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iTunes Europe Goes Live

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the you-submitted-this-too-didn't-you dept.

Spad writes "The Register is reporting the launch of iTunes in the UK, France and Germany. "iTunes will carry 700,000 songs from the five major record labels and independents, and prices for the download service start at 79 pence or 99 euro cents per song." It's not ideal (99c is about 55p) but it's better pricing than expected. I for one will be signing up to use it."

9 of 451 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Since this is an Apple product by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm a UK Mac user. I know of dozens.

    So all of them, you're saying.

  2. Not much on there yet... by jaytay · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well it's launched but there's not much on there at the moment and there's an awful lot of "Partial albums" consiting of just one song. Hopefully they'll be adding more tracks over the coming weeks....

    1. Re:Not much on there yet... by Sunspire · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The whole idea of having some content exclusive to only parts of the world is just stupid. It really shows the media companies are living in some bizarro alternate marketplace where a bigger audience is not preferable over control. Apple should try to bring everyone together in a single gigantic music hub. I want to listen to what the Japanese market listens to, the UK indie scene, Swedish garage bands, etc. Right now iTunes is simply your local music store in digital form but it could be so much more!

      Why not simply go the full mile? I want every music track, movie, tv-show and computer game ever produced, and I've got an attention span of about 30 seconds so you better hurry up. Sell to me dammit, I've got cash! It's the inevitable conlcusion to all of this, being able to queue up that one funny episode from your fav sitcom from Poland from the 80's, and having it instantly. The money the media companies could be making is a magnitude greater than what they get today, by truly selling on a global level absolutely everything they've got in their dusty archives and all future productions. It's ultimate distribution channel so if it can be digitized and sold it should.

      Sigh, something tells me they'd rather just work on DRM and new region encoding schemes.

      --
      It's like deja vu all over again.
  3. Exchange Rates by indie1982 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well i think we're getting a shitty deal in the UK when 0.99 euro converts to 65p and UK users have to pay 79p a track!

    1. Re:Exchange Rates by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, the British didn't want to join the Euro, because they wanted to be independent. So, now that you are, hope you are still happy with your independence!

  4. Bah... by MouseR · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...still not available for the 53rd state: Canada.

    1. Re:Bah... by 955301 · · Score: 5, Funny

      The 51st and 52nd states are Ignorance and Confusion, and they contain over half the population.

      --
      You are checking your backups, aren't you?
  5. Re:uk + fr + de != eu by swiert · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apple also announced that the iTMStores would open all over the European Union in October.

    For instance, see:

    http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/jun/15itune s. html

  6. Price differentiation by 16K+Ram+Pack · · Score: 5, Interesting
    By EU law, can they do this?

    I thought that the EU was dead against people being able to price people differently based on country. In other words, if you go to a site, that site can't give you a different price based on your country of origin. But, that having a UK site and a French site with different prices is OK.