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iTunes Australia to Launch Next Week

Posted by Zonk on from the cheap-tunes-for-our-friends-down-under dept.

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."

1 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. no - IT'S FOR REAL - & Australia is a GREAT sc by linuxbaby · · Score: 4, Informative
    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!)