Apple Launches iTMS Japan

[Doctor Q]

Not that it really matters to me at all, but why isn't there an iTMS in any African countries yet?

or South America?

or Central America?

or the Moon?

Three reasons: Market opportunity, legal issues, and logistics. All three of those factors limit iTMS to the earth, at least for now.

 

[lalcan]

Three reasons: Market opportunity, legal issues, and logistics. All three of those factors limit iTMS to the earth, at least for now.

Not to mention NASA is a real expensive ISP and i guess their bandwidth is quite slow...

At least in Mexico the local music copyright laws are way more complicate than those in the countries currently included in the iTMS, so i don't expect it to be sorted out easily

Only recently the biggest local media empire (Televisa) announced it´s alliance with Intel (sure, it really makes you wonder why they choose Intel to partner with!) to create a online music store, so hopefully Apple will wait until they sort it out and "open the field" and after that bring the iTMS, at that time we will be using Leopard i guess.

 

[LimeiBook86]

imports

Maybe one day (when hell freezes over of course) we can download music from other countries...oh well a man can dream.

 

[Sayhey]

Now has everyone seen this story? Not bad!

Apple sells 1 million songs in four days in Japan
By Jim Dalrymple jdalrymple@maccentral.com

It only took Apple four days to dominate the lucrative Japanese music market as the company announced on Sunday that it had already sold more than 1 million songs on the iTunes Music Store Japan. Japanese artists claimed the number one song (Def Tech) and the number one album (Ulfuls).

“iTunes has become Japan’s number one online music store in just four days,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO in a statement. “iTunes has sold twice as many songs in just four days as all the other online music services in Japan sell in one month.”

When Apple announced the store in Japan, people were worried about the price that would be charged for individual songs. Apple’s US$0.99 price it charges in the U.S. stands in contrast to Japanese services which typically charge between ¥200 and ¥300 per song (US$1.80 and $2.70).

It seems that Apple’s price of ¥150 per song for over 90 percent of the songs in the store was enough of a draw for the Japanese consumer.

MacWorld

 

[MacQuest]

iTMS Japan : one million songs in just 4 days

Although, I can tell you it will be a flop. 150 to 200 yen for a song, when you can RENT the entire disk for 330 yen ($3USD) at the local movie rental store? Haha.

Gotta love smacking the iTMS and iPod pundits upside the head with a dose of reality:

http://www.hardmac.com/niouzcontenu.php?date=2005-08-08#4344

Oops. Looks like"SayHey" beat me to it. Oh well...

 

[Gasu E.]

Value

On the topic of Album prices, the other day, I went to go rent the new 50 cent album, (maybe not so new, but it's new here). They didn't have it to rent yet, but you could buy it for get this, 4800 yen. That's around $45 USD.

$45 is 90 times what a 50 cent album should sell for. Quite a mark-up!

 

[glay]

iTMS Australia/New Zealand?

Just noticed that the free song on iTMS USA by P-Money (A New Zealand Producer) & Scribe (A New Zealand Rapper), could it be a hint of things to come? Just a thought I had and wanted to share...

 

[zen]

Except it doesn't let you into the site, it just tells you that you need Windows. I also can't find a link to contact them.

Oh yeah, it totally sucks - I agree. Windows only and everything is in WMA, and only 3 our of 5 major labels.

But they have still beaten iTunes, and it has caused a fair few news story and headlines in NZ over the last few days.