USA iTunes?

mauly said:

I've heard there's a way of getting iTunes content from the US iTunes store from the UK (or any other country) anyone know how?

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a) have a US credit card/mailing address.

OR

b) buy a US iTunes card from eBay or somewhere.

c) Have someone from the U.S. 'gift' you a song. (Free songs work just fine.) Log out of the Music Store, and try to redeem the song. It will prompt you to create a new account, no verified anything needed. But, this will only let you 'buy' free songs, since you won't have any valid billing information. If you want to buy music, you'll need a U.S.-store-legal payment method... Like PayPal! (Or fund it with iTunes prepaid cards... They can be found at online retailers who will ship overseas.)

Is there a reason why they don't allow you to purchase songs from other countries? I never really understood this.

vprp said:

Is there a reason why they don't allow you to purchase songs from other countries? I never really understood this.

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Apple, I think, doesn't trust 3rd world countries enough due to the rampant piracy or hacking happening in those parts. i'm based in Asia right now and on every street corner you'll see all sorts of bootleg CDs/DVDs you could possibly think of. giving these countires easier access to digital copies of music or video is like bringing a moth to a flame. unfortunately, the legitimate 3rd world buyers/users are prejudiced by this decision of Apple (and other site operators like Yahoo's musicmatch, google video and napster) not to make the store available. I guess the calculation is that making the market smaller (instead of bigger w/c seems the more logical choice) is not that bad as long as you're hitting the right market w/c pays well and is not likely to infringe on applicable copyrights.

mannix87 said:

Apple, I think, doesn't trust 3rd world countries enough due to the rampant piracy or hacking happening in those parts. i'm based in Asia right now and on every street corner you'll see all sorts of bootleg CDs/DVDs you could possibly think of. giving these countires easier access to digital copies of music or video is like bringing a moth to a flame. unfortunately, the legitimate 3rd world buyers/users are prejudiced by this decision of Apple (and other site operators like Yahoo's musicmatch, google video and napster) not to make the store available. I guess the calculation is that making the market smaller (instead of bigger w/c seems the more logical choice) is not that bad as long as you're hitting the right market w/c pays well and is not likely to infringe on applicable copyrights.

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Absolute total bollocks.

Music is sold on a country by country basis because that is as far as their jurisdiction over their label can go. A contract for the sale of music in Australia is null and void in the US and so on. There are no globally accepted laws governing music sales and the record labels are not global companies, their international counterparts are totally separate from each other in a day-to-day business sense of the word. A prime example is Sony music: they came online in the Japanese iTMS fairly early, yet it took Sony-BMG months till they accepted terms from Apple.

Apple is a company first and foremost and it's main concern (despite what SJ says) is to make money. Apple tracks down major affluent, wealthy, music buying markets and pursues quite relentlessly the record labels to allow them to set up iTMS shop in that country and that country only. That's why it took them an age to get down here, we have the per capita income to support the iTMS but there just isn't enough of us. We are a whole continent with the same population as Los Angeles.

Give it time, Apple either want to set up in your country or they don't. Sucks, but that's big business.

well thanks for clearing that up. i've long wondered why this is so and i was beginning to think that i've been banished to a god-forsaken place that
nobody cares about.....🙁😱