell them is they sometimes are posted for free after the copyright expired unlike in the US where the extension act will make it sure I will expire first.
Vox Populi (Score:2)
The point of publicizing this is not that it's happening, it may be that if enough consumers say "Hey, why not let us have the access to purchase that" the companies involved will work something out. So the article could be trying to get the word out so /.'ers and other iTunes users contact Apple and demand access.
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Can I get the "domestic" price by switching to the iTunes Japan site?
Are the bits cheaper that way?
Well, of course not, since everything costs the same on iTunes. But I bet the labels would prefer it this way. This may be why those "import" tunes are just unavailable on the US store instead.
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It actually is often cheaper to order the CD from the local amazon (e.g., amazon.jp) and have it ship them to you.
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Firstly, these Japanese pop bands, just like pop bands outside of the two major music producing areas (USA and UK, with exceptions now and again), are very simple and derivative. Even by pop music standards. They are only really popular, because people want to hear songs in their own language.
Secondly, just because Apple can sell those songs technically, doesn't mean they can legally. You addressed this
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However, I don't see any modules on CPAN for non-Japanese bands:
Acme::MorningMusume [cpan.org]
Isn't it the record labels doing it? (Score:3, Insightful)
I seem to have seen a post about that at some point on Apple's discussions boards.
From that, iTunes works with the whoever hold the distributions rights in that country. If those bands don't have a U.S. distributor.
One band I like "Growing Old Disgracefully" recently made the jump from the U.K., to the U.S. iTunes store by working with CD Baby.
Re:Isn't it the record labels doing it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Music marketing doesn't understand ubiquity (Score:2)
Unfortunately, but hardly marketing (Score:3, Informative)
Selling all music globally is something no one's ready for legally, and probably won't be for years, given the glacial rate at which the *AA's seem to be evolving to embrace new technologies and opportunities.
Holmwood.
It's probably a legal decision. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, while the Internet is world-wide and country borders are merely speedbumps, the legal world hasn't figured that one out yet...
So their deals with Japanese record houses probably only allow Apple to sell their music in Japan.
Seems short-sighted to me. If you're making a deal with the guys who sell 80% of the online music sold, why not let them sell to as many people as possible instead of holding back rights? You get a cut on each...
It's the licensing, stupid (Score:2, Redundant)
Maury
Re:Because with binary data on the internet there (Score:2, Troll)
For an iTunes J-Pop/J-Rock fix (Score:5, Informative)
JList/JBox [jbox.com] has been selling Japanese iTunes [jbox.com] cards for some time, and frequently advertise them in their ads in magazines like NewType USA. Right next to the hentai/bishoujo games and Domo-kun plushies.
Uh, it's the Record Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
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Um, look at the headline...
It's about copyright ending at the border (Score:5, Informative)
It *should* be a simple, global, find-it-and-buy-it repository. Unfortunately, the way that copyright has been worked, the right to sell a particular work (music, movie, tv show) only extends to a country's borders. If you want to sell that work in another nation, you have to somehow acquire the rights to sell there as well.
This used to be a real problem trying to buy import albums and CDs. If a particular overseas-only album had a local rights-owner who didn't have the title in print, that rights-owner could prevent you from importing the CD for purchase. (Naturally, they could also prevent you from importing if they *did* have it in print, but generally then you wouldn't want the import in the first place.) This didn't always happen in practice, but it did make things more difficult at times.
Today, they try to restrict trans-national media purchases via things like region coding.
Honestly, I think this is another of the ridiculously outdated aspects of copyright law that really needs to change. In my mind, if I purchase a legally-produced copy of a CD or DVD (or iTunes download), then somehow, somewhere, somewhen the artist was compensated for that purchase. Maybe not directly, and maybe not for that exact purchase, but at some point the artist's rights to sell the track were transfered to someone else who got money from me. It shouldn't matter if I'm buying a German pressed CD while visiting in Japan and holding a US passport. As long as the German CD was produced with the approval (or delegated approval) of the original artist/rights-holders, then it should be treated as legitimate and proper.
Of course, if you've got a situation where some country is permitting the sale of tracks for which the original artists have *not* delegated their rights to whomever made the [cd, dvd, file], then that shouldn't be permitted. Certainly, this isn't what's happening in Japan, but it is sort of what happened with AllOfMP3 (or so I understand -- I haven't followed that too closely).
I believe this is also why it's taken so long for new iTunes stores to open in new countries. It's not just a matter of arranging the financial-side of things for handling payments, currency conversions, etc., or even of getting servers and such set up for faster local access, but I bet a whole lot of it is securing the appropriate approvals from whomever "owns" the publishing rights for each track in that country.
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It's not that companies don't artificially segment the market for marketing reasons -- they do. There's still region codes on DVDs today despite the treaty basically saying that the countries agree to not enforce any
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The treaty you're thinking of didn't do anything to importation rights, and has required things like anticircumvention rights. (The way that the IP interests get more protection in the US without much debate here is to get our diplomats to support it, put it in treaties, to get the treaties ratified, and then Congress is told to make the necessary laws so that we can live up to our treaty obligations; it's kind of a back door)
Frankly, no copyright treaty has ever done anything good for the public, and we
It's about Market segmentation as well (Score:2)
Now in the iTunes case that is probably not true, however the general idea is still the same.
No, it's a label decision. (Score:4, Insightful)
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If you do something that would otherwise be copyright infringement, a good way to protect yourself is to get a license -- i.e. permission -- from the relevant copyright holder. For example, if I want to make and publish copies of a Japanese song in the US, I need to find the person in Japan that owns the US copyright, and get permission from them to make and publish copies in the US. As a practical matter, they won't give me that license unless I pay them for it. It could be that betwe
Bollywood Music (Score:2)
However, I think it would be very beneficial for iTunes to start offering things from Bollywood (movies and music, priced to compete with local stores). I think India is one of the few places where the movie industry isn't going (relatively) downhill.
YMCK! (Score:2, Interesting)
Is this simply a marketing decision?" (Score:2)
I mean, are US youngsters (who undoubtably make up the bulk of the iTunes music store purchases) really ready for Japanese tunes such as "Yatta"?
I mean, won't somebody think of the children!
how is this limiting choice? (Score:3, Insightful)
A more accurate presentation might be that DRM and restrictive licensing is limiting the choice of music, which does have an element of truth, and Apple does bear some responsibility. But even this is far from unclear. If we are talking about music downloads, the only thing effecting music choice is the artist, not Apple. Apple certainly effects exposure, but not choice, except in the sense that one cannot choose what one does not know.
But certainly anyone can go onto a P2P network an download music, and it will play on the iPod and work in iTunes. Any artist can go to Youtube and upload a video. If a song is insanely great, it will generate insanely great buzz, and people will hear it.
I also wonder about the definition of insanely great music, and people expecting have such music handed to them on a gold platter. We are so used to having sanitized music spoon fed to us. The ability to download music is just going to exacerbate this problem, and lead to the increasingly sanitized of music. A better article would be how increased music delivery in destroying insanely great local music, and replacing it with moderately interesting sanitized corporate music.
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Actually, at the end of the day, Wal Mart "censoring" music doesn't make much of a difference either, since there is no legal restriction that prevents you from buying the uncensored versions elsewhere, either. You just don't buy them at Wal Mart -- you buy it online via Amazon, or Barnes & Noble, or any of the other
Another legal way to buy Japanese music (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/ [cdjapan.co.jp]
I have no financial interest in this company. I am merely an occasional customer. Of course, if you are under, say, 25 years old, the idea of actually buying a CD will be anathema to you as you'll have to wait for it to arrive by mail and you'd rather slit your emo wrists than do anything that doesn't lead to instant gratification. And if you want to just buy individual tracks, this isn't the answer you were looking for either. However, if you are over 30 years old and not afflicted with ADD, this might be an option for you should want to purchase that CD that is only available in Japan. Sometimes Japanese CDs come with bonus tracks not released in other markets (usually this means the US), so hardcore fans of various Western singers/groups might be interested in Japanese CDs for that reason too.
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People think that the only thing coming out of japan is manufactured pop (and a lot of it is, it's worse than America in some genres over there with entire groups dedicated to nothing but churning out idol after idol) but Japan seems to be where a lot of Western 80's musicians go to die or something
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And if you're over, say, 30 years old, the idea of downloading music seems like scary voodoo as music is supposed to be a plastic disc instead of data, and you'd rather yell at kids to get off your lawn than do anything to save natural resources.
Jesus, keep this shit on Digg (Score:4, Insightful)
All the "logical" reasons are wrong (Score:2)
Readers have mentioned licensing and other reasons why American's can't dive into the amazing bounty of Japanese bands on the store. But I think it's part of an evil plan to inflict pain and suffering on Americans. What else could rationally explain their attempt to keep thousands of insanely great Japanese pop tracks out of the hands of Americans?
Do the math... (Score:5, Funny)
On the UK iTunes store it is $15.75 (i.e. £7.99)
On the Canadian store, $8.47
New Zealand, $12.61
etc. etc. etc.
On the Japanese store, by the way, they don't sell it at all. Guess they saw the video for "Hit me Baby" and figured "Like the schoolgirl outfit, but needs more tentacles. Or cowbell."
The Pillows! (Score:2)
Beyond Music (Score:4, Interesting)
In the book business it has become near impossible to convince publishers to translate non-English authors, making access to some of the planet's finest writers nearly impossible.
Geist magazine [geist.com] out of Vancouver has had a couple of good articles looking at this phenomenon, one by Stephen Henighan [geist.com] in Issue 61, and by acclaimed writer Alberto Manguel in Issue 62.
Henigan's article opens:
Manguel's article this month puts the blame squarely on the publishing houses who are increasingly market driven to publish lowest common denominator works, rather than building a catalog that stands on literary merit.
North America lives in a cultural bubble defined by a narrow range of English language music, writing, and film. It would be a great exercise to see how iTunes handles music from Latino and Mexican artists, or in Canada from Quebec musicians.
I'll wager that both of those groups are also underrepresented despite the considerable popularity of their work.
Lawyers, guns, and money (Score:2)
Fixed that for ya...
More seriously, we can't really blame Apple for this one. They can only sell what the copyright holders let them sell. Cross-border music distribution has always counted as something of a tricky issue (thus the nearly black-market prices of anything you buy stamped "import").
One additional, more practical problem - PR (
Done for the protection of the artist (Score:2)
That's why I don't do RIAA/GEMA big labels anymore (Score:2)
armin van buuren and ayumi hamasaki (Score:2)
i found some info on it [discogs.com]
those tracks blew me away, and i would have NEVER have found that music had i played "legit" and not pirated
i didn't even know what the armin van buuren/ ayumi hamasaki album was until i looked for it just now, even though i've playing songs from it for years and i deeply dig those remixes. i'm utterly beyond the notion of albums. i haven't bought a cd since 1999, and i never will again
i don't think i'll ever go to itunes either, because i'm too into t
And that's why someone else will get my money (Score:2)
Namely that's why Amazon Japan get my money for Japanese music, and not Apple.
Apple need to realise that they're losing out on sales because of a contrived market demarcation, one that makes no sense for an online world. Apple is a business, you can only hurt them one way, money. Either by denying them sales, or making them realise they're losing sales because of a stupid, non-sensical, policy.
The only reason things like this still exist is because labels don't want to lose the ability to charge one g
I would hate a "World" iTunes (Score:2)
I think of myself as open minded and live in a culturally diverse neighborhood. Still, I like my music to be "Western" and if I were faced with a "most popular downloads" list monopolized by the shear numbers of Chinese lets say, I would be frustrated quickly.
From FTA, it looks like Apple allows us to switch our "neighborhood" if you will so it isn't like they are censoring the co
Reality (Score:2)
OT: Music recommendation? (Score:2)
(Pretty much off-topic, but my question involves buying Japanese music, so I'm asking... ignore it if you only care about discussion specific to Apple)
While J-Pop and J-Rock are nice and all, I'm interested in checking out more traditional Japanese sound, with old-school instruments. What's the Japanese counterpart to, say, classical violin concertos? Enka sounds promising, but beyond a general genre, I have no idea what to look for. Can anyone recommend some artists or albums for someone who wants to l
Why the surprise ? (Score:2)
Whether that means adding DRM to music, locking out rival operating systems, or only selling certain music to certain people because the labels don't want them to, if it increases their profit, they will do it.
How Zune handles it (Score:2)
It's Changing...Slowly (Score:2)
Some songs are only on iTunes - and then removed (Score:4, Interesting)
For over 2 years I had exactly 4 songs in my iTunes shopping cart... songs that I really liked, but I couldn't bring myself to hand over my credit card for the DRM inhibited music. I usually buy CDs.
So, for Christmas I received a couple of iTunes gift cards. I figured, what the heck... I'll buy the songs now and attempt to find something to strip the DRM.
And then the catch hit me. The songs, while still in my shopping cart and still had playable samples were "no longer for sale in the iTunes US store". The songs and the albumn that they made up were no longer listed in the store by any means of searching.
Here's the real kicker that pissed me off. These songs were only ever sold through the iTunes store. No physical store sales, no other online music stores, and I was never able to find them on any p2p services.
Hopefully I'll now be able to purchase them. This is another perfect example of why DRM is a bad bad thing. If the company holding the keys to the DRM infected information decides to revoke them, the content can be completely lost to society.
WELCOME TO THE GLOBAL MARKET, USA! (Score:2)
Example - here, in Canada, I can't buy episodes of The Daily Show on iTunes. This is despite the fact that it's aired at the exact same time every day here as it is in the US, so there is therefore no possible way Comedy Central is losing more potential viewers than in the US. The same is true of 95% of the content on iTunes video, it's simply not offered here,
Two Quick Points (Score:5, Insightful)
First, this isn't "Apple" not letting you hear these things. It's the record companies and their licensing agreements. If you go into a record store in the US, do you see all these great Japanese artists? Hell no. Why? Isn't it just as easy to ship them over as it is to ship over US artists? It's not Apple limiting these things, it's the damned recording companies.
It's the same reason that TV shows on iTunes US aren't available on iTunes UK and vice versa. There are ancient licensing agreements (well, ancient in terms of the internet) between the media companies that Apple has to respect if you want any content on iTunes at all. Apple could have gone the eMusic route and filled the iTunes store with independent artists, but who would start doing that?
Finally, Apple's not preventing you from hearing these songs on your computer or your iPod. You're free to buy them on CDs and rip them into your computer. And you can even rip them in MP3 format with no DRM! Amazing!
It's natural for people to beat up on Apple because that's who's dealing with them when they don't get what they want. But that's just human nature. I used to work as a bus boy in a restuarant. I've seen people scream at waiters for the cooks screwing up their order. I've seen people yell at cashiers for something they bought there not working correctly. Most people are stupid. It's up to those of us who aren't to
That's the one thing that really annoys me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No it isn't. Complex webs of contracts have been set up. You might imagine the studio has complete control over its tracks but it doesn't. A simple example: They may have signed various types of contract with a variety of distributors all over the world. If studio X has given distributor Y exclusive rights to song Z in country W for a certain time then X might not be able to sell the song on iTunes because Apple then becomes a competing distributor to Y breaking the exclusivity contract. Sure, X
Re: (Score:2)
I suppose that will happen the same day as airline pilots report seeing pigs out the window, the devil has to place an order for warm jackets because hell has just frozen over, osama bin laden walks into the US ba
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Waaaaah! Oh, so sorry that you are upset with iTunes because Don McLean or his label requires that Apple sell you the entire album instead of the one popular song he has to his name. What an injustice!
Petulance is no excuse for engaging in illegal activity and then acting like a jackass. If you don't like it then go buy the single somewhere else.... what? It's out of print? How dare those bastards pull shit like letting a single from 30 years ago go out of print!
Contrary to popular belief, it is not