No 'iTunes In The Cloud' for United Kingdom Until 2012

[VulchR]

A worker asks for a reasonable wage and the reply is 'You have global competition, so we can get away with paying you low wages'.

The worker asks then why executives get paid such high salaries and the reply is 'The global competition for recruiting executives is high, so we have to pay them a fortune.'

The UK consumer asks why the can't have all the features of iCloud for music (already paid for) and the reply is 'Because there are national boundaries'.

 

[Steve121178]

Bl*&dy typical! Stone-age Britain hits the pan again! How did we ever get to be the 6th largest economy in the world? Oh well, back to file-sharing and flook the record companies!

You are getting this upset over software? Quite frankly, it doesn't matter. Just have some patients.

Look on the bright side, at least if a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina occurred on our shores, we wouldn't just ignore it and pretend it never happened.

 

[farleysmaster]

Headline: No 'iTunes In The Cloud' for United Kingdom Until 2012

Story: The wait for iTunes In The Cloud will be similar in other international countries.

Jist: No 'iTunes in the cloud' for the rest of the world until 2012

Despite all the valid complaints about the PRS and the British record industry, it's the same problems everywhere!

P.s. love the phrase 'international countries'

 

[NightFox]

...This keynote was very strange anyway. Nothing was released at it? IOS 5 in the fall, Lion in July, iCloud also in the fall.
Mack120

But don't forget that despite the hype and expectation this is actually a developers event. All of the things you mentioned were released to developers on the same day.

 

[JoJack82]

Probably be 2022 before it's alowed in Canada. Lmao.

The CRTC probably won't allow it until Apple agrees to convert 30% of your uploaded music to Nickelback and Celine Dion songs.

Canadian Content laws are stupid. They slow down new technologies and services from coming to our country.

 

[onetoescape]

. . . and buy your US iTunes cards online. We do that to get US only shows and early release movies, books and some apps. Does mean that the US government are getting sales tax rather than the UK. But serves them right.

Can someone tell me how to do this? Would like to download some tv shows on in the states.

 

[NightFox]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; de-de) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

just get an US account ... takes like 2 minutes

I read somewhere in the last few days (sorry, can't remember where) that Apple were going to clamp down on this - something along the lines of 'locking' your iTunes authorised devices to an iTunes account - if you changed to an account in a different country you couldn't change back for several months. Something along those lines anyway, hopefully someone else can be a bit more specific?

 

[arkitect]

Bl*&dy typical! Stone-age Britain hits the pan again!

Oh come now, don't be so harsh. Everyone outside Planet You-Es-Eh is affected.

How did we ever get to be the 6th largest economy in the world?

By shrinking from being 1st largest?
But that was a long time ago.

Oh well, back to file-sharing and flook the record companies!

There is never an excuse for piracy.

You are getting this upset over software? Quite frankly, it doesn't matter.

+1

Just have some patients.

That'd be nice. Rich ones are even better.

Look on the bright side, at least if a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina occurred on our shores, we wouldn't just ignore it and pretend it never happened.

But only after we've put the kettle on.

 

[nicky0]

Doesn't matter, the UK has Spotify. I'd rather have Spotify over iTitC any day.

 

[farleysmaster]

Do you have any idea how puny the Spotify royalty payments are? I can't imagine any worse deal for musicians and songwriters than allowing the record companies posing as an indie streaming service to keep all the revenue and pay what amounts to almost zero royalties.

There is a great set of graphics here that lay out visually how many sales or plays an artist would have generate to earn the minimum wage; 143 self-pressed CD sales or 4 million Spotify plays.

But how does it compare to Radio royalties, and does anyone (i.e. your average artist) make money off of PRS royalties anyway? How does it convert to purchases vs the difficulty of selling self-pressed CDs without promotion?

How much easier is the distribution of your work to an audience as an independent artist, than getting a record deal where the royalties go towards paying your debts to the label?

Aren't artists making the majority of their money off t-shirts and tickets, anyway?

I don't know the answers, but it's clearly far from simple.

 

[The Phazer]

The media industries seems to be run by dinosaurs who keep failing to adapt to the modern era.

Why is this PRS's fault?

PRS is primarily a union for music performers, not the labels (not saying the labels don't have massive clout and own some of those rights, but PRS is NOT just the labels). It's the primary source of revenue for most individual musicians.

There's no indication here PRS are taking an undue time to do any kind of contractual deal, which is inevitably complicated (just for a start - how does Apple plan to deliver metadata? Is is compatible with UK data protection legislation? Does it work with PRS's systems?). Even if the answer is a flat "yes, great!" from PRS, this still takes a good six months to sort out.

And Apple didn't even start asking them until the service was announced in the US. That's not PRS's fault, it's Apple's fault for being rediculously disorganised and having a corporate culture where only the US matters.

Here's a little rumour you can take from what it's worth from someone anonymous on an internet message board -

The reason Apple TV has no content outside the US is because nobody outside Cuppertino is allowed to write any code whatsoever for it. Steve personally gave an edict that he didn't want the iOS team in Cuppertino "wasting time" writing code for any services that he couldn't personally get in his house. So the international Apple teams haven't bothered approaching any content providers whatsoever, as they can't implement any deals regardless, even six months after the device went on sale.

Phazer

 

[179202]

Money, they need to make sure it is a viable service in the states first. An international launch for a brand new product could be a disaster if it fails.

Whilst I see where you're coming from, if it was purely about money, surely the UK market would be a better place to test out a product like this (smaller market etc)? That is, unless Apple/the music industry deems USA a bunch of pirates and wants to try and convert them first?

That said, that's £25 of my hard earned cash not going into the music industry's pockets this year. Would gladly pay for this.

 

[Prallethrin]

You guys should count your blessings...

You guys should count your blessings where I live we don't even get the iTunes music store - of course no videos either.

iTunes Match will probably never come to our shores.

 

[The Phazer]

But how does it compare to Radio royalties, and does anyone (i.e. your average artist) make money off of PRS royalties anyway? How does it convert to purchases vs the difficulty of selling self-pressed CDs without promotion?

The majority of average artists do make money of PRS royalties. Indeed, over time it provides the majority of retirement income to musicians.

And radio royalties historically have a lot less negative effect on sales of permanent copies that Spotify does.

How much easier is the distribution of your work to an audience as an independent artist, than getting a record deal where the royalties go towards paying your debts to the label?

It's much, much more difficult. For a start, try getting a bank loan for the money to fund recording an album for six months from a bank and see how their terms compare to a record labels. And how the bank won't do any marketing for you.

Aren't artists making the majority of their money off t-shirts and tickets, anyway?

With a few exceptions, this is a Cory Doctorow invented fabrication. It is a brilliant example of a lie being repeated enough times it becomes the truth.

Phazer

 

[ScottishDuck]

This is because the british legal system.

 

[OllyW]

This is because the british legal system.

The British legal system is restricting the launch of iTunes in the Cloud to the USA and preventing Apple from launching the service in other countries?

Ok.

 

[mikechan1234]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

iTunes match not coming here until next year is not a big deal, just roll the other cloud services on time and it'll be like it never existed

 

[Westyfield2]

Why does this not surprise me?

 

[farleysmaster]

As I say, I'm not the expert (do you have sources? Im interested in seeing what sort of incomes people get off PRS), but was wondering about this one:

It's much, much more difficult. For a start, try getting a bank loan for the money to fund recording an album for six months from a bank and see how their terms compare to a record labels. And how the bank won't do any marketing for you.

How easy it to get this record deal in the first place, though. Maybe I'm thinking more about the artists that don't get that much radio play, (think Belle and Sebastian, but twice as cult). But the process of making and recording the Music is very DIY (and I expect this is getting more popular).

Re radio vs spotify, how common is it for artist getting promotion via radio play to be selling their own CDs? It's hard for me to avoid thinking that the big acts who get radio play, will likely be selling in volumes to make some royalties (or pay off their debts...) whereas no money off of no radio play is fractionally worse than almost no off spotify play (but with added promotional and distribution value) (and spotify discourages time-wasting illegal downloading).

I'm coming at this from a pragmatic point of view, though. The way the industry exists is contrived and doesn't have a lot to do with art.

 

[tech3475]

And Apple didn't even start asking them until the service was announced in the US. That's not PRS's fault, it's Apple's fault for being rediculously disorganised and having a corporate culture where only the US matters.

If this is true, then fair enough, since the negotiations in the US went on for some months.

The reason I called the media industries dinosaurs is because they have a habit of failing to adapt to modern situations or do so in a way which is bad for consumers e.g. DRM.

 

[daveathall]

Strangely, I don't feel that a void has opened up in my life. When it comes it comes. Bug free one would hope.

 

[AaronEdwards]

Do you have any idea how puny the Spotify royalty payments are? I can't imagine any worse deal for musicians and songwriters than allowing the record companies posing as an indie streaming service to keep all the revenue and pay what amounts to almost zero royalties.

There is a great set of graphics here that lay out visually how many sales or plays an artist would have generate to earn the minimum wage; 143 self-pressed CD sales or 4 million Spotify plays.

A worse deal? Need not to look any further than the deal Apple made with the record companies, if it's correct. $25/year to convert all your pirated songs into legal songs. After Apple has taken a cut, the record companies take a cut for themselves, what do you think is left for the artists?
There's little incentive now to buy any music from iTunes.

A Spotify customer in the US is most likely going to pay between $120 and $180/year for the service. If you compare that to a customer buying songs on iTunes, he or she would have to buy between 90 and 260 tracks each year to pay as much. I doubt many do that. And Spotify isn't taking a 30% cut either as Apple do.

 

[Coastercub]

Bum ! I guess it's only a few months to wait.. I'll survive..

 

[Piggie]

I used to enjoy that old service where you could listen to cool new music all day long, ohhhh, what was it called? Oh yes I remember. Radio

 

[fat phil]

I read somewhere in the last few days (sorry, can't remember where) that Apple were going to clamp down on this - something along the lines of 'locking' your iTunes authorised devices to an iTunes account - if you changed to an account in a different country you couldn't change back for several months. Something along those lines anyway, hopefully someone else can be a bit more specific?

I've not heard this yet, but it wouldn't surprise me (little would these days). It sounds a bit draconian though - I've several friends who move around from country to country, doubt they'd be happy with this arrangement.

Here I have a UK account and my wife has a US account - I can see things getting complicated...