Slashdot Mirror
The Insanely Great Songs Apple Won't Let You Hear
FunkeyMonk writes "Slate.com has an article by Paul Collins explaining that the iTunes music store has thousands of tracks that you can't buy in the U.S. From the article: 'The iTunes Music Store has a secret hiding in plain sight: Log out of your home account in the page's upper-right corner, switch the country setting at the bottom of the page to Japan, and you're dropped down a rabbit hole into a wonderland of great Japanese bands that you've never even heard of. And they're nowhere to be found on iTunes U.S.' The article goes on to mention a few workarounds if you want to purchase foreign tunes. But this brings up a good point — why shouldn't iTunes be the great mythical omniscient music repository where all the world's music is available instantly? Is this simply a marketing decision?"
This is just the way the music business works. Apple can't change the fact that labels only license to certain territories. Just like you can go into a music store in Japan and buy thousands of CDs you can't buy elsewhere, Apple's iStore is contractually bound to operate the same way.
Back in the 60's, British and US releases had different songs on them.
British had "With the Beatles" while an album with slightly different tracks called "Meet the Beatles" came out in the US.
The British version of "Are You Experienced?" by Hendrix had additional songs, such as "Red House" which the record company felt would go over better in Britain than the US, even though it was a straight blues track and blues was born in the US. *shrugs*
So while in the age of the internet, this seems silly, it's nothing new.
Sugapablo
One possible reason why that insanely great band from Japan (love the hyperbole, by the way) can't have its songs show up in the U.S. version of iTMS is that the label that produced the music hasn't licensed Apple to sell it in the U.S. I'm not sure why that would be, but there are all kinds of idiotic details in music contracts. There may also be weird export and tariff issues at stake - different country, different laws. Ever notice that the import version of a CD on amazon tends to be 2x-3x more expensive than the domestic release, if you can even find it?
Isn't it the record labels limited things?
I seem to have seen a post about that at some point on Apple's discussions boards.
From that, iTunes works with the whoever hold the distributions rights in that country. If those bands don't have a U.S. distributor.
One band I like "Growing Old Disgracefully" recently made the jump from the U.K., to the U.S. iTunes store by working with CD Baby.
The folks in charge of the music industry have a view formed by decades of paying for bands to record, then pressing a bunch of records. That makes a barrier to carrying an artists' work. Currently, the only barrier is the addition of more data to a database - nearly zero cost.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Music is licensed on a per-country basis. Often, different organizations/people hold the rights in different countries. A Canadian band, for instance, might keep (or buy back) Canadian rights, but a major label would have the US rights, and a Europeans subsidiary of that label -- or another label altogether -- might have the European rights.
Selling all music globally is something no one's ready for legally, and probably won't be for years, given the glacial rate at which the *AA's seem to be evolving to embrace new technologies and opportunities.
Holmwood.
Apple has contracts with various record houses that allow Apple to sell their music.
Sadly, while the Internet is world-wide and country borders are merely speedbumps, the legal world hasn't figured that one out yet...
So their deals with Japanese record houses probably only allow Apple to sell their music in Japan.
Seems short-sighted to me. If you're making a deal with the guys who sell 80% of the online music sold, why not let them sell to as many people as possible instead of holding back rights? You get a cut on each...
It has nothing to do with marketing and everything to do with the selling rights granted to stores. A label in the US tends to only have the rights to sell the track in the US (and Canada). Labels in the UK usally can only sell in the UK. Even if the labels are global you still need to gain the rights to sell from EMI UK (to sell to the British), EMI France (to sell to France) and so on and you are constrained by the limits placed on you when you are granted the rights by the label.
This has been the situation for years and is not just limited to digital music. And it's been discussed on slashdot before, on why it took Apple so long to open iTunes outside the US, why the Zune store is US only and so on.
Ever song is licensed by a different company in different geographical regions. Those firms are typically under an international umbrella group, but that doesn't change anything. General Electric Canada sells different products than General Electric (US), and no-one finds that odd, so I'm not sure why anyone would be remotely surprised here.
Maury
JList/JBox has been selling Japanese iTunes cards for some time, and frequently advertise them in their ads in magazines like NewType USA. Right next to the hentai/bishoujo games and Domo-kun plushies.
I mean come on! Do you really think it has anything to do with Apple itself not letting you hear the song? Oh yes, Apple engages in musical censorship. It's the record companies, people. If a band doesn't have a record distribution deal in the US, then guess what! you can't buy their music on iTunes either.
why shouldn't iTunes be the great mythical omniscient music repository where all the world's music is available instantly? Is this simply a marketing decision?
It *should* be a simple, global, find-it-and-buy-it repository. Unfortunately, the way that copyright has been worked, the right to sell a particular work (music, movie, tv show) only extends to a country's borders. If you want to sell that work in another nation, you have to somehow acquire the rights to sell there as well.
This used to be a real problem trying to buy import albums and CDs. If a particular overseas-only album had a local rights-owner who didn't have the title in print, that rights-owner could prevent you from importing the CD for purchase. (Naturally, they could also prevent you from importing if they *did* have it in print, but generally then you wouldn't want the import in the first place.) This didn't always happen in practice, but it did make things more difficult at times.
Today, they try to restrict trans-national media purchases via things like region coding.
Honestly, I think this is another of the ridiculously outdated aspects of copyright law that really needs to change. In my mind, if I purchase a legally-produced copy of a CD or DVD (or iTunes download), then somehow, somewhere, somewhen the artist was compensated for that purchase. Maybe not directly, and maybe not for that exact purchase, but at some point the artist's rights to sell the track were transfered to someone else who got money from me. It shouldn't matter if I'm buying a German pressed CD while visiting in Japan and holding a US passport. As long as the German CD was produced with the approval (or delegated approval) of the original artist/rights-holders, then it should be treated as legitimate and proper.
Of course, if you've got a situation where some country is permitting the sale of tracks for which the original artists have *not* delegated their rights to whomever made the [cd, dvd, file], then that shouldn't be permitted. Certainly, this isn't what's happening in Japan, but it is sort of what happened with AllOfMP3 (or so I understand -- I haven't followed that too closely).
I believe this is also why it's taken so long for new iTunes stores to open in new countries. It's not just a matter of arranging the financial-side of things for handling payments, currency conversions, etc., or even of getting servers and such set up for faster local access, but I bet a whole lot of it is securing the appropriate approvals from whomever "owns" the publishing rights for each track in that country.
"why shouldn't iTunes be the great mythical omniscient music repository where all the world's music is available instantly? Is this simply a marketing decision?"
I imagine thats exactly what it is, a marketing decision. The average customer has very minor interest in foreign music (i.e. in a language they don't understand) so rather than inundating them with the latest hits from around the globe they stick with what will sell thousands of copies, not 10-20.
Of course they are losing out on business if you can't even search for these bands in certain areas, but there may be licensing and copyright issues for them to consider also.
It's not a big scary conspiracy. They need to be granted rights for each territory by the labels. They evidently don't have US licences for all the japanese stuff. But if you prefer you can pretend that the government is stopping Apple corrupt the nation's youth with cheesy J-pop.
The reason why Apple doesn't have the worlds music on iTunes is probably because it takes a lot of work to get Record Companies to sign on and whatnot and the time taken to accomplish that might be better utilized on some other things for now at least.
However, I think it would be very beneficial for iTunes to start offering things from Bollywood (movies and music, priced to compete with local stores). I think India is one of the few places where the movie industry isn't going (relatively) downhill.
While they may not be "insanely great", one of the Japanese bands I've found a while ago that I enjoy listening to is YMCK. Its a chiptune band, so it sounds like old Nintendo music combined with vocals. I can't understand the lyrics, or not much of them anyways, but its fun to listen to. Samples are available on their website (linked to in the above wiki article).
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Probably,
I mean, are US youngsters (who undoubtably make up the bulk of the iTunes music store purchases) really ready for Japanese tunes such as "Yatta"?
I mean, won't somebody think of the children!
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
In Canada we have iTunes also, but we have a greatly reduced selection of music, Most of what is available on the US iTunes site is not available in Canada. It Pisses me off that the big music groups seem to think that we don't like US music...
The point of publicizing this is not that it's happening, it may be that if enough consumers say "Hey, why not let us have the access to purchase that" the companies involved will work something out. So the article could be trying to get the word out so /.'ers and other iTunes users contact Apple and demand access.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
But, you can only purchase it with the entire album, which I did not want. So, instead of getting my $0.99, I went and downloaded it for free.
Stop pulling that stupid shit, i don't mind paying for music but don't try and fuck me.
As others have pointed out, it's because a band's music is licenses to a publisher in one country, but that publisher may not have rights elsewhere in the world. So they only sell distribution rights in turn to Apple for the relevant country's store, because they don't own them for worldwide distribution.
To even out the flamewar somewhat, this is exactly the same reason you Americans can download films from the XBox Live Marketplace, but I can't with a UK account. There are ways around that, too, although Microsoft keep making rumbles about dire consequences if you try.
Mind you, there's also the small issue that if I could buy music from the US iTunes Store, I'd be paying $0.99 a track, rather than the rather more expensive £0.79 for the exact same data file. I can't see Apple being too keen on that bit.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
A more accurate presentation might be that DRM and restrictive licensing is limiting the choice of music, which does have an element of truth, and Apple does bear some responsibility. But even this is far from unclear. If we are talking about music downloads, the only thing effecting music choice is the artist, not Apple. Apple certainly effects exposure, but not choice, except in the sense that one cannot choose what one does not know.
But certainly anyone can go onto a P2P network an download music, and it will play on the iPod and work in iTunes. Any artist can go to Youtube and upload a video. If a song is insanely great, it will generate insanely great buzz, and people will hear it.
I also wonder about the definition of insanely great music, and people expecting have such music handed to them on a gold platter. We are so used to having sanitized music spoon fed to us. The ability to download music is just going to exacerbate this problem, and lead to the increasingly sanitized of music. A better article would be how increased music delivery in destroying insanely great local music, and replacing it with moderately interesting sanitized corporate music.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I know of another legal way to buy Japanese music. You can buy Japanese CDs in an English web page at
http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/
I have no financial interest in this company. I am merely an occasional customer. Of course, if you are under, say, 25 years old, the idea of actually buying a CD will be anathema to you as you'll have to wait for it to arrive by mail and you'd rather slit your emo wrists than do anything that doesn't lead to instant gratification. And if you want to just buy individual tracks, this isn't the answer you were looking for either. However, if you are over 30 years old and not afflicted with ADD, this might be an option for you should want to purchase that CD that is only available in Japan. Sometimes Japanese CDs come with bonus tracks not released in other markets (usually this means the US), so hardcore fans of various Western singers/groups might be interested in Japanese CDs for that reason too.
For all of you arguing "because of licensing issues", please explain this: What is the advantage (for the band, OR the label) of not licensing a track to be sold in the US (or Europe) by anyone?
We are not talking about Apple not being allowed to sell the tracks, because it's on Zune Store (or whatever), but the tracks not being available anywhere. "Licensing issues" does not explain it, because somewhere someone made the decision to NOT license it. It's not a mountain we are talking about, licensing issues don't just exist by themselves, they are created by humans.
So, why don't they want us to hear the music? Why don't they want our money?
"It's not just a question of changing a value in a database" Yes it is. It's as simple as that someone who makes the decision calling Apple, and saying "Hey, could you add everywhere we are not already selling this to the list?". It may not earn shitloads of money, but the money they do make will be for free. The work has already been done.
From my experience, it extends to *ALL* electronic music stores out there and it is one of the reasons I don't like pay-to-download music that much. Besides the lesser quality, incomplete catalogues, partial albums (${deity}, do I hate that!), and so forth, all these virtual music stores have brought us back to before the internet when it comes to buying music. Artificial barriers have been erected for reasons I can't fathom right now, that prevent me from purchasing downloadable music from outside my country of residence. Whilst I can order a rare *PHYSICAL* cd from, say, www.fnac.fr, I can't buy a song sold in non-physical format from them.
One example: try to purchase anything from http://www.fnacmusic.com/ if you are in the USA. You will be refused because you don't have a credit card with a french address.
I've never seen DRM, region BS or anything similar in pirated copies of anything...
Customers who pay for such bizzaro-world limitations are victims.
no borders. Music is universal, and it's quite possible to enjoy something in a language you don't speak - that goes from opera to J-pop. That's why it's different to electric goods, which run on different voltages with different plugs and conform to different safety standards around the world.
Yes, it's plain old licensing, but in the modern age music companies are doing it purely to be jerks, without the slightest hint of an excuse.
Christ, how did this one make it through? I'd expect this kind of thing on digg, but Slashdot is usually a shade better about posting uninformed hyperbole. It's not Apple that won't let you hear these so called "insanely great songs" - it's the record companies in Japan. Apple is only authorized to sell those songs to residents of Japan. It's not big, bad Apple keeping the little guy down, or some vast racketeering conspiracy by the RIAA or anything like that. It's just standard protocol - different distribution agreements for different countries. If the record companies of Japan felt like there was money to be had in selling these songs across the pond, they'd negotiate that with Apple and you'd see these songs in the US-version of the iTMS. To act all indignant because you browsed the Japanese iTMS and were not allowed to use an American credit card/gift card is just absurd. Different countries have different factors (e.g., blank media tax) to consider in distribution that make articles like this seem so uninformed and naive that it's embarrassing.
In any given country, you can probably bet that most of the people are going to want to look for music that is "released" in their country. So, if I search for "Turning Japanese", I probably don't want to see 10000 tracks of indecipherable hiragana characters. I probably also don't necessarily want to hear those either.
So what did this do? It cluttered up the UI, and put a huge burden on the iTMS infrastructure for a decrease in customer satisfaction. Not really a win-win.
"...why shouldn't iTunes be the great mythical omniscient music repository where all the world's music is available instantly? Is this simply a marketing decision?"
Isn't the answer to this obvious? The most logical answer, even to an outsider who isn't privy to the legal arrangements Apple has made with labels/artists, is that they have the online distribution rights to those songs in Japan and not North America. They _CAN_ sell the songs in Japan. They _CANNOT_ sell the songs outside of Japan. Seems pretty simple to me.
Readers have mentioned licensing and other reasons why American's can't dive into the amazing bounty of Japanese bands on the store. But I think it's part of an evil plan to inflict pain and suffering on Americans. What else could rationally explain their attempt to keep thousands of insanely great Japanese pop tracks out of the hands of Americans?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
A copy of Britney's Greatest Hits (as a random example) on the US itunes store is $8.91.
On the UK iTunes store it is $15.75 (i.e. £7.99)
On the Canadian store, $8.47
New Zealand, $12.61
etc. etc. etc.
On the Japanese store, by the way, they don't sell it at all. Guess they saw the video for "Hit me Baby" and figured "Like the schoolgirl outfit, but needs more tentacles. Or cowbell."
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
This problem is an opportunity.
Clearly, iTunes is restricted due to licensing arrangements not of Apple's making (see other posts in this topic). Equally clearly, these restrictions don't benefit Apple: it costs them little to offer extra tracks, even for low-volume sales (also noted in an earlier post in this thread). Therefore, cannot Apple use their commercial leverage to get the licensing changed? The record companies may listen if they think they're going to be trading with the Master Music Archive of all time.
then use myspace music from all over.. and its free too (most)
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.
What do labels offer to artists? Distribution. They say "sign on with me, and I will get you played all over the country."
Now, it might sound ever better to say "I will get you played all over the world," however, if they do that for all their artists, that means that each artist faces even more competition. Basically, the labels wind up making their own products compete with one another, which will naturally drive talent away.
This is the same reason that labels stop selling old albums. They don't want their dead artists to compete with their live ones, so they make that music unavailable.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Goddamit... wheres the WTO when you need it?
Its worse for us Canadians. Though we do get access to most of the same music, we cannot purchase movies or tv shows from iTumes at all. One theory is that if those movies and shows were release in Canada, they would not be protected under the DMCA the same way they are in the US.
"Gentlemen, You cannot fight in here, this is the War Room...." - Dr Strangelove
Yes you aree right it is about copyright laws. But one of the reason such laws are the way they are is that the music industry wants to reserve the right to charge different prices in differen countries for the same product. These degrees of freedom (for the various **IAA allow a greater gain than would otherwise be possible), It's called "Market Segmentation".
Now in the iTunes case that is probably not true, however the general idea is still the same.
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
One of the best bands out there. Many of you will know them from FLCL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLCL
In the book business it has become near impossible to convince publishers to translate non-English authors, making access to some of the planet's finest writers nearly impossible.
Geist magazine out of Vancouver has had a couple of good articles looking at this phenomenon, one by Stephen Henighan in Issue 61, and by acclaimed writer Alberto Manguel in Issue 62.
Henigan's article opens:
Manguel's article this month puts the blame squarely on the publishing houses who are increasingly market driven to publish lowest common denominator works, rather than building a catalog that stands on literary merit.
North America lives in a cultural bubble defined by a narrow range of English language music, writing, and film. It would be a great exercise to see how iTunes handles music from Latino and Mexican artists, or in Canada from Quebec musicians.
I'll wager that both of those groups are also underrepresented despite the considerable popularity of their work.
Three Squirrels
But this brings up a good point -- why shouldn't BitTorrent be the great mythical omniscient music repository where all the world's music is available instantly?
Fixed that for ya...
More seriously, we can't really blame Apple for this one. They can only sell what the copyright holders let them sell. Cross-border music distribution has always counted as something of a tricky issue (thus the nearly black-market prices of anything you buy stamped "import").
One additional, more practical problem - PR (in the good, "exposure" sense). Let's say Apple miraculously gets permission from every record company in the world to sell anything at all. How many J-Pop artists do you think most non-Japanese people can name? Off the top of my head, I can only think of one by name and one more I would recognize but can't name a damned thing by them; And I expect that makes two more than 99% of Americans.
And that, from a country with a major, thriving music industry. How about more obscure regional genres? Ever heard of Norteño? Magham? Wayno? Yupraka? Luogu? Isizulu? Yeah, I can see those selling well enough the US to even justify the bandwidth of listing them as available downloads.
I live here in Japan and often log out of my iTunes account and look at all the amazing things people in the US, UK and Australia can buy that are not available on Japan's iTunes. I'd love to be able to legally purchase some TV programs to watch here instead of the stuff I put up with on local TV, not to mention catch a free new song occasionally, or simply buy music that I can't get here. I can't believe someone has only JUST noticed this and is making news out of it.
You don't suppose the RIAA has anything to do with it?
dot-sig.
Not that I have anything against J-Pop or any other Japanese music, but is it all really "Insanely Great" or is someone up there in /. just trying to sensationalize things and spread a little FUD here? You might not find Japanese music in iTunes, but you probably won't find your local jam/metal/hip-hop/alt rock/indie artist in iTunes either - in fact, I doubt that many of us will ever hear these bands on the radio, let alone see them releasing content on iTunes.
If you want to worry about foreign rock, thats cool, I'm sure there is a lot of good stuff out there, but don't hype it in to seeming like Apple is trying to rip anyone off or hide anything. As mentioned before, your local record store doesn't have a "Japanese Artists" section the size of a Japanese record store - if any Japanese section at all - so why expect iTunes to have it?
And I never bought a DVD until the cracks were easily available on linux.
Only AFTER that did I buy DVD's and then after that, I bought a player and a TV to watch it on.
This article is stupid. It's certainly not Apple's fault you can't purchase the music in the US or on the US version of itunes. The label, while at fault, is usually doing this for a good reason. They generally negotiate per country with different artists for a reason. Before a label decides to "launch" an artist in a new country (especially one where there is a language barrier), significant PR and advertising needs to be done to ensure a successful launch and good rankings for that artist. Imagine if Celine Dion (pardon my example) just started selling albums in the US without any PR machine. Her initial album sales likely would not be too good and it would take awhile for her to get noticed, even if her quality is high. This especially holds true for latin american artists doing a "cross over" etc.
The same thing goes for DVD region codes, etc. People sometimes I think don't bother to stop and try to figure out the whys of something they just automatically assume everything is done for some nefarious reason.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
You know, I'm hardly a free-for-all Free-Marketer, but either we have a global economy or we don't. I love it how all the laws that affect consumers restrict the beejeezus out of them, while laws affecting transnationals allow them unfettered access to any market they choose. Taking the example of music companies, they are allowed to use the law to partition the world into several incompatible markets with artificial restrictions of what music can be sold where, and by whom. They can buy CD cases from Taiwan, have the CD's made in India, and have everything assembled in Mexico, usually duty-free (thanks to "free trade zones" set up in various countries).
If a consumer tries to buy music from other countries through traditional channels, they are usually prevented from doing so by the same companies that tout the wonders of the global economy and the free market. Remember, the free market and the global economy only apply to producers, not consumers. So, iTunes (which is an unfortunate pawn in this shell game) ends up enforcing anti-free market restrictions on product, blocking the consumer from the same freedoms enjoyed by those who produce the product.
I'm not saying the world has to be perfect and we should all get ponies. I'm just saying that if we're going to have a global economy, EVERYONE should be allowed to participate. Otherwise, there is no incentive to NOT get products through non-traditional channels, as the system is rigged against you from the get-go.
Governments are not necessary.
They all sound like DDR music to me...
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Many of you pointed out the complexity of legal contracts, marketing and distribution, etc.
Except, that all those are based on the old business model, when disks, CDs or other products, services had to be physically distributed.
This is obviously not the case any more, there is really no reason to "invent" the global online distribution agreement for products and services which can be acquired by downloading them.
Don't buy that crap, check out http://music.podshow.com/ or http://cdbaby.com/ or other places where you get non DRMed music you can buy from all around the world.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
put out a remix album awhile back
i found some info on it
those tracks blew me away, and i would have NEVER have found that music had i played "legit" and not pirated
i didn't even know what the armin van buuren/ ayumi hamasaki album was until i looked for it just now, even though i've playing songs from it for years and i deeply dig those remixes. i'm utterly beyond the notion of albums. i haven't bought a cd since 1999, and i never will again
i don't think i'll ever go to itunes either, because i'm too into the idea of "following my nose": start with a track i like, find out what else is related to that song/ what else is hosted by whomever is sharing it, and download hundreds of those songs, throwing out 98% of them. this shotgun search approach gets very expensive on itunes, but not on emule. after a few rounds of "following your nose", starting with a song very familiar to you that you love, you "fall down the rabbit hole" as the original poster says, and you wind up in a universe of foreign recorded/ underground music you hadn't the foggiest idea existed, and yet you absolutely are ecstatic about
however, i recently found a "legit" way of the shotgun approach i've mentioned above: http://pandora.com. i read an article about them and they apparently hire people to listen to music all day, categorizing it. besides being notable as what sounds like a dream job for a music lover, it's kind of sad that pandora has to do manually what the internet can do automatically, as i've already discovered, years ago
say what you want about piracy, but in terms of a music lover's experience, it is the garden of eden compared to being "legit". i don't know how to be legit anymore, i don't think i ever will again. the experience as a music lover renders it impossible for me to consider something so stone age as the itunes paradigm of buying individual tracks. i want to inhale 1000s of tracks based on search words, throw out 900 of them in rapid succession, and find bizarre gems of world music/ underground music there is no way in a million years i would ever have found through any legit copyright addled mode
i'm a lifer, there's no way i'll ever buy music again, and before you holier than thou a@@holes lecture me on stealing from starving third world musicians, consider the fact that if it weren't for piracy, i wouldn't have been listening to them in the first place. solve that paradox, then get back to me with your attitude. i'm not downloading justin timberlake and beyonce knowles. i'm going after esoteric (to me in new york city) tracks i can't get my hands on any other way. i'd like the music industry or copyright wankers to address what i really am interested in (foreign and underground esoteric and exotic tracks) before they find some way to consider me an enemy. they can't
i wrote an article about it a long time ago, in 2003, that, bizarrely, i keep find being cited around the web
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Namely that's why Amazon Japan get my money for Japanese music, and not Apple.
Apple need to realise that they're losing out on sales because of a contrived market demarcation, one that makes no sense for an online world. Apple is a business, you can only hurt them one way, money. Either by denying them sales, or making them realise they're losing sales because of a stupid, non-sensical, policy.
The only reason things like this still exist is because labels don't want to lose the ability to charge one group of people more money than another group. They want to be able to prevent groups from going to a different pricing region to get their products. There's no justifiable reason for it.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
I mean if you like jpop, that's great. Let's not pretend that it's anything more than a desire for something out of the ordinary. It's not that good.
In the UK, we can't buy some American stuff - for example - I can't get Scrubs for my Ipod - off to the torrent sites then...
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
While I see that some people would like a "World" iTunes with every flavor under the Sun given equal footing, I would despise it.
I think of myself as open minded and live in a culturally diverse neighborhood. Still, I like my music to be "Western" and if I were faced with a "most popular downloads" list monopolized by the shear numbers of Chinese lets say, I would be frustrated quickly.
From FTA, it looks like Apple allows us to switch our "neighborhood" if you will so it isn't like they are censoring the content.
Bottom Line: I like my TV "The Office" style, not "Anime" style. Does that make me a crabby American? maybe, but it puts me in league with my culture and I have no problem with that.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
But the cack-handed scheme that is music licensing and bad copyright.
Apple already have the product. A customer wants the product. Money is ready to exchange. The REASON for art is to bring enjoyment. The exchange of money for enjoyment is curtailed by the method that is supposed to help art florish.
So why do we want art to flourish if the reason for that art is being negated?
It's been mentioned quite a bit that licensing in different territories may well be controlled by different distribution companies and Apple has contractual obligations to respect each territory. This is evident by the time it took for the music store to open in each territory. It's also been pointed out that the movie industry does the same thing with DVDs. Nothing new here.
The additional bit that I want to mention is how regional licensing could affect costs. When we licensed a major sport player association for a video game I worked on, it was for the US only. If we wanted to sell our game in Europe or Japan we would have had to pay a higher licensing fee. Since video games had region encoding for much longer than DVDs (the original NES had different notches in the carts for each region, possibly it was done earlier than that too) we were able to get the cheaper license since we could (reasonably) guarantee that we wouldn't sell outside of the region we paid for. Apple may be able to handle the technical requirements to sell globally, but the labels may want more per song. Oh, and don't tell me it doesn't make sense - this isn't about sense it's about greed. And it's not the only reason; it's one more potential hurdle to consumer utopia.
Posted AC since I'm at work...
Everybody seems to think that iTunes is so huge that it's bigger than record companies and countries, but that's not the case (yet).
(Pretty much off-topic, but my question involves buying Japanese music, so I'm asking... ignore it if you only care about discussion specific to Apple)
While J-Pop and J-Rock are nice and all, I'm interested in checking out more traditional Japanese sound, with old-school instruments. What's the Japanese counterpart to, say, classical violin concertos? Enka sounds promising, but beyond a general genre, I have no idea what to look for. Can anyone recommend some artists or albums for someone who wants to listen to Japanese musical performances with a more timeless, traditional sound and less like something out of a videogame or anime?
Call the wambulance!
Why is it, that people sound so surprised whenever Apple does something they don't like ? Apple is not some kind of charity or a philanthropic society, it's a business like any other, and they will do whatever it takes to make a profit.
Whether that means adding DRM to music, locking out rival operating systems, or only selling certain music to certain people because the labels don't want them to, if it increases their profit, they will do it.
"This, to my mind, means that they should not be protected by copyright. If you intentionally exclude a region, then it is not in the best interests of that region to grant you a monopoly on distribution."
If they don't want to sell something to you but they'd be willing to sell it to someone else, then you should be allowed to just take it anyway?
The songs you can't have show up just like other songs. They're just grayed out. Taunting you. saying "look what I have that you can't have". They'll even have reviews of the stuff you can't have when you click on them.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
I stumbled into iTMS' Japanese store about a year ago and of course found I couldn't buy Japanese tracks that way. So, I just started writing Apple asking them to add Japanese pop and rock to the US store. Apparently enough people did this to convince someone to make the music available as now you can find music from some to the most popular performers in Japan such as, Ayumi Hamasaki, BoA, Utada, and Amuro Namie. There's a lot of older back catalog stuff, but it appears that the time gap is shrinking with some albums becoming available after 6 months. I don't mind the gap too much given that importing CDs from Japan is very expensive, because CDs in Japan are insanely expensive, costing twice what the typical US released CD costs, and DRM'd to boot!
I don't know if a World iTMS will come to be anytime soon, but it is clear to me that iTMS has already started to change how music is bought on a global scale. The added exposure is great for the artists, but somehow I don't think the big record labels are too happy since it means they can't sustain the huge markups they're accustomed to on CD sales. Still, that's the new world.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Much the same problem with regard to lack of access for U.S. customers can be found at the Canadian iTunes store. For example, there's more tracks available from The Tragically Hip", a Canadian group that has a small, but strong, fan base here in the States, including me. In particular, there are several iTunes-exclusive download albums of live concert material of "The Hip" called "Live 10" which are unavailable to U.S. downloaders.
*SIGH*
"At the hundredth meridian, at the end of the mesa, where the Great Plains begin..." (Fully Completely)
There must not be a lot of news out there to report this. Who cares about Japanese bands, seriously. I mean alright maybe someone does and thats fine. It's whatever floats your boat, but to be complaining about it. Like I said not much news going on today.
It has already happeded.
http://www.maddmansrealm.com/sukiyaki/
"His biggest hit, Ue o Muite Aruko (I Look Up When I Walk; "Sukiyaki" in the West), was released in Japan in 1961. After its release in the U.S. in 1963, the song's earnestness and melodic beauty proved irresistible despite its incomprehensible lyrics. Against all odds, on June 15, 1963, the song ousted Leslie Gore's "It's My Party" to become the No. 1 popular song in the U.S."
Japan has lots of great music. While I was there I bought a few albums. Some I could not even tell you who the artist is or the name of the album because there is not any english printing on it. The record stores would frequently play albums and display the album playing. This is how I found and bought some great music.
The truth shall set you free!
It's a well known fact that perfect stuff never get noticed. Apple has smart marketing people that can fool Slashdot to write about their store.
In this case I guess the crappiness comes from legal crap, but Apple still profits from it.
Does this mean that if I change my country setting from Canada to US then I can download movies and TV shows?! Can't wait to get home and try that.
Folks, the /. editor that posted this story already knows the fact that you can't buy all tracks at every iTunes Store isn't Apple's fault. However, it just makes a much better story to blame it on Apple. You all fell right into the trap with your attempts to explain to the /. crowd something they already know: that you can't buy, for example, some Japanese tracks on the US iTunes store because the labels haven't licensed Apple to legally distribute and sell those tracks.
And, of course, they never will go back and edit the story title to reflect the truth. They'll leave it a tantalizing blurb that implicitly blames Apple: "The Insanely Great Songs Apple Won't Let You Hear".
Puh-leaze
Much the same problem with regard to lack of access for U.S. customers can be found at the Canadian iTunes store. For example, there's more tracks available from "The Tragically Hip", a Canadian group that has a small, but strong, fan base here in the States, including me. In particular, there are several iTunes-exclusive download albums of live concert material of "The Hip" called "Live 10", which are unavailable to U.S. downloaders.
*SIGH*
"At the hundredth meridian, at the end of the mesa, where the Great Plains begin..." (Fully Completely)
If you want to check the Japanese track that topped the US charts, check the link in the parent and scroll down. The original version is posted as well as many many many remakes including the English version. Enjoy.
Maybe iTunes doesn't sell them is they sometimes are posted for free after the copyright expired unlike in the US where the extension act will make it sure I will expire first.
The truth shall set you free!
I am going to try this immediately.
For over 2 years I had exactly 4 songs in my iTunes shopping cart... songs that I really liked, but I couldn't bring myself to hand over my credit card for the DRM inhibited music. I usually buy CDs.
So, for Christmas I received a couple of iTunes gift cards. I figured, what the heck... I'll buy the songs now and attempt to find something to strip the DRM.
And then the catch hit me. The songs, while still in my shopping cart and still had playable samples were "no longer for sale in the iTunes US store". The songs and the albumn that they made up were no longer listed in the store by any means of searching.
Here's the real kicker that pissed me off. These songs were only ever sold through the iTunes store. No physical store sales, no other online music stores, and I was never able to find them on any p2p services.
Hopefully I'll now be able to purchase them. This is another perfect example of why DRM is a bad bad thing. If the company holding the keys to the DRM infected information decides to revoke them, the content can be completely lost to society.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
It's high time Americans have some content unavailable due to ridiculous licensing, since the rest of the world has had to put up with it for years.
Example - here, in Canada, I can't buy episodes of The Daily Show on iTunes. This is despite the fact that it's aired at the exact same time every day here as it is in the US, so there is therefore no possible way Comedy Central is losing more potential viewers than in the US. The same is true of 95% of the content on iTunes video, it's simply not offered here, for no good reason whatsoever.
Back in the 1980's, there was one record store company I ended up buying CD's from. It was in Indianapolis called Tracks. I quit going to other places at the time like Camelot Music and other chain stores. Tracks use to be in Indy, Bloomington, W. Lafayette and even got to Evansville. One thing, they carried items that you couldn't get at the chain stores - import CD's. There was one import I got that were not available at the chain stores - The Best of Steve Miller. Since this was a time prior to CD burners, I would tape off of my CD's to listen to my tunes in my car (even though frowned upon by the RIAA). They carried Metal Tape which the mainstream stores did not carry.
On the RIAA, they had ads at the schools supported by the administrators encouraging the students to write to members of Congress to support a tape tax. The thing was you buy a CD of a given album. If you wanted to listen to it in your car, since there were not any CD players for cars, the RIAA wanted you to buy their cheap quality pre-recorded tape of that same album. Homey didn't play that. With the metal tape, the music quality stayed good and the tape player didn't want to eat the tape unlike the pre-recorded ones.
Apple needs to become an independent record label itself. The handwriting is on the wall. Apple seems to have worked out their differences with Apple Records...Steve Jobs has repeatedly complained about the greed of the record labels...Apple already has "iTunes exclusives"...they give 90% of their iTunes revenue to the record labels.
If they became a label and sign artists, they could work out much better arrangements with them to give them a bigger cut, loosen overly stringent restrictions imposed by the industry, increase distribution, keep a bigger profit for themselves - and lower prices for consumers to say 10-50 cents per song!
They've been prohibited from moving directly into the music industry due to agreements with Apple Records, but if they can work out a cooperative agreement with them (merger?), everyone wins! (Except the existing labels that will be extremely pissed off.)
Simple licensing. Please, is the submitter really so stupid he/she doesn't understand this? And the editor just passes it through?
The real story is that iTunes isn't geofiltering IPs apparently.
TD
First, this isn't "Apple" not letting you hear these things. It's the record companies and their licensing agreements. If you go into a record store in the US, do you see all these great Japanese artists? Hell no. Why? Isn't it just as easy to ship them over as it is to ship over US artists? It's not Apple limiting these things, it's the damned recording companies.
It's the same reason that TV shows on iTunes US aren't available on iTunes UK and vice versa. There are ancient licensing agreements (well, ancient in terms of the internet) between the media companies that Apple has to respect if you want any content on iTunes at all. Apple could have gone the eMusic route and filled the iTunes store with independent artists, but who would start doing that?
Finally, Apple's not preventing you from hearing these songs on your computer or your iPod. You're free to buy them on CDs and rip them into your computer. And you can even rip them in MP3 format with no DRM! Amazing!
It's natural for people to beat up on Apple because that's who's dealing with them when they don't get what they want. But that's just human nature. I used to work as a bus boy in a restuarant. I've seen people scream at waiters for the cooks screwing up their order. I've seen people yell at cashiers for something they bought there not working correctly. Most people are stupid. It's up to those of us who aren't to
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
'Course, it kinda has to be your thing, but that goes without saying.
This is just what I'm listening to now: http://www.archive.org/details/mtk165
Click up in the right corner to ge to where you can browse their whole collection.
Anyway...
Who is your credit agency? Citi only charged me ~0.16 cents on a $10 refill on a foreign music download service.
...if the youth of America were exposed to Japanese noise bands like Boredoms and the Ruins, it would mean the end of Western Civilization...
Another reflection of US insularity is the apparent need for remakes of TV and movies that were in English in the first place.
Even stupider is that Discovery Channel and Animal Planet will take UK documentaries and dub over an American voice reading (mostly*) the exact same words. Apparently Americans can't deal with hearing someone foreign.
(*There was one interesting exception though. I watched a documentary about the U-2 incident in the UK, and then happened to see the overdubbed version of the same show in the US. For some odd reason the US version didn't mention the possibility that the information was deliberately leaked to Russia by the CIA in order to sabotage the peace talks and protect their budget.)
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
This, to my mind, means that they should not be protected by copyright. If you intentionally exclude a region, then it is not in the best interests of that region to grant you a monopoly on distribution.
Copyright is more than just a monopoly on distribution: it also protects unpublished works. Copyright laws should apply whether or not a work is available legally. That said, copyright is also based in National law, and thus the particulars differ from country to country. It would be interesting to see a case go to court in country X, where a creator sued an unauthorized distributor, when the creator has only registered the copyright in country Y.
That doesn't mean that I disagree with your analysis in the other respects, however - I think that a country-based model doesn't make much sense for digital music. I'm glad that iTMS has such an easy way to get around it.
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
> switch the country setting at the bottom of the page to Japan, and you're dropped down
> a rabbit hole into a wonderland of great Japanese bands that you've never even heard of.
You know, Japan is not exactly known for great music. Cars, electronics, video games, sure. Sushi, if you're into that sort of thing. But Japanese _music_? Isn't that sort of like British cuisine or French military strategy? Isn't Japan the country where they're seriously into karaoke music? Ugh.
If you go _looking_ for Japanese music, I suppose you ought to be able to find it okay, but I don't think Apple *or* their customers would be well served by offering it by default to customers elsewhere in the world.
If you log out of your European account and go to the US store there are also plenty of records that Americans can buy and not Europeans. I guess the labels give iTMS the restrictions.
Let's whine together: If you are a Latin American resident you can't buy any music at all cause there aren't any iTunes Stores for any Latin American country. You can't even download the covers cause you can't create an iTunes account anywhere. Buuuhhh.
So stop whinnying cause you just can't buy Night of Fire. If you are so interested in J-Pop, Google for a store that sells it to you. It's not that Apple "won't let you hear" as the title says.
It's as childish as complaining because the a specific bar won't sell Coke to you because it has Pepsi instead.
Quite often I'll hear a song on last.fm that I like and go on iTunes to buy it. Come to find out it's an iTunes UK offering and my account won't let me download it. This is the major problem with the music industry. Music is now international, not regional. The industry hasn't adapted yet.
I know Slate is currently owned by the Washington Post, it wouldn't surprise me that there are still some microsoft sympathizers there...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_magazine
I imagine one reason we don't get Japanese music on iTunes is hardly anybody knows anything about it in the U.S.
I wouldn't mind checking it out.. but I would have no idea where to start. Anyone have any recommendations? I hear it's "insanely great"!
I think you misunderstand what marketing is. You Market ( advertise ) to create a demand. Once a brand or demand is established, you market to maintain market share.
www.zunior.com
Very simple. Apple is contractually bound to segment the market by region -- this is for reasons of legality (Nazi music in France?) and marketing. By creating these artificial barriers the recording industry can charge 1 price for the music in India ($.05) and another in the US ($.99). The reason is a classic marketing tier. Americans can and are willing to pay $.99 and an Indian would never. If someone will pay more, why not charge more? On the other hand, you don't want to have American's buying the same songs for $.05. This is the Starbucks model, the DVD region encoding model, etc.
(Title 17 USC, section 602)
The exclusive rights of a copyright holder include copying, so the law considers piracy and importation for resale to be identical crimes.
Napster does a similar thing. I was able to get to Napster's private UK, Canadian, and Australian message boards. The only message board that had any traffic was the UK board. In chatting with the users it came to light that different songs were available in the different countries. At the time, U2's "Vertigo" was not available for purchase in the US (on Napster), but it was in the UK. UK users also paid more per song than US users.
After I posted the technique to switch countries on the US board, Napster modified the structure of the board to prevent jumping.
I really wish I had points today to mod you up. And I wish I'd seen this post about six months ago. I'll be dating myself here, but I clearly remember walking with my mother in a strip mall years ago when this song came on over the PA system and it has stuck in my head ever since. Something else reminded me of this song a few months ago and thanks to Amazon, I was finally able to find it on one of those Billboard compilation disks. So now, any time I like I can put the CD on, close my eyes and think about a sandy haired kid walking holding his mom's hand while we window shopped in Key Biscayne. Great memories!
Admittedly this if off topic and I'm sure you know this already, but Japan is not the only place with great music. My wife is Colombian and since knowing her, I found a whole new world of latin music that I didn't know existed. We both have a pretty ecclectic music collection from artists all over the world and music is truly one of our shared passions. If you're interested, check out some of the Putumayo collections (they're sold here at Whole Foods and other markets or available on line). We have 6 or 7 of them now and they're all excellent - especially the Brazillian ones.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Queen of Hip-Hop by Amuro Namie cost me ~$60 USD at an import store the week of release.
That same album is like ¥2400 on iTunes, and so is the new Hamasaki Ayumi album that just came out. That's a steal, but it sucks I'll need to get PDFs of the packaging some how -- if I do join iTunes just for these huge savings. =/
SlashDot is the perfect format and environment for marketers to get their company name thrown around. I call it Viral Reporting or Viral Journalism, since all that is needed to further your business is the mention of your company in a journalistic context, being for a positive or negative reason, where millions of people will check you out, even if they despise you. Thus, even though you have created a negative PR image, you get unintentional advertising and name exposure with the great possibility of financial windfall from it.
I have noticed lately that Apple has two very distinct faces. Steve Jobs, idolozed by Apple Worms as someone who built a company that cares about computer users and strives to make the internet and computer seamlessly integrated into human society and as easy as possible for people to use, and to allow the spreading of ideas and media throughout the world. Then there is the other face of Apple Marketing, which totally contradicts the "People loving, society oriented, free thinking" world that Steve Jobs is proclaimng to love.
This marketing gimmick (one of MANY, for Apple) is purely an exmple of marketing tactics that make it almost indistinguishable from Microsoft and most Network News stations. Apple can created this wonderful public relations image in the eyes of the consumer, and has, almost literally, made the consumer fall in love with it. Apple has figured out that they can exploit this "Aple Affinity" to their advantage by using the good PR as a means of diverting the customers' attention away from their tactics and sedating them with all of the benefits and joys of Apple products.
Apple is just like Microsoft, in that what lies underneath is a big stinking pile of crap. The only difference is that Apple is more appealing to the customer. Would YOU buy a pile of dog crap if it smelled Mountain Springtime or Pine fresh? I still wouldn't, because it know what it really is.
I used to use a Macintosh LC, back in the days where a quad speed CD-ROM's and 14.4 modems were was the status equivalent of optical holographic drives and T4 connections. However, PC or Mac, the marketing schemes that all companies, not just electronics, create to divert attention has crosse the line from being a threat to society to controlling society. When you control what people see, you ARE what people see and that can be abused when you control content for your own personal or commercial interests.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
http://www.miraesoft.com/karel/2007/01/02/piracy-t he-better-choice/
Beating up on Apple or yelling at the cashier may be unseemly, but it isn't really stupid. In the case of a cashier, it means that eventually cashiers demand a higher wage to work at places that sell shoddy products. This in turn puts pressure on their employers and suppliers. It may be indirect, but it does work in a Darwinian sense to increase the quality of the products or the improve the policies of the various companies involved.
The labels aren't going to change. It's like asking a cat to bark.
A) Cat's are generally disagreeable about anything...it's just who they are
B) A cat wouldn't even know how to bark anyway
When indie artists sign up via CDBaby and such, it automagically goes to all the foreign stores. Why? Because they are not labels.
That's the only way things are going to change.
are they any better than Paris Hilton's latest CD?
Since moving to the US from Europe 5 years ago, I've noticed that it's very hard to keep up with whats going in in the rest of the world once you're in the US.
There's hardly any news about the rest of the world in the media (Iraq excepted). I've generaly presumed that to be either one of the causes or effects of the generally low level of US education, but now I'm wondering if its not just a marketing decision.
I'll be dating myself here, but I clearly remember walking with my mother in a strip mall years ago when this song came on over the PA system and it has stuck in my head ever since.
What will date us is the tech of the day. This was the age of the transistor radio with it's 2 inch speaker or single earphone. It was AM. FM wasn't even on the horizon yet let alone stereo radio.
I have my grandfathers portable radio. It is bright red and the size of a small lunch pail. It has 5 tubes and took 3 batteries. It used a D cell for the filimants, a 22-1/2 volt battery for bias, and a 67 volt B battery for the tube plate voltages. The batteries were not rechargable.
The truth shall set you free!
duhhhhhhhhhhh are you blaming these people for lame programmin?????
Here is what I think of Japanese music...right from the sphincter. On YouTube, Beavis and Butthead style. Someone really needs to put those niggers in the Pacific back in their place; they're not Arians, true metalic artists in iron like Zakk Wylde (think Suicide Messiah) and Alice in Chains (think Again).
Japan, just go away. Just go. Sink soon.
Logged-in users aren't forced to preview their comments. Create an Account! To confirm you're not a script,
please type the word in this image: felony
For different flavors of the story, see here, here, and here.
I bet they have several regional product managers who don't even know each other, let alone talk to each other....
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
Before everyone gets their panties in a knot, this is not a conspiracy, this isn't record labels trying to screw you over, this is about taxes, tarrifs, accounting practices and licensing tracks for distribution.
Why do you think a record label only licenses a song for a specific geographic area? Because they want to deny you the enjoyment? Because they're too good for your money?
What's been exposed is most likely a huge tax and accounting liability for Apple and will be repaired very quickly. If you're so hot to trot to buy Japanese music, get a Japanese credit card and use a proxy inside
l2business noobs
To each their own, but that genre seems aptly named in my opinion.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Shoutcast is a good start.. you can do it straight from a web browser (www.shoutcast.com) or get fancy and use a player like winamp or xmms... My combo with Linux is.. Streamtuner/Xmms/Streamripper but there are other ways equally good on both Windows and Linux. Guess if you want it to be portable, you'll have to find a (streamripper) way somehow... but damned if I know how.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
i work for a company that manages the data for many independent record labels and their uploads to digital music services.
this is all to do with record label licensing. some releases may be licensed for worldwide release, whereas some may be licensed only for one country. so it is not just itunes that have this problem, all online music stores must comply with the licensing information held in the metadata supplied by the record labels.
I watch Mexican DVDs (same region as the US) in my UK bought laptop.
I am using Linux of course, but as far as I know, in computers the lock down is controlled by software, not hardware.
But I stand to happily be corrected, just don't tell my laptop...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Aarrgghh.. I just got my first iTunes Store "Your request could not be completed. The item you've requested in not currently available in the US store."
From month or so back, I've had "A Taste of Honey" in my cart from Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass's "Whipped Cream & Other Delights" album. Today I went to purchase, and it auto-removed it from my cart saying "that item is no longer available".
Well, you can still search for it and find it, but you can't put it in a US shopping cart.
I put the 'fun' in fundamentalism
I mean, they invented DRM to make our lives miserable, and now I discover that they invented national jurisdictions for copyright regulations and credit card sales just to piss off the internationalist commies amongst us.
.25 per track in the US -- to not charge .45 cents somewhere else.
Apple has spent a lot of time working out the details of the sometimes bizarre, sometimes rational national rules for sales. That's why the international sites took a while to get up and running. I remember reading, many times, about how impatient people were in this or that country to get going, and how angry they were that their credit cards were not recognized, even though they were good citizens of Zambesia, and how dare that George Bush who runs Apple frustrate world consumers? Now it turns out it was all a nasty plot to dominate music sales and withhold Japanese rock from the Western consumers.
More likely it was the labels refusing to cooperated, or the bands, or it was finding a way to get the credit cards -- who take
In Canada, there are Canadian content rules, for instance. Different rights organizations. Jesus.
A single repository for the world's music? Good idea. Rewrite your copyright laws, will you?
Virtually all recent media management tools are about marketing. This is no different, it's just region coding embedded in software.
the spanish itunes store doens't have movies, or tv shows or anyhthing else than what you'd find at a bad retailer... its so pointless to have an account there...
Meanwhile the rest of the world doesn't get any TV shows (including Canada), so you Americans better not complain.
If you want to listen to some wicked Japanese Trance music, check out Yoji Biomehanika He has a track called Ding-A-Ling. . .pure euphoric awesomeness.