iTunes Music Store Japan Launched

Does anyone familiar with the Japanese credit card market know of an online place where we can sign up for a Japanese card? I suppose it would also mean we'd need a fake or borrowed Japan street address also, right?

Well, I encountered this same problem, and of course, was searching for a solution when I encountered this web page. Want to know what this means to me? The whole problem iTunes tries to solve by giving people an easy, cheap, effective way to purchase downloads of songs and stop piracy, is not going to go away at this rate. If there's no other solution for me to get single tracks off foreign albums, I'll give you just one guess where I'mma go to get em.

Good point. Most non-music international websites support this. Infact, most credit cards support charges in foreign currency and do the conversion themselves. I also thought this is very weak when I discovered the problem. I would think Apple would understand globalization. This issue is explained away by iTunes as a matter of licensing and control by the Japanese music industry. Shutting down global access to their product is self defeating. The industry better get with the times.

Well, I think that they would WANT us to be able to buy songs from the Japanese system. If we are willing to pay for them (and they can SO easily convert our $ to yen) then I don't see why they won't let us buy them? Then everyone would be happy! We get songs, they get money. I, personally, think it makes perfect sense.

Well I use the American iTunes Music store in Japan, so I suppose it is possible the other way around, but difficult. Since I lived in America for most of my life I still have an active American credit card. If you could get a Jpaanese credit card (not overly hard to do), you could use the store. At least that's my theory.

hey poster number five, blame politics. It's not going to get fixed. It took this long for Apple to negotiate enough to get the store going to begin with, and due to stupid rules with international things, an American account won't be able to use the JP services. That being said, it might be possible to get a JP account....anyone know if there's a way to do this?

NO WAY! Using our normal accounts, we cannot purchase songs from Japan. What a load of dung, I was really looking forward to increasing my collection. Bastards, this needs to be fixed!

Ha ha ha. http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=74570633 An entire album for 8 Yen, or 1 yen a song. 1 yen is worth less than 1 US cent. haha. I wish I could find more of these deals.

Does that mean that we (in U.S.) can buy japanese songs too from itunes?

This is good news! Not only will Apple's iTunes grow in popularity, but Japan will get the quickest access to smash hits like "Let's get retarded".