Euro iTunes Store Delayed

pnjman writes "Due to the record labels being unable to agree licencing issues, the European iTunes music store has been put back until at least next year."

Comments

Credit Cards

[Llywelyn]

"imagine remotely accessing a machine in Finland, using that machine to download from Apple's store at a cheaper rate than your home country, and then downloading from the Finland machine to yours. "

This would probably be countered the same way that it is being handled now to prevent people from buying music this way from Finland by routing through a US American server--by checking the credit card address.

Thus, if your credit card has a home address in Estonia (and a Credit Card *is* required to use the store), then you won't be able to use the iTunes store through Finland after Finland is included in the plan or through the United States today.

Overblowing it a bit?

[Llywelyn]

This is blatant hyperbole.

Windows access is relatively critical, but only from the perspective of competing with whatever MS manages to cobbel together that actually has a chance of competing (I haven't seen anything yet) and will likely have very little to do with the long term life-and-death of the project as it stands now (the record companies seem happy with the deal, and so long as they have the big-5 and the big-5 remain profitable, Apple will probably not have to float the store).

International access, on the other hand, is in no-way critical to whether the project succeeds or whether Apple succeeds. The problems are the laws in other countries which are not conducive to this kind of pricing scheme, as well as the international contracts and licensing issues surrounding distribution of media.

If Apple and the big-5 are having trouble with it, so will anyone else who wants to expand across country boundaries.

Thus, the two *most* critical issues for the iTunesMusicStore, at this stage, are:

1) Getting more labels aboard (they seem to be doing an admirable job at getting this set up).

2) Getting iTunes ported to Windows (once again).

These would be the "logical next steps" to remain in front of the pack. International access is more of a nicety that is not overly critical for their success (though I'm sure they want to do it as quickly as possible--more profits are never a bad thing).

Haha!

[psavo]

I can't help but quote Simpsons:

Haha! Suckers.

I can't believe how this is feasible for them. From my POV, they're loosing money here all this time the iTunes store isn't running in Europe. I think they'll have a lot to explain to shareholders, eg. 'Why didn't you pursue this business model as soon as it showed it's potential?'.

Reading the article...

[squiggleslash]

...it appears to me that Apple has made the somewhat common mistake of treating Europe as a country. It isn't. It's a collection of countries with a growing trade-orientated body joining most of them in some fields but by no means all. It's almost as absurd (I said almost) to treat Europe as a country as it is to treat "North America" as one.

Apple would do well to look at rolling out iTMS in individual countries rather than attempt to do this as a bloc. Other international retailers, such as Amazon (which has amazon.co.uk and amazon.de) have already learnt this lesson, and built successfully upon it.

Take what they can get

[fingers1122]

The record labels should take whatever they can get. Basically, they have two options: (1) Get some money when people legally download songs. -or - (2) Get no money when people download songs illegally with p2p clients. The record companies are getting greedy; they should take what they can get and be happy!

Re:European Music Store, what about individual one

[pnjman]

Would it not be better to combine all the stores into one huge store and so expose these smaller artists to a much wider audience rather than the big 5 labels just pushing the latest teen act?

5 million isn't good enough for them?

[chia_monkey]

I find it odd that the initial success of iTMS here in the US isn't good enough for the EU to say "ok, they were a good test bed. We let them take the risk, now we'll jump on". What exactly are they waiting for (aside from what the article says...which I think is just a bunch of sad excuses).

I also find it ironic that in that very article, they're talking about how the P2P networks are trading thousands of tracks per day, thus people aren't buying CDs. Um...hello...doesn't it just seem like common sense to hurry up and get this set up so you can get SOME money?