Japanese Musicians Defy Sony by Joining iTunes

Homework Help writes "Japanese musicians under contract by Sony are defying their contracts by using Apple's iTunes service to deliver songs. Rock Musician Hotoharu Sano points out: 'It is an individual's freedom where that person chooses to listen to music. I want to deliver my music wherever my listeners are.' Sony Music Entertainment and Apple are still locked in talks and no agreement has been reached so far. Apple's offering of its iTunes service at lower cost in Japan is greatly attributed to their success." From the article: " Before iTunes' arrival, Japan's top music download service, which is backed by Sony and includes Sony recording artists, averaged about 450,000 downloads a month. By offering its service for lower prices, Apple is undercutting such online music services. Japanese are accustomed to paying twice as much as Apple is charging in Japan, which are still higher than the 99 cents charged in the U.S."

Comments

Re:Contract

[wankledot]

Most likely, yes. It would be a bit like taking the master recordings that Sony owns the rights to distribute and going out on the street corner selling CDs. While it might common sense that the artist has a right to sell their music how they want to, but that's not the way things are done in "the industry" and not the way contracts work. Although there might be some little loophole in their contracts, I'm sure big expensive teams of lawyers are working through the details as we speak.

Good for them! But...

[drhamad]

Good for them! They should be able to put their music everywhere and anywhere - isn't that why they signed on with a label in the first place?

Of course, doing so in violation of their contract could put them in a sticky situation. I wonder what the contract actually says.

Just wait until it catches on

[alvinrod]

If this report is to be believed then Apple is selling roughly half as many songs per day as Sony was selling per month according to the description.

Give it a month or so and they will probably be going through 450,000 songs a day. I'm guessing that the reduced price has more to do with it than the Apple Brand. It looks like Apple is going to sell a lot of iPods to Japanese consumers.

I wonder if these latest developments will be enough to bring Sony around to reaching an agreement with Apple.

Take my money, please!

[Elias Ross]

My wife's Japanese, and I like J-Pop. But, iTunes Japan won't be getting my money, since we live in the U.S. and you have to have a Japanese credit card to download from their site.

It's actually easier for us to buy a CD from Japan and get it shipped to us, than try and send money to her Japanese bank account, etc.

You can buy a money card from http://amazon.co.jp/ (it's on the front page) ONLY IF you are in Japan. They think of everything...

I suppose eventually some stores are going to set up so you can purchase iTunes money cards overseas, but until then, iTunes Japan can kiss my ass.

Let Sony hurt over this

[Nom du Keyboard]

The record companies have too much power - especially Sony. Take the example of Fiona Apple and her third album "Extraordinary Machine" which was completed nearly two years ago and never officially released. It finally leaked out over BT and P2P (yeah), but when a record company can sign you and then bury your work this has gone too far.

Therefore, anything that weakens them is not a bad thing for the world at large.

Re:I kind of have to say

[radish]

Independent music is a ghetto. It is something you do because you love the art and you love what you are doing. It is not really something you can turn into a career.

Rubbish. I personally know a number of people who make a very decent living without going near the majors. For some very high profile examples (these are not the ones I know personally, fyi) take a look at people like Paul Van Dyk, Armin Van Buuren and DJ Tiesto. All earn (I would guess) in the high 6 to low 7 figure range (USD) and all own their own indy labels which publish their own and other artist's music. It's true that much of their personal income will be from live appearances, but the guys I know (signed to similar european indy labels) make all their money from sales & licensing. None of this music is available on iTunes, but a lot of it IS available on sites like beatport.com, which, amazingly enough, offer 320kbps MP3 downloads. These are big, multi-million dollar labels, who have realised that DRM is not the way forward. I wish there were examples of this kind of vision in other parts of the music business.