Slashdot Mirror
iTunes Accepts PayPal
lemist writes "Apple Computer Inc. on Friday said customers of its iTunes online music store can now use eBay Inc.'s online payment service PayPal to buy songs and audiobooks, becoming the second major online music store to do so. Story here."
There goes all the money I set aside for my Christmas shopping.
I keep clicking on the word "here" but I get no story.
They may be now accepting Paypal, however your Paypal account must be linked to a credit card, which makes it completely pointless.
I don't know how they can accept PayPal and still make a profit. Doesn't PayPal charge a per transaction fee on top of the percentage fee?
Can overseas buyers buy from iTunes USA @ USD 99 cents?
I've been looking for "useful" shops that accept PayPal so that I can use those money without losing on exchange rate.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Works from my PayPal account, and I'm australian!
of course, I also have US info on it. But don't tell.
The shiznit!
Debit and prepaid Visa/Mastercard have existed for years, and they work with the iTunes store.
Too bad it's against the Paypal TOS for people under 18 to have accounts.
No they dont. Service was pulled for unspecified reasons mid this year.
Conspiracy theorists have had a field day as to why (think: RIAA). Its been really inconvenent because no-one wants to hand their CC # to russians. Although having said that, its a damn good service.
DRM-locked music vendor takes new payment form. News at 11. Oh, wait--it's our beloved Apple?! OMG Why didn't you say so? +1, FP!!!!
First Paypal then...eBay itself! Imagine being able to auction off iTunes songs you thought were badass but now think are just ass (I'm talking to you, Incubus fans) via the iTunes music store interface. Oh yeah, and Apple could control supply of super-popular songs to prop up its eBay side in a sort of DeBeer's-ish artificial price inflation mechanism. What? Little Miss Jailbait's latest hot-hot-hot single is burning up the charts? Too bad, only 100 people can buy the song directly. I guess this would be a good time for one of those trez-fashionable Slashdot "1)X 2)Y 3)?? 4)Profit!" sort of lines.
I just checked. "Temporarily unavaliable".
Yes, I know having a bank account is enough, however in order to create an iTunes account with Paypal you HAVE to have a credit card
They Might Be Giants sell songs for $0.99US, too, and the $$ goes directly to the artists. Sorry, no PayPal.
Sig goes here.
If you don't have an iTMS account yet, Paypal will give you 5 songs when you create a new iTMS account and link it with a Paypal account. Only for the first 500,000 people, but the promotion just started days ago so should be good for a while. I signed up Friday and got my 5 songs without any problem. Here's the link to the details on Paypal's website: 5 free iTMS songs
Just in case you didn't know, allofmp3 exploits a loophole in Russian copyright law, thus they PAY NOTHING for their content from non-russian artists.
You might as well use Kazaa...It's ripping people off just the same.
PS: I would assume that the artists/Apple get more money this way since you don't get PayPal taking their cut.
PPS: Not to mention that with all I've heard of PayPal, I wouldn't trust them with anything but a credit card in the first place.
PPPS: You can buy prepaid Visa cards (work just like debit cards and are accepted wherever credit cards are) easily too. So really this doesn't change anything.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Ok, so I went to itunes.com, and poked around, and found all sorts of info on how great it was, and how easy, yet nowhere can I find a link to actually select music to check out with for download.
Does anyone else notice how /. is getting behind the times? This news is 2 days old at best.
It would be really neat to see where paypal could take a currency system. For now, many online stores prices are posted in the local currency in use, whether it be American or Canadian Dollar, the Euro, etc. If any form of online trading becomes universal and widely adopted, prices could be posted in paypal dollars; call them Paydols (I dunno... work with me). If prices were posted in Paydols it might transition to the physical world---you could pay for goods at a store with X amount of Paydols instead. If you could buy most things with a Paydol account, people might accept payments. You could transfer money from person to person with cell-phone administration of your paypal account. Obviously, I'm getting carried away, but having a system like iTunes accepting paypal transactions could be a big step on a long-road to a universal currency.
I always pay with a credit card. I get no service fees. I get no annual fee. I pay it off every month. It is like having 30 days free use of money.
And on top of it I get 2-5% back on purchases.
And on top of that, my monthly budget can be downloaded and auto-categorized. Saves me many hours of work.
And on top of that, it is nice to be able to dispute a charge when you don't get what you paid for.
And on top of that, I am much more protected from fraud (all my cards have 0 liability).
So why wouldn't I want to use a credit card?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Parent brings up a good point though. Paypal money really is monopoly money. It's not guaranteed by the FDIC. I read somewhere a while back, maybe on /., how people's money is spread out amongst many regular bank accounts. If they went belly up, would customers lose their money. I think the only guarantee they can give is by faith, but not legally backed.
Oh, I get it. Ripping off artists is okay, as long as you're ripping off record execs at the same time. Thanks for the clarification!
Interesting, but you know, most people probably have the opposite perspective: Linux won't do them any good until it's capable of running iTunes. Sorry, just the way it is.
Linux is fine, but use the right tool for the right job. If you want the best of home user need covered, use the OS that was intended for that.
That's not hard to figure out.
Virtually nothing is better than actually nothing.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Largely due to their unqiue intellectual property model, which is surpsingly under-utilised elsewhere on the 'net. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's called the "Ha ha, fuck you - we're all the way over in Russia. Come get us! :-)" model.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
when their's Ebay? I'm serious. I just bought 30 CDs for ~$100 dollars (expensive japanese CDs no less). At 10 songs average (give or take) that's ~300 songs or ~.33 cents a song. Beats the hell out of iTunes. Yeah, you can't get everything one ebay, but you can't get everything on iTunes either. And I've got liner art, lyrics, and high quality pressed CDs that aren't nearly as susceptible to bit rot.
I guess it's nice getting _exactly_ the song you want, but still, I just don't get the appeal of iTunes. Unless the content providers start craming it down our throats by phasing out CDs (yeah, they probably will), I can't see it as being more than a passing fad after the novelty wears off.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It's about cottonpickin' time that other sites besides eBay begin integrating with PayPal. I mean, seriously, how the devil is PayPal to be taken seriously if it's an eBay-only technology?
Hey this is such great news! Can you also let us know about every new song they put up too. Every little bit of iTunes news is just so enthralling!
Either the quality of music has taken a sharp nose dive in ten years, or it must be because I'm now 31 instead of 21. Nah, I don't think my age has anything to do with it as I once knew 40+ something friends that were more 'hip' to the music scene back in the day. Nowadays, nobody my age will even touch the shit. Hell, I don't know anyone in their 20's that want to listen to it, either.
Nah, it must be the kiddies or something. Or maybe it's that those teenage boys just get to masturbating over either those Brittney Spears or Jessica Simpson's CD covers because neither one of those bitches can sing worth a damn.
Maybe I am an old fart. Who know? But that's the only opinion that I have on the subject.
Faithfully submitted,
Douglas C. Neidermayer
Sergent of Arms
As someone who draws erotic cartoons for a living, I learned early on about how Paypal refuses to perform any payment transactions involving adult material (in fact, they'll fine sellers $500 for adult material).
So how does that differ from iTunes, where any variety of "Parental Advisory" labeled music can be dowloaded?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Kinda wished that I knew sooner, but at least now I can put an end to that crap. With my debit card, I can simply tell the bank and say it was unauthorized and fill out a little form. Thanx for the link.
http://www.allofmp3.com/
You know what? good for Russia. The ol' US of A used to be the biggest IP thief in history around the times of Charles Dickens. Have a read at this.
Having no IP protection to speak off (including patents) was a great way to exploit other countries works of arts and inventions without having to pay for royalties. For a while it helped make the US what it is now: the richest country in the world by far.
For the last 50 years or so the US have turned around and want to make everyone pay through the nose for Hollywood films, pop music, brand-name drugs and sport shoes.
It's only fair that the US and the West in general gets a taste of it's own medicine. I feel for the RIAA but I won't be so sad if it flounders and goes away. Music will not stop. If worse comes to worse you can always make your own or go to a local concert.
What is going to be funny is when Apple gets the standard Paypal "HA,HA, we just suspended your account and hijacked your money for six months." -form letter that paypal seems to send to just about everyone these days.
"Dear Paypal user APPLEITUNES INC.
We have noticed some unusual activity regarding your paypal account. For your saftey, we have limited your account access. To restore access, please complete checklist below and your account will be reviewed in 7-30 business days, when we will simply ask you for more extremely personal info, even though we have already made the decision to limit your account access indefinately, even though you have done nothing wrong.
Please complete the following steps to restore access:
1. Provide proof of inventory and invoices for all 1.2 million songs you provide.
2. Provide the names and phone numbers of all companies that provide you with your 'inventory'
3. Provide us with your Social Security number.
4. Provide us with copies of your utility bills at 101 Apple Ln.
5. Provide us with copies of your bank statements for the past year.
6. Change your password and password hints
7. Confirm your credit card
8. Confirm your bank account
Once this checklist is complete, we will still ask you for the same info over and over again, with no valid reason, and we will hold all funds in your paypal account for 180 days and then release them to you.
Thanks for choosing Paypal
Sincerely
Mark
Paypal "Investigations"
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
While I like very much the concept of PayPal - which allows me to quickly send money without revealing my CC number, they do behave like nasty monopolists and terminate accounts without telling the reason why.
Look what they did to Clay, the artist of Sexy Losers - they terminated his account just like that, without explaining anything besides claiming he violated their TOS.. and they did that to many other people.
Slashdot community, please notice: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Nave H. Weiss
And of course those that do reasearch on Paypal and find the paypalwarning.com and paypalsucks.com websites - also don't realize:
- Posts that praise paypal are deleted [often]
- Posts that try to assist users with problems are deleted
- Paypalsucks.com is sponsored by the competition - yowcow
- You are allowed to post anonymously and as registered
- There's a disporportionate # of comments to registered users
Paypal Ain't My Buddy
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
You usually don't pay tax on a gift card. You would be double taxed because you'd pay sales tax on the gift card, and then you'd pay sales tax on purchases with the gift card. But now that I think about it, Apple collected sales tax when I ordered a $25 gift card online. And then they will probably collect tax on the iTunes as well. It's only supposed to be one or the other. Now I'm mad!!!
You may be looking for allofmp3.com, a perfectly legal digital music seller (RIAA propoganda notwithstanding), accepts paypal and will sell music to anyone, in any country, in just about any format you care for (including unencumbered versions of Apple aac if that's your thing).
They are located in Russia, licensed by the Russian eqiuvelent of the RIAA, and with current favorable exchange rates the music costs pennies on the dollar compared to iTunes or other western resellers. What's more, they have a better selection of music one cannot find at iTunes.
(reposted in defiance of censorship)
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy