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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."
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It's too bad that licensing has been so difficult for Apple in Europe. It seems like this will be a roadblock for any kind of digital content distribution service.
If you accept flat-rate, simple click-and-download content distribution as the future, then it is obviously necessary to re-think the "every little European country is licensed differently" international licensing model.
Otherwise, imagine some of the weirdness you could pull off... 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. I'm not familiar with the security measures that might combat this, but I imagine any that are in place could probably be circumvented.
It's pretty obvious don't you think? M$ marketoid drones must have flooded those executive meetings recommending the corporate managers to wait for WMP DRM "It'll-be-available-really-soon". The temptation to license 3 copies, one for the car, one for the sitting-room and one for the portable media whatnot is too compelling. Otherwise why did those "artists" complain that their concepts' complexity was crippled by one-song downloads? (hypocrites... radio pass has already done this; else why don't we hear 15+min tunes more often?) That was meant to be part of a bullet list in a powerpoint presentation... Sheesh... this damn greed is literally changing my musical tastes; once I used to dig Metallica and HM (say, at the times of Justice for All) but now I'm all into electronica subculture... there's less MTV colonization!
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Um... as one who just came back from an EU country and visited the EU buildings themselves, not to mention studying my brains out about it, this is just what the EU is for. to be treated like one *financial* country. What is more, having total-european standards for every shared product is a major part of that. With that goes the using of standard policies on things such as copyright and telecom and such. In practice, it is a tad more complicated, but that is just because their policies are more French, ie: artist work integrity centered instead of focus on profit and poorly worded royalties contracts. Probably something like the % that goes to the actual artists are what is holding this deal back.
the failure of the music business to get a grip on new models of doing business is, again, shocking. i'm having a hard time coping with it! (a) for one, the record companies themselves have made these completely different contracts by country. in order to maximize profits they have agreed on different pricing per country. i understand that there are legal differences, and that from a legal point of view the contracts are difficult and different also but anyways. i feel that the record companies should make a move towards apple (and maybe others as well) to set this up. (b) the prices of CD's is very high here in Europe. partly that is because of higher taxes, but the biggest cut still goes to the record companies. this encourages p2p filetrading as all internet-literate people *know* how much a CD is in the US. (c) the failure to give the rest of the world the same access to (legal) onlne music *will* hurt the music industry. because of all the different legal systems it is nearly impossible to go after the big traders, unlike the RIAA in the US. the situation in Est-European countries is even more difficult! my guess is that apple would do wise to crack the European market one-by-one and force the record companies to come up with a solution on their end (by forcing 1 pricing schema!!!). start with the UK and Germany (big markets and easier law). Move on to the other ones, eg. the countries where apple stores are in place so you are a legal entity already. ....
I have to salute you. For the first time in recent memory, someone's made a legitimate "the record companies are out of touch with technology" post. This isn't just a "I'm not getting free music, so the record companies suck" post, but a good point.
May we never see th
ITMS does not know where I live and I have credit cards on both continents.
...it may result in a UK iTMS, a French iTMS, etc.
Just like XBox live which is available in some European countries, coming to others later this year and not even on the horizon for the rest. I live in one of the smaller countries (but one where live is coming soonish). So I might soon have to watch friends in other countries using ITMS while I can't. As long as it's US only I don't care that much, because I don't actually know any Americans.
As far as my tastes are concerned there is good music in Europe. More so than anywhere else in the world. Okay, so America has Weezer, Princess Superstar and Saul Williams who kind of make up for Michael Bolton and Garth Brooks.
Hank! White!
One thing that kind of piss me off is that Apple has decided that the whole European Union will get one big European Music Store. That really sucks because that mean that either the store will be flooded by German or French-singing artists that rest of Europe don't have any clue who the hell they are, or that these artists who happen to sing in their own language get sacked from the store. Now as a Swedish person I'd like to have some Swedish Hip Hop in the store, but since Swedish Hip Hop isn't selling outside of Sweden -- I doubt that they would even think about. This is kind of stupid in my opinion, and I would like to see a Music Store per country instead. To not only launch it faster, but to please the consumers more specifically in each country.
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
How many more boats do record labels have to miss? Here you have a service people people use and like and they're likely quibbling about a few cents.
Yahoo! music tunes into Europe
Wednesday, June 25, 2003 Posted: 5:14 AM EDT (0914 GMT)
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- U.S. Internet media company Yahoo Inc. said it is debuting its popular music service Launch in Europe, its first crack at the region's burgeoning online music market.
Launch Music carries free and subscription-based programming ranging from music videos to artist interviews to streaming music, which it is bringing to Europe as high-speed broadband Internet usage reaches mass market levels.
Yahoo does not sell music downloads in North America, but the company said it would consider launching such features in the United States and abroad in the future with Launch's user base of monthly visitors topping 9 million.
"What we will be doing is building this service to take Launch global, and then we'll look at the opportunities," David Goldberg, vice president and general manager for Launch Music on Yahoo, told Reuters on Wednesday.
Launch will be a primarily advertiser-supported Web site in Europe, as it is in North America.
Goldberg said Launch will likely team up with UK music site Dotmusic, which is owned by BT Group, as part of its newly struck alliance to bring entertainment content to BT OpenWorld broadband subscribers.
Yahoo has been exporting select features of its North American service to its European operation in an effort to boost advertising and subscription revenues overseas.
Earlier this month, Yahoo launched a free online dating service in Europe, but will change to a monthly subscription service as soon as this autumn.
Yahoo has been noticeably quiet in Europe on the music front as the market has been slower to take off here.
The major music labels have been more selective in releasing music to song download sites, offering their artists' music to a handful of Europe's largest Internet service providers and Web portals including Tiscali and Microsoft's MSN.
==== Yeah, I know, it's not the same, but still...
And you, madam, are very ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.
Reading through the comments i find lots of statements along the line of "The music industry again doesn't get it" or so, but few seem to realize what all this is really about.
As far as I understand it, it's not only the greedy music managers that are keeping the iTMS Europe from opening. It's basically a structural difference between (continental) European author's rights and copyright in the USA.
The difference is quite obvious. If you have the right to copy some book, or painting, or piece of music or whatever, you can simply give it away. It's not bound to some special person. If I buy the copyright of some work of art it's as good as if I were the artist myself (at least such contracts are possible under the copyright sort of law).
In the concept of author's right, you can't sell any rights. You can allow someone to publish your work, or copy it, or whatever you could think of, but you always keep your author's right, because you are the author, and there is no amount of money in the world that could make someone else the author.
As a consequence this means that, when a new method of publishing emerges (like the internet), the record company has to come back to the artist and ask him, if he would kindly allow the use of this new method now, too - simply because "the internet" isn't mentioned in the old contracts and the company never had the possibility to simply buy "all rights". (It should be possible to have a contract that allows all forms of publishing, but I think that is pretty unusal).
So, I think the managers do know by now that there's a lot of money to make with the iTMS, and they'd be more than happy to make it possible, but the real problem is to get thousands of artists to sign new contracts.
But, then again, im am (happy) not (to be) a lawyer, and I could be wrong.
Actually, the music industry does see Europe as one country or 'territory', with the exception of Britain. The whole globe is divided into these territories. I'm not sure why it's taking so long, at least there should be a British model spun out pretty soon, Euroland later, seeing as Britain and USA share the same recording companies for the most part. I'm surprised that Apple haven't targetted Australia / New Zealand as a great territory to test-bed on, same language, few record companies - ideal!