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Canadian iTunes Music Store Opens
Trillan writes "After appearing on December 1st, iTunes music store Canada is now officially open. Price is only $0.99 CDN (about $0.83 US) per song, so it's less expensive than the US store. This is probably fair since our CDs are usually cheaper here, too, at least on the west coast."
Is it possible for Americans (USA) to buy songs from Canada's iTunes?
JEWS DID LACEY PETERSON
Wonder if these will still be $10+.....
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
Fuck those commies!
from the u.s.a.?
"The Best of Bob and Doug Mackenzie."
Take off!
users in the US to download music from Canada's music store, to get the price break?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
About time. I don't see why it took this long. Was there some massive tech barriers, that restrained the opening, or was it Canadas version of the RIAA?
nice!
Under the Canadian Copywrite Law, "personal copying" is permitted. This means I can download all the music I could ever want. The only drawback is a small tax on every cd purchased. thats ok though, i dont buy cd's often.
You are confusing me with someone who cares.
The only difference between the two countries is currency, and since the payment method requires a credit card anyway, that is not really an issue.
What is the benefit of having a separate website for Canadians when the Internet is designed to be international? It isn't like there is some giant firewall at the Canadian border that blocks Canadian users from accessing the regular iTunes page. The media is also fully digital, can be downloaded, and doesn't have to come wrapped in cardboard.
This is international commerce without the problems of nationalities getting in the way. I don't understand the point of having a separate website for a group of people who speak the same language as the original group.
Yet another useless headline on the slashdot front page!
Next headline:
Apple makes I-Mac that serves pudding...
I am full of goo... black evil goo
"This is probably fair since our CDs are usually cheaper here, too, at least on the west coast."
That's not a usage of "fair" I'm familiar with. Are you Canadians getting 16% less music per track than Americans? Or did you mean to say "it's unfair in a similar way to the current CD price-fixing scheme"?
0 1 - just my two bits
Please Apple. Please.
Australia/NZ now are the last English-speaking countries not to get iTunes so I hope we get it soon (as in the next 6 months).
Bored? Visit my exciting counter page!
They probably have Bryan Adams albums featured. :)
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Any Canadian out there who wants to be my best friend?
Moderate this comment
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Nothing to see here
Now I can buy some Wilco albums for only $9.99 when they are often $20 or $25 CDN in stores.
Random is the New Order.
Now I can run north of the border, buy iTunes GC, and return home giggling over the profits. Now only to factor in gas. Fortunantly war is fixing that little problem for me.
This is another way of starting a sig with this and ending it with that.
Cheaper CDs, cheaper pharmaceuticals, affordable health care ... sounds like paradise! Would you Canadians just invade us, please?
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
Keep in mind that the taxes in Canada are higher on average. In Ontario, we pay a total of 15% tax.
Also, keep in mind, if a can of coke goes for $1 US, the same can will sell in Canada for $1 CAD.
This idiot is:
Negative: Retarded Peurile A Mega Troll Let Lycos Loose on Him
I find it interesting that Canadians right now enjoy more 'freedom' wrt music sharing/copying etc. We are allowed to 'share' our music with friends in exchange for a small tax on CDRs and MP3 players.
Also, our AACs from Apple are cheaper ($0.84 today).
The most interesting part? IP is not part of NAFTA, if it was, you could buy music in Canada and re-import it to the US. (Actually if IP was part of NAFTA, Apple CANADA could sue the RIAA to force lower prices as the present situation is anti-competitive) {interesting asside, Apple CANADA would have to do it, Apple USA would have no standing, goofy NAFTA dispute resolution}.
INSTEAD, what I think will happen is that the US will force Canada to sign the WIPO and the world gets DMCA like treatment, as opposed to making the US laws more sane.
So, for all those who asked, no you will not be able to re-import the music back into the US... even if you could get Apple to sell it to you at the lower price you would have to declare the purchase and remit duty on the purchase. Ever buy one of the "imported' CDs from the record store... part of the reason they cost more is excise duty.
Bah, somewhat useless however, with the USD sucking lately, we could be back to 1.05Canadian soon, and we would want to buy your cheap music.... better get that trade deficit fixed soon!
Bad spellers of the world untie!
The performance of the store doesn't seem terribly awe inspiring right now. Knowing that Apple don't tend to launch small, I can only presume that this means lots of happy Canadians browsing and buying.
-psy
In other country Apple had problem getting indies onboard, one would have thought they would be prepared this time. This ain't gonna work if they have no music from here to sell us, The rest of Canada might appreciate but the national fiber is too strong here for a majority of people to adhere to a service that doesn't sell them their own music...
Arent Apple still being sued for not complying with the EU about having the same price throughout EU? I seem to remember it being cheaper in france or something than UK!
"No George Bush."
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
That's irrelevant; as someone here once said, $1 is still a $1 here, no matter what it's worth anywhere else.
Finally, I have some music to groove to during the cold nights up here in the Great White North while sipping a Molson! Now where's my took?
It's actually called "TunesA".
Sweet, what a deal for Americans! Only $0.83 a download, no wait, $0.85, oop, make that $0.92, don't worry guys it'll stop any day now, shit! $1.05 ...
1. Be a Canadian.
2. Have a credit card.
3. Set up website (totally automated, eh) offering to buy people iTunes songs at cost plus 5%.
4. Advertise service in USA
5. Profit!
Of course I'm probably missing some DRM reason why this won't work. Not that I care.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Michael Moore has already made a movie about Canada attacking the U.S.
I live in the United States of Canada. Do I qaulify?
Nothing to see here
as an indie musician with stuff on iTunes, they don't have it together internally. I've had sales from 6 months ago that I haven't been paid for yet.
it's great that they're opening these new outlets and all but they're lacking in some basics.
Can you spot the subtle differences?
~jeff
Considering the U2 branded iPod, I expect to see Ireland come online first.
Phase 1 -- On Ebay offer to sell any iTunes song for US$0.90
Phase 2 -- Use Canadian iTunes to buy the songs cheap then give the files and account password to the purchaser
Phase 3 -- Eh???
Phase 4 -- Profit!
ITMS US has the rights to distribute the music on their store as negotiated with the US companies who hold those rights.
But, and this is crucial, those companies don't hold the rights to distribute those songs in Canada, or the UK, or Spain, or any other country but the US. So in order to sell the songs to Canadians (or in the UK, or in Spain) they have to negotiated the distribution rights with the people who do hold the rights in each of those countries.
Hence each country needs its own store, with distribution rights negotiated with the local rights holder, which only sells to credit card billing addresses within the country to which those distribution rights pertain.
As people, Canadians are very sorry for not containing Celine Dion ourselves, and allowing her to reak havoc on the world. Thanks be to all Americans who helped pay for her containment prison in the Nevada Desert.
I'm not trying to troll here but I'm not overly interested in rebooting just to go browse and see what they have. Is it possible to at least browse the store under linux or is it mac or windows only?
As a Canadian, i'm glad Apple finally delivered on their promise to make iTunes available in Canada.
And of course I couldn't be happier they stuck with the $0.99/song pricing, even in our currency.
However, my first search for music came up empty! In the USA store, 47 hits show up when I search for "Foo Fighters". However, switching to the Canada site results in "no hits". What the heck?
Is this our crazy "Canadian content" laws overruling sanity again? How many other artists are mysteriously missing?
Free GMail invite with Free iPods!
Canadian Representative: Our government has apologized for Bryan Adams on numerous occasions!
You qualify if you can manage to put "eh" and "yehaw" in one sentence that makes some sence.
It looks like not all of the music that's in the US store is available in the Canadian one at the moment. :( And I was looking forward to picking up some Lemon Jelly...
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
Here's how a Canadian could arbitrage this. Offer to buy songs for any Americans. They send you $x where 0.83 x 0.99 via PayPal. You then create a bogus Apple ID (email address), buy the song they want, email it to them eith the password to the Apple ID. They change the Apple ID password and the song is all theirs. Actually this could be simplified by purchasing "gift certificates" perhaps? I'm sure there's multiple holes in this, but seems like there's potential!
Gol' darned Canadian socialized music industry!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
" we don't need canadian business though, you need ours"
How often do you think you fill up on Canuck Gas?
What's 0.00 canadian in USD?
IMHO, Ipods (like all Apple products) are for people who have more money than sense.
The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'
I like to insert my I-pod into my anus. MMMmmmmm!
His name was Robert Paulsen.
Probably less often than you pay for US electricity. It used to be that we (CDN) provided the states with a lot of juice but not anymore. I have a friend who works with the CDN gov who recently enlightened me on this fact. Can't explain why though.
I have a 40 GB iPod, and all this time I wasn't sure how in God's name I was going to fill it. Now I can!
This space left intentionally blank.
If it is not legal to get it from one, it is probably not legal to get it from the other, so you might as well not bother, or get it from the cheaper of the two, no?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Just wondering, has anyone else from NZ/Australia found they can no longer access the iTunes store?
You used to be able to enter it, and look at the music videos in the various iTMS, listen to the previews etc.
But now, even though it says you can, I can no longer enter any of the iTMS stores at all...Only happened in the last fortnight.
Parallel imports are actually dead in about four weeks.
e ntly-yours/2 004/11/25/1101219671693.html?from=storylhs
:-)
Apparently our government caved during the Free Trade Agreement negotiations. Virtually all Intellectual Property Rights law changes to US law come 1 Jan 2004.
We even get the Digital Millenum Copyright Act - believe it or not.
Check (Registration Required):
http://smh.com.au/news/Technology/Pat
I hope you know the words to the American Anthem!
I've added my mother in charlotte, NC, sister in Rochester, NY, and my po box and home in NJ...
I havent' asked them to add a valid address in another company, but I also don't use itunes.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Woops: URL Should be: Patently yours - Sydney Morning Herald
Couldn't you just purchase a bunch of iTunes GC's like we can at Target? (any Michigander takers wanna make a run for the border?)
Maybe he thought you would be interested?
Here is a screenshot from the store. Too bad Rush blows donkeynuts.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
We are not there yet but its getting close. There are projects on the way though (primarilly in Quebeq) that will address this issue.
American TV Anchor: But, Mr. Minister, it isn't like this film is the first troublesome thing to come out of Canada. Let us not forget Bryan Adams.
Canadian Film Minister: Now, now, the Canadian Government has apologized for Bryan Adams on several occasions!
And just like the US store, I'm sure it'll feature:
A lot of pop artists;
A good selection of works by earlier groups in various genres;
Not a whole lot of imports; and
A lot of partial albums for major singers, because some corporate asshat out there thinks that's good marketing.
I used to download lots of music from Napster in college. Burned it CD, played the hell out of it. But I didn't keep most of those mp3s, and today with a steady job and a little different viewpoint, I'm willing to pay money for good copies and to support artists I like. So I checked out iTunes and loved it. I've spent about $80 there in the first month.
But when I run across artists like Enigma (whose albums have been chopped to hell) and Genesis (none of the most notable songs from the Peter Gabriel era are available), what do I do? I load up my p2p and start searching.
I don't blame iTunes. I commend them for doing the best they can to bring fire to the music industry cavemen. I admire what they're doing, but if the music makers want me as a consumer, they're going to have to deal with me on my level.
snoopblocker.com and proxyweb.net are proxy servers located in Canada
I checked earlier today and my first few searches turned up nothing. And these weren't super obscure searches. Normal stuff like the proclaimers and nofx. My buddy - the music elitist - thought it was great because when he tried to test it with hip obscure stuff a lot of it was there; including some indie Victoria bands. So what's going on... is there a big push to get the block busters on there and the really obscure stuff. And those of us in the middle are left in the cold?
That's all well and good, but when are those of us in the land down under going to be able to legally purchase music online?
However, from a different news source, the identity theft in canada doubled last night. Primary investigations revealed that much of that information has been moving across the border to U.S
Actually, it's only ontario using US electricity, most other provinces sell the US power. And ontario is only buying US power becuase the liberals were bribed to do so, wonder why so many nuclear and hydro generators that are fully functional have been shut down? Stupid Mcguinty...
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Or...something?
...maybe you can give your friend your harddrive and he can copy it off of your harddrive? Maybe that would be legal.
What you said is not the full truth. There are restrictions. This is how it works in Canada:
It is NOT legal to send copywritten files to people.
I'm not 100% sure about receiving files however.
What you're perfectly allowed to do legally is give your friend a CD that you purchased, and he is able to take that CD and make a copy of it.
I'm not too sure how this would work with itunes. I assume your Hard drive is the medium that the song is stored on? So
IAMAL
Some interesting things in there:
1) HydroQuebec exports almost a third of the energy
2) Either I'm stupid, or the gov't is, because they think HydroQuebec is exporting "Hydraulic" energy. Don't they mean "Hydro electric"?
I just took a first look at the store and I noticed there was no French music or music in French from Quebec altought the interface was in French. Does somebody know if they plan to introduce new titles progressively ? It could be a good idea to consider this option...
Then find a Canadian Friend, and wire them money on a regular basis to buy tunage from the iTMS. Since you're saving 16 cents a track, all you have to do is record enough tunes on the drive to cover the cost of the drive (about 900) plus the shipping (about 100 or less, depending) to break even.
Your Canadian Friend then DLs track to the Drive via the Canadian iTMS. Once the drive is full, or you feel you've spent enough, Your Canadian Friend mails back the drive with the note "Hey dummy - you left this on the desk, ya hoser - see you soon, yours truly: Your Canadian Friend".
Of course, your Canadian friend has an incentive: he gets all your songs for FREE as he copies them to his own drive or DVDR or whatever floats his little Canadian Boat.
I figure, if each tune is about 5 megs, you should be able to get about 32,000 songs on there, and at a 16 cent saving on each, you'll save USD$5120. Well Worth the Expense of the drive.
RS
FUCK DA POLICE!
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Yea and its gonna get bigger yet. It has to do with all those huge hydro-electric projects they've been up to. On the other hand Ontario has some nuclear reactors in mothballs that can be restarted, dont they?
Don't they mean "Hydro electric"?
Sure they do. Just dont expect some administrative assistant somewhere in one of those bureaucratic enclaves to be able to type all this techie stuff right. Me thinks she had trouble with a spell checker (although she can probably type 60 words per minute).
you buy music at 5 cents a song.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
Sealand
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Read down through the comments. I think with javascript and any browser that supports it, you could be good to go with a little tinkering
0 30 429215101277
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20
Many unsigned and independent artists provide free downloads of their music as a way to promote themselves. Of course the hard part for you is to find this music at all, let alone find the music that you're going to like without actually downloading and listening to it all.
iRATE Radio solves this problem for you. It is a collaborative filtering MP3 downloader and player. It is Free Software, licensed under the GNU GPL.
iRATE's central server has a database of about 50,000 MP3 tracks available from a number of music hosting services such as the Internet Underground Music Archives. The iRATE client fetches a few URLs from the server, downloads the tracks, and then plays them for you.
As you listen to each track, you rate it according to your preferences. The client then uploads your ratings to the server, which then correlates them with ratings submitted by other users. Future track recommendations will be based on these correllations. Basically what that means is that if you and I like the same music, then iRATE will download for you all the same music that I rated highly.
iRATE Radio is very close to its 0.4 release, which offers many improvements over the current 0.3 release. We can use your help in testing the upcoming release. If you want to help, please download one of the unstable builds. Subscribe to the mailing list and submit bug reports via the sourceforge bug report form.
There is a new distribution page at www.irateradio.com that is aimed at the non-technical user. Downloading from there gets you the 0.3 release right now, but soon the 0.4 release will be available there.
iRATE Radio is written in Java and welcomes contributions from new developers.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Uh, HELLO!? Maybe you're forgetting the billion fucking people in the Republic of India, of which English is an official language? Seriously, this kind of ignorance is disgusting.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Actually, Ontario is a net provider of electricity to the US as well. During peak times, Ontario has sometimes imported power from the US, but its rare. Its much more common for Ontario to export power, just like Quebec.
We sell americans fuel, wood, gold, electricity and water. They don't need us?
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
...with step one? Just get a PO Box from Canada Post. You don't need your own plot of land, a little box in Macs next to the frosty machine will do just fine.
Besides, you couldn't by $10 of land anywhere in Canada (even in Winnipeg). Even $10 US--especially since at the rate the US dollar is tanking it'll be at par with the Canadian dollar in a year and with the peso by the end of the decade if the trend were to continue that long.
BTW...this is how Canadians get HBO--they get a PO box in Montana and order DirecTV. Can't see why the same strategy in reverse wouldn't work for USians lookin' for cheap iTunes.
I hope you know the words to the American Anthem!
Yes I do
America...
America...
America, FUCK YEAH!
Coming again, to save the mother fucking day yeah,
America, FUCK YEAH!
Freedom is the only way yeah,
Terrorist your game is through cause now you have to answer too,
America, FUCK YEAH!
So lick my butt, and suck on my balls,
America, FUCK YEAH!
What you going to do when we come for you now,
it's the dream that we all share; it's the hope for tomorrow
FUCK YEAH!
McDonalds, FUCK YEAH!
Wal-Mart, FUCK YEAH!
The Gap, FUCK YEAH!
Baseball, FUCK YEAH!
NFL, FUCK, YEAH!
Rock and roll, FUCK YEAH!
The Internet, FUCK YEAH!
Slavery, FUCK YEAH!
FUCK YEAH!
Starbucks, FUCK YEAH!
Disney world, FUCK YEAH!
Porno, FUCK YEAH!
Valium, FUCK YEAH!
Reeboks, FUCK YEAH!
Fake Tits, FUCK YEAH!
Sushi, FUCK YEAH!
Taco Bell, FUCK YEAH!
Rodeos, FUCK YEAH!
Bed bath and beyond (Fuck yeah, Fuck yeah)
Liberty, FUCK YEAH!
White Slips, FUCK YEAH!
The Alamo, FUCK YEAH!
Band-aids, FUCK YEAH!
Las Vegas, FUCK YEAH!
Christmas, FUCK YEAH!
Immigrants, FUCK YEAH!
Popeye, FUCK YEAH!
Demarcates, FUCK YEAH!
Republicans (republicans)
(fuck yeah, fuck yeah)
Sportsmanship
Books
A Canadian Ipod owner here. I recently bought a refurbed 5 GB Ipod from Tiger Direct for C$200, which seems an excellent deal as the unit appears to be brand new in every respect and has worked flawlessy for the last month.
I originally bought the unit without knowing that Itunes would be on-line in Canada, what a bonus! I know several people that have Ipods even though we haven't had the Itunes music store this entire time and several retailers, among them Future Shop, regularly sell out of the Ipod Mini. With the added convenience of the Itunes music store, I predict it will get more difficult to find stock of Ipods.
I find it interesting that the cool factor of the Ipod is so great that many stores have sold out of a product that up till now, was only half usable. I orignally bought my unit because the price was so good and didn't know that Itunes was coming. This is simply fantastic news!
...in Canada iTunes is only for old people.
It was obviously supposed to be a funny comment. He was poking fun at America, not Canada. :P
Joseph?
The rest of Canada might appreciate but the national fiber is too strong here
Too bad you spell fibre like an American. You are clearly some sort of desperate Vermonter.
The best deal going so far is the Depeche Mode - Remixes 81-04 album.
37 songs, over 4 hours of music = $9.99CAN!
Free GMail invite with Free iPods!
a song coming! To all you Canadians I proudly sing your national anthem!
Oh Christmas Tree
Oh Christmas Tree
What!? Huh? That's not right?
We did this to a fellow graduate student who happened to be Canadian. He was a good about this and would just say,... well it wasn't hoser but something that rhyme with duck cough. Must be a canuck thing.
This was many years ago. When the USA won the gold medal in ice hockey in 1980 he caught a lot of good natured grief. He also got really drunk when every American bought him a drink when the Canadians smuggled out escapees from the American embassy in Iran in the early phases of the hostage crisis. Canada hid the Americans, then left Iran (the Americans suddenly became Canadians), then said duck cough.
It should have not taken so long for Canada to get a iTunes Music Store. As someone that has worked with Canadians in the past (including conditions of ice storms, sleet, snow, and white out) all I can say that it is a boot time!
2004-12-02 08:42:14 Apple Music Store launched in Canada (Apple,Music) (rejected)
It's like you don't even try anymore. This site has become the fucking LAST to have any news. I have paid my last subscription.
CANADA =
...
C ourageous
A mericans
N oble
A merican
D efender of
A merica
American live in a democracy and value freedom and are not afraid of anything
But you'd only be able to download cover songs sung by Sandy McTire...
The dollar is at rock bottom prices. All iTunes prices are in dollars and then converted. This is because the U.S. is now faced with the largest deficit since before the second world war. Remember? Right from around when the myth about stock brokers at Wall Street jumping from roofs got started. Well, the U.S. is facing economical meltdown thanks to extremely bad policy and an uneducated (CowboyNeal!?!?) mob of people who continue to support this parasitic (and self-terminating) economy. No? Don't believe me? OK, ask one of the top ten financial officers in the U.S, see for yourself; http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/view .bg?articleid=55356
Pretty much the whole of Canada lives on the US border, but the reverse isn't true. That would be the issue with PO boxs.
Really what you would need is a Canadian friend.
We may let Americans browse the Canadian store, but when Canadians log in, here's what *we* actually see...
>We sell americans fuel, wood, gold, electricity and water. They don't need us?
You also forgot to mention that a lot of good hollywood actors happen to be Canadian.
I know a lot of people were complaining that this took a long time, though I can totally understand. It takes a while to go through all the interface/documentation, and add "eh" to the end of every sentence. Also replacing "fuck you!" with "I'm sorry" and "bitch" with "Kim Campbell" probably took a bit of research.
or you could just buy from www.allofmp3.com
they're cheaper and offer encoding in aac, wma, ogg, and all the other codecs.
They also have a lack of fairplay/DRM that all the other music stores suffer from.
Only need a paypal account to try it.
Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes
You gave us Bryan Adams, Celine Dion, Alanis Morrisette, Avril Lavigne, etc. Shame on you!
...in exchange for a small tax on CDRs...
It's actually properly referred to as a levy, because the revenue goes to the private sector. The term "tax" is reserved for money that goes to government.
terrist
Cute. Yet another cheap shot at Bush's pronunciation. My, we certainly don't see many of *those* these days. He's such a novelty, because no one else in the entire world has ever mispronounced words. =P
You probably think that National Public Radio and Public Radio International are a group of highly educated people, right? Do you know how many NPR and PRI hosts slur that word just like Bush? I've heard at least 5 that consistently say 'terrist'. And I only get to hear 2 hours of NPR/PRI a day.
Really. You should start listening to the people around you. You'll be surprised at what you hear.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
This was going to be a post saying "Do you know if CD Baby's music will be on the international iTunes Music Stores," but I just used VNC to search for m/n/m/l on iTunes, and it showed up. This wasn't the case when it first opened on Wednesday night. This is awesome. It's too bad that CD Baby artists don't show up when browsing the store (using the "browse" eye button in the top-right-hand corner of iTunes).
As a personal aside to you: I was really reminded of your music when I heard "On the Run" by Pink Floyd, from Dark Side of the Moon. Were you inspired by them?
We didn't "buy" it ... our highschool made it in shop class!
Waffles rock.
Canadians pay a special levy on music CD-R's, flash memory cards and HD-based music players such as iPod. The $299 regular price in the States translates to about $356 CDN, but you can't get a 20 gig iPod for less than $429.99. Plus, we have to pay PST and GST. This is so our benevolent overlords can give royalties to Anne Murray, Shanaia Twain and Rush. Afterall, buying an iPod must mean that these fine Canadian musicians are losing money to private copying.
They were waiting for our dollar to catch up so they could save costs by marketting only 99 cent songs ;)
With the Bush administration being around for the next four years spending more while reducing taxes you'll see that next year there will be parity between the Candian Dollar and the US Dollar. You're already seeing record highs of the Euro against the US dollar. Look at the price of gold which is set to the US dollar. For it to hold it's value internationally, the price has gone up well over $400 an ounce.
I know someone who's high up in the Bank of Montreal and they're expecting 1:1 with their dollar and the US sometime next year.
The only real question is when will Canadians start trying to buy iTunes from the US?
while I still can!
But does the store offer the same stuff, eh?
I mean that's what it's all abuut isn't it, eh?
The sad truth (one that people don't want to face) is that the Chinese, Tiwanese, and Koreans have been supporting the US Dollar for a while now. The US Dollar is overvalued. The poor USD Dollar is the only the reason why the Canadian Dollar has been doing so well.
Ahh, remember the days when the canadian dollar was worth less than the American dollar?
Thanks George W. Bush! I love seeing the dollar loose 30% of it's value in one term! Great job! I'm just glad I've converted my money into beer. Much better investement I'd say.
Whiole a lot of Canadians live within fairly easy driving distance of the border, actually only a small minority actually live ON the border, such that it would be just as convenient to get US mail as it is Canadian mail.
That's not how it works anyways. PO Boxes have forwarding services for a small additional fee. you don't actually have to take a road trip to the US to get your DirecTV bill--the postal workers at the RPO just empty your mailbox regularly, slap a sticker with your real address on it on each piece of mail and fire it off to you. The only things they don't forward are oversized envelopes and parcels. That suffices for getting your US bills just fine.
Anyways, the idea wouldn't make sense for iTunes unless you downloaded thousands a month. The main reason Canadians get US PO boxes for sattelite isn't to save money (because it would usually be cheaper to get a Canadian sattelite system anyhow)--it is to get content that is otherwise unavailable in Canada (HBO for example--it is not approved for broadcast in Canada by CRTC).
for "Not So Fast, Wanker!"
"Australia would be much easier to "port" than Japan. Think of all the text on the iTMS, the Tom Waits biography is 3 screen tall, somebody has to go and translate all that."
irrelivant. He hardly needs a bio written in japanes. After all, tom waits is already Big In Japan.
ba dum ching!
I got the style but not the grace
I got the clothes but not the face
I got the bread but not the butter
I got the winda but not the shutter
But I'm big in japan I'm big in japan but heh I'm big in japan
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
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