ITunes Australia Goes Live

daria42 writes "ITunes Australia has finally gone live, after more than a year of waiting. Apple is holding a press conference in Sydney this morning to officially launch the service to the media, but the store has already opened. Like the Japanese ITunes store, it looks like Sony-BMG is not participating."

Comments

Global store?

[bugbeak]

I'm sure there are numerous world branches of just about every major record label out there. What's stopping Apple from running a global iTunes Music Store?

Re:Global store?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to say something as stupid as "outdated business practices," you might as well go the full distance and put the blame where it really belongs: national sovereignty.

See, different countries have different laws regarding taxation, contracts, royalties and licenses. If you buy a copy of the latest Limozeen album in Taiwan, the retailer has to handle the local taxes differently and the record company has to pay royalties differently than if you bought it in Topeka.

Why? Because the people of Taiwan have decided that they want different laws than those the people of Kansas have.

So really, the problem is sovereignty. If we could just conquer the world and force everybody to use the same laws, Apple would be able to have one big iTunes store.

(Fucking idiot.)

iTunes store is helping legitimize online music

[mattnuzum]

I have a friend in India who says that he would use iTunes store if it were available, but because it isn't he simply uses peer-to-peer.

As the iTunes store becomes available across the world it will help legitimize the online music industry. I think there are a lot of people in the world who don't have the option to go and buy the music they want to listen to. If they could, they would.

Of course there are a lot of people who will jump at the opportunity to get something for free if they can, but no one is stopping these now, so it's not really the point. But if you give everyone the opportunity to pay for the music, many will. I think this is a good thing.

Speaking of online music sales, I'm really looking forward to another price war. Come on guys, we need a legit iTunes competitor to drive down the prices!

Re:iTunes store is helping legitimize online music

[pintomp3]

itunes prices aren't based on competition, but what the riaa charges. apple doesn't make much on the store, thier money comes from ipod sales. unless the riaa is going to take a smaller cut from a competitor, the competitor isn't going to be able to charge much less than itunes. i believe riaa gets 71/99 per track. not much room to undercut there.

Re:No Fair Use

[TeraCo]

Fair use is irrelevant here, as Apple have permission from the record companies to publish it in the relevant format.

Apple, how about NZ?

[mdew]

how about Itunes service that includes NZ too?