iTunes Music store in UK

dobbin

dobbin

macrumors 6502a
Someone from Apple is going to be on Simon Mayo's show this afternoon on BBC Radio Five Live to talk about the Music Store.

I have emailed Simon to ask him to ask the Apple guy about possible dates and costs for the UK service.

I will post back with a report of what he says, but I think this is already a good sign that the Music Store will be coming to the UK. :D

Cheers,
Dobbin
 
This would be SO COOL

I already have a HUGE list of songs just waiting to be bought. Come on Apple, don't forget we do subsidise other non UK Apple purchases by paying over the top prices for our Apple gear !!!
 
Its just been on, a brief interview. Mark Rogers, UK General Manager of Apple Computer Speaking to Simon Mayo on BBC Radio Five Live (2.10pm).

Mark briefly described the Music Store, including US pricing. He emphasised the ease of use, legality, Apples joint working with the music industry, etc. He said exciting several times and was very upbeat.

Simon told him it was pretty useless if it was only available in the US (thanks Simon!!).

Mark replied that if the music industry resolves some of the issues regarding legality and contracts, then we will look to expand it outside of the US.

Mark said that no pricing available outside the US as the service is not yet available. He said hopefully they can work something out though. With a prompt from Simon, he agreed it shouldn't be more expensive than in the US. He said they would have to work on pricing for UK as Simon said he had had a lot of emails about this - i.e. we will pay 60p (~$1) but not 99p which would be more than the US price.

He was very positive about it all but said it was out of their hands as to when it could be released outside of US. Simon asked if it could be out this year, and Mark said he really didn't know but it would be as soon as possible.

All in all a very good interview, and excellent questions from Simon who had done some research, or at least read my email and asked the right questions. Apologies for my disjointed report, but I had no means to record the interview here and I can't type fast enough to transcribe the whole thing. I've written this from memory.

One funny moment was when Simon asked Mark when he had last downloaded music legally. Mark replied he had never downloaded music legally, and then quickly added that he had never downloaded music at all (liar!!). He added that to use the service in the UK at the moment we would need a US credit card and US billing address (as has been previously suggested).

In summary, the general feel I got was that the service will come to the UK, although not straight away. And if this wasn't the case, why would marK even bother doing the interview.


Cheers,

Dobbin
 
Tnx for the info Dobbin.

I hope that those "legal + contracts" hurdles will be taken quickly..... and also for the rest of Europe, and indeed globaly.
 
I'm getting an iPod and thats it, so far its not very good and unappealing to me.

I went online with it last night and it seems they have alot of partial albums which annoyed me and i havn't seen a B-Side yet! Its ALL Albums, nothing from single releases where the B-Sides reside.

I'll just purchase and rip music like normal.
 
Originally posted by dobbin
All in all a very good interview, and excellent questions from Simon who had done some research, or at least read my email and asked the right questions
Click to expand...

Probably never know where he got the questions from - but kudos to you for sending them in and giving Simon a heads up about this. Thanks for the posting aswell. :)
 
No international iTunes

I'm glad to here the right noises from Apple about the music service coming to international markets.

But I want to know what timescales are being aimed at since i don't trust Apple on this after Sherlock and iPhoto. I will also be extremely angry if the effort goes into bringing the service to Windows before International Apple customers as already seems to be the case.

I suspect Apple can't be bothered and will hide behind no announcements on future products and legal issues.

My tuppence ha'penny
 
This thread is starting to be UK only! :)

I live in the country just a couple of miles east off your East Anglia shoreline, but I feel the European market is quite dependant on you British and Irish.
I thnk that, because a) Cork (says enough), and b) no language (and political) problems. If Apple wants to try anything in Europe, UK and Ireland are the obvious places to start.

So could you "up" the pressure on Apple-UK? Someone over here must know someone...
 
I'd like to think it would be a europe wide deal and not just UK. I think that's quite feasible although I don't really know enough about the industry. There probably waiting for us to join the euro, makes the currency situation easier.

I am a little bit puzzled though about why apple are letting us use the service but not buying anything as we are using up quite a lot of bandwith and not putting any money into the service!!!! I think to me that signifies that they are planning to release something worldwide at some point when legal issues allow them. I think had it been US only and no chance of Europe we would of had no access whatsoever and probably iTunes 4 would have seperate US and International versions.
 
As a US iTunes user, I would also love the rest of the world to be included. Presumably, it would mean that many more European, Asian, African, South American, etc. artists would be added to the catalog. How great to have instant access to the top hits from, say, Japan or Iceland... music that's difficult to find in even the best US cd shops.

A world-wide iTunes music store would be absolutely amazing.
 
Originally posted by Flowbee
As a US iTunes user, I would also love the rest of the world to be included. Presumably, it would mean that many more European, Asian, African, South American, etc. artists would be added to the catalog. How great to have instant access to the top hits from, say, Japan or Iceland... music that's difficult to find in even the best US cd shops.

A world-wide iTunes music store would be absolutely amazing.
Click to expand...
I totally agree with you! I would like to see the rest of the world be able to use the music service, too. And, also, hopefully more artists would be added if it went world-wide.
 
Originally posted by James.Paul
There probably waiting for us to join the euro, makes the currency situation easier.
Click to expand...

LOL! I hope not, we'll be waiting a long time if thats the case.

Back on topic though, the news that they sold 275,000 songs in 18 hours will hopefully speed up negotiations elsewhere in the world. They have shown the record companies that there *is* money to made from this!
 
A Belgian newspaper quoted someone from Apple Belgium yesterday. He confirmed that the iTunes store is not available here because of the different and complicated copyright laws. But he also added "we're trying to clear that up as soon as possible".
 
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