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iTMS Launches in Japan
ickoonite writes "The iTunes Music Store has finally come to the Land of the Rising Sun! After months of tricky negotiations, Apple has reached agreements with 15 record companies for the supply of around 1 million tracks, with per-track prices between ¥150 and ¥200. AppleInsider also has some blurb, and Apple has an (English) press release on the launch is here. The question now is: 'Where next?'"
Bigger news is that there are no Sony songs on iTMS Japan!
The story is that this is the current hold up in Australia. Sony/BGM in Australia won't allow iTMS Australia to use their songs unless Apple agrees to sell the songs in Apple's Fairplay AAC, Microsoft's Windows Media format, and Sony's own ATRAC format.
It looks like Apple Japan just went ahead without Sony on board. If only they would do that in Australia...maybe Sony BGM is just too big a monopoly in Australia to be able to do this?
How about one universal store with all the music from every band availible for sale from them and not their record companies.
/idealism
RTFA again for the best results.
I dislike subscription services because they amount to extortion. Keep your subscription, or the music is effectively gone (rendered unusable). Assuming that I don't want to break the law, all the music I downloaded is useless to me if I decide to stop using the subscription service. Of course, iTMS files utilize DRM, but I can play tunes on five CPUs and unlimited iPods, as well as rip CDs. So although I don't have unlimited rights to do whatever I like with iTMS files, for my forseeable uses I feel like I'm getting a fair deal.
Beyond my general reticence toward subscription services, Yahoo's Music Unlimited doesn't work for me because:
1) I use an iPod. I don't think I'm alone in this.
2) I use a Mac. Y! Music Unlimited doesn't support the Mac.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
It's called "price fixing", and when done within a single country is usually illegal. When done between different countries, no single country's law can apply, and even though it's illegal in BOTH countries, it's legal if done separately in each country.
The basic idea is, as usual, to maximize proffit. If a band is really popular in the USA but not popular in say, Europe, the most profitable price point of the album in USA might be $19 where it might be maximized at say, $12 in Europe due to low demand. They are trying to prevent an entrepenur from buying a few thousand CDs in Europe and shipping them to the US and selling for say, $16 each. This undercuts their market in the US by $2/unit, costing them sales. Instead they only see the $12 where they could be seeing the $19.
They want the $19 and do everything they can to see that they get it.
If price fixing wasn't illegal in your country, things would be a lot worse... like in the USA a Garth Brooks album might go for twice as much in Tennessee as it did in say, Alaska. We'd probably see more aggressive region coding on DVDs as well. Instead of 7 world region codes, they'd probably try to like split up countries into regions too. Imagine having to buy a DVD that was not only USA region, but was say, in Central timezone code too? Think of the mess that would make for the consumer. And the recording companies would LOVE it.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.