The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

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".

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As reported in today's Australian Financial Review:

http://afr.com/premium/articles/2005/08/03/1122748692563.html

Protracted negotiations preventing the launch of Apple's iTunes Music Store in Australia are costing the music industry dearly by creating music pirates who may never return to buying music even after Apple's store appears, PricewaterhouseCoopers warned yesterday.

Releasing its fourth annual Australian Entertainment and Media Outlook report, which found that only $100,000 worth of music downloads were sold in Australia last year, PwC also warned that radio stations could be well positioned to steal a big share of the internet music market, especially if Australia continued to lag the rest of the world with legal music downloads.

Apple has been trying to launch its iTunes Music Store (iTMS) in Australia for the past several years, but an impasse with at least one major record label, SonyBMG Music, has kept it out of the market. First launched in the US in early 2003, the online store has proved to be the single biggest driving force in the uptake of legal music download services in the rest of the world.

"Each day without iTunes Music Store is a day when more and more people will resort to piracy," warned Matthew Liebmann, author of the PwC report.

"When you look at digital downloads, we are a lagging nation. We do have BigPond Music and ninemsn and some other services, but unless you have iTunes you're just not in the game.

"The longer we delay, the more people go towards piracy [and] take matters into their own hands, and the industry would be foolish to think they'll all come rushing back to paid models once the big gun iTunes comes into the marketplace," Mr Liebmann said.

PwC predicts that the legal music download business will grow by an average of 169per cent a year between now and 2009, climbing from a "negligible" $100,000 in sales last year to $14million by the end of the decade. "If you don't embrace the technology today, you risk it going to the pirates, and you will never get that revenue back," he said.

SonyBMG Music, one of Australia's two biggest record labels, is still locked in negotiations with Apple over the launch of iTMS in Australia, delaying the release of the service in Australia.

Industry insiders say one sticking point is that SonyBMG wants Apple to increase the number of digital formats supported by the store.

Apple sells music that features digital rights management technology known as FairPlay, which prevents it being played on any portable music players other than Apple's own iPod players. SonyBMG is understood to be fighting to have Microsoft's WMA format and Sony's own ATRAC format added to iTMS, to allow players from other manufacturers (including Sony) to work with music purchased from the popular online store.

Mr Liebmann said the battle to get iTMS launched here could still be moot in the long run because it was the radio stations, not the internet stores, that had the real opportunity to own the legal download market.

"Radio is in the position to own music. You listen to the radio to learn about new songs. It's the prime way to do it," he said.

"If these guys can start embracing the technology that will allow people to discover the music, and then buy the ring tone or ideally buy the track, they'll start to capitalise on the marketing benefits that they offer."

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

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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.

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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!

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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