iTunes Australia to Launch Next Week

daria42 writes "It looks extremely likely that the iTunes music store will launch (finally) in Australia next week. Apple confirmed that its vice president of iTunes Eddie Cue, and vice president of iPod product marketing Greg Joswiak will be flying down under for a press conference on Tuesday morning. Cue has been prominent in a number of launches around the globe of the online music store, which is now available in around 20 countries worldwide. Australians have been waiting for the launch for more than a year now. It is believed Sony's Australian division wanted to block the launch."

Comments

This is untrue

[Anonymous Coward]

this is tosh invented by the pathetic rumour mill that has never maneged to get a rumour correct, Appletalk Australia. They first fabricated this rumour on Wednesday this week and like the sheep they are Australian media outlets picked it up again. Remember their fake russell crow article that media outlets picked up? this is the same thing like the other ten times they told us the itunes store was opening in australia.

read more at andrew's blog about what to expect from these people. iTunes music store australia will come eventually but just give it a rest with the fake rumours people.

Too Late Apple

[craznar]

Already signed up here in frustration http://www.allofmp3.com/

Only 2 weeks ago.

Re:Too Late Apple

[craznar]

Seems to be alot of moronic yanks that don't realise that SOME countries allow you to buy music OUTSIDE that country.

It's legal in Russia - it's legal in Australia.

Live with it moron.

no - IT'S FOR REAL - & Australia is a GREAT sc

[linuxbaby]

No - it's for real. I know because my company CD Baby is the provider of over 500,000 songs to iTunes, through our Digital Distribution program. Apple just contacted us again today to make sure we were all OK with the Australian launch. They only ever do this a week before a new country launches (as we did with Japan, Europe, Canada).

I have to say, I'm very impressed with the independent music scene in Australia. There's a great spirit of independence there, helped by Triple-J Radio, a gov't-sponsored nationwide radio that actually plays a lot of truly-independent local artists, QMusic - a gov't-sponsored non-profit to develop and help local musicians, AIR, the Association of Independent Record Labels, which is run by a few passionate punks in Brisbane.

(I'm SO impressed, in fact, that we're going to be setting up a CD Baby office in Australia in a couple months!)

Re:$1.69 a track?!

[Fex303]

Why should the price discrepancy be so large between the two markets?

That's a pretty standard markup for media or content in Australia. Remember we're still paying A$99.95 (US$74.88) for a new-release video game. Sometimes higher. A$33 for a CD isn't unusual either. So a ~25% price hike is pretty good by our standards.

I'm suprised it wasn't around the A$2.50 per song mark...

Probably not

[AnEmbodiedMind]

The thing holding up iTunes rolling out in each country is not Apple's presence in that country, but the existence of independent music publishing groups in each country.

This means that Apple has to reach agreements with the groups in each and every country before they can roll out the iTunes store in each of those country.

While NZ and Australia share the same song rights group (APRA - The Australasian Performing Right Association), this is different to publishing rights which is governed by other groups.

all of mp3 = 0.00 to artists

[acomj]

Artists aren't seeing penny one from allofmp3. not even the 2 cents of wich you speak. Its basically piracy, but because Russia is ... well Russia the laws only cover physical copying.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4328269.stm

Just pirate it if your not going to support the artist. That way your supporting criminals as well

At last - something legal to put on an iPod

[Namarrgon]

This will probably mark the first moment any iPod user in Australia can stop breaking the law.

Last I checked, it is still illegal here to make a copy of the music on a CD you own, for any reason at all - personal uses of any type included, even for an MP3 player. We have no fair-use provision in our copyright laws, nor (AFAIK) are we getting any as a result of the Free Trade deal with the USA (though copyright terms are being drastically lengthened to match the US). We own the media, but have no "license to the music".

There are already a few online music stores in Australia, but to my knowledge they only sell songs in WMA format, not much good for iPod owners. iTMS will be the first useful site.

I can imagine that all of our iPods would be desperately looking forward to playing something other than crappy bootlegged highschool bands, home-recorded birdsong & the occasional scroungings from Creative Commons.