Looks like I won’t be putting down money on iTMS from today anyway. Plenty of new European outlet’s, just not in Scandinavia. Fuck. And color me amazed, they did put out a color iPod Photo. I wouldn’t have put my money on that happening, that’s for sure. Especially since they only just updated to 4G. The photo function is pretty cool I suppose, but the coolest thing about the iPod Photo, is definitely that it shows you the album cover of the currently playing track! With me being the anal sucker I am, all the albums in our 80 something GB music collection have had their covers painstackingly added, and I would just love to have this feature.
But with my 3G iPod being merely 9 months old, I doubt I’ll be fronting the money for a new model any time soon…
Queens of the Stone Age – Gonna Leave You (Spanish Version)
Exclusive
Voodoo Child – Baby Monkey
(Moby)
Curve
The Faint
Wet from Birth
William Shatner – Common people and I cant get behind that
Beastie Boys – to the 5 boroughs
If you like your electronica of the Warp persuasion, it’s gotta be Bleep.com.
MP3s, no DRM, 99p a track. Oh yes. They also sell music from a large number of other independent labels, so you’ve got Bjork’s new album on there too.
If not… my favourite iTMS song I’ve bought is Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses.
What?
Unfortunately, iTunes EU (or whatever the flavor is going to be) is most likely going to be just as crippled as OD2 is in terms of licensing. The EU is one big quilt of licensing agreements and just because one artist can be sold on iTunes in France doesn’t imply that said artist can be sold on iTunes in Sweden.
What’s really interesting to me (I don’t buy much music online) is how Apple intends to limit my ability, or rather Michael’s ability since he will be buying on it before I will, to purchase music on iTunes in France. As far as I know, it is illegal to limit the transferrance of goods within the EU. Nobody can stop me from buying a CD from French online store and have it shipped to Denmark. Noone, except the store itself, who may or may not ship to other countries. As long as the reason is “practicality”, not licensing.
Well im in the UK and weve had the store for a while. Ive had no problems with it and can if i like simply burn them to audio cd for friends to add to their own mp3 collections themselves.
Germany and France have also had the ITMS for a while and the only restriction for purchasing is that you register with a credit card which has the billing address in that country, then you can only buy from that store. for example i can only buy from the UK store, not france, Germany or indeed USA.
That way it is clearly simple for Apple to restrict which tracks are sold where by just having whatevery they want available in the appropriate store until licensing allows otherwise. The UK store has been build tracks very steadily now.
Yup, and my point is that I think using the credit card home country as a limit to who can buy what borders legality in the EU. EC Treaty Article 28 “prohibit measures which have an effect equivalent to quantitative restrictions in intra-Community trade”.
Since “goods” is defined as any products that have value (even negative value), some argue that prohibiting the transfer of digital information breaks the rules for parallel import, wholly legal in the EU.
Now if iTunes argue that the problem is payment conditions, then it’s suddenly a practical measure, but since they accept international credit cards too, that doesn’t seem to be the case to me.
Now I’m no lawyer, or even an expert in this matter, so I could be wrong. But I’ve certainly heard of cases covering very intangible products (such as electricity) … all were established to be unpreventable.
Hope this rumor it’s true, my country it’s on the odd list of non-European countries * crosses fingers *
Bjorn, well if thats true and Apple are forced to allow anyone in an EU country to buy from another EU countries store (or maybe just have one big EU store) then thatd be great (although I cant see that Ill be buying the latest Franco-Pop or Germani-pop hits). Im sure itd be no skin off Apples nose and if anything would benefit them with bigger sales figures.
I would think that Apple have basically been forced into this position by the various record companies and if the EU can give them a bloody nose and force them to be more open then all the more power for us consumers.
We in the UK (and possibly EU, not sure) dont even have fair-use rights (IE backing up software/music etc) so any little extra would be beneficial.
Wow, Spain is on the list and everything seems to work. Prices are the same 0.99€ and so are the licensing terms. Hmm, I don’t see any free singles of the day though, which is a shame. Otherwise, great news!
Luckily Finland does not belong to Scandinavia. :) Sorry…
For newer music, I really dont see any reason to buy from iTunes, when places like cd-wow and Play.com sells a cd for about 1 £ more than iTunes, and then you get the actual cd without all the DRM crap.
For singles and old stuff, iTunes does seem to be a good solution, though, if they ever open in denmark…
That’s true, if you like CD’s… I personally don’t. We packaged up all our CD’s 3 – 4 years ago and haven’t really had them out of storage since then, and having only bought a few CD’s since then.
It’s just so… analog.
Can somebody confirm that the stores are localized, because although I am in Spain everything appears to be in English. Not a problem for me as I am not even Spanish, but may be an issue because, at least in this country, the wast majority don’t speak English.
I sympathize with you Michael. I fully expected to see Canada listed as one of the new ITMS’s today. Apparently from what I read, we should expect one here in Canada in November, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
I’m actually more surprised that they haven’t added Canada yet than I am Denmark… How big is the Canadian population?
I don’t think the digital music market is large enough in Canada, with a population of ~32 million we are not exactly a prime target. Although we are have the largest percentage of people on the internet… somewhere around 60%… and something likr 70% of those are on High-Speed access (Cable/DSL).
Likewise in the prime of illegal music downloading Canada had the highest rate of illegal downloads. Thank the light that the government passed a law last year to protect consumers from getting traced/attacked by record labels!
I really would have though Canada would be a good market, but no one is coming here.. we have some crappy napster serverice and a couple other download music services, but they have very little selection, most of it being the top 40 hit lists of the United States >.<
Michael, you really put artworks manually? That’s analog… ;)
I think you should have a look at iTunes Catalog: it’s not very expensive (about 10 Euro).
Have a look at my music to see what it can do. I’m not using it everyday, but I’m 100% satisfied with it…
I use fetchart its free.
My ipod is only 1 and a half years old, but im still tempted .. Mmmm album art.
Brendan is correct on all of those points, still though, I’m shocked that iTMS hasn’t launch here, but I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised because there still aren’t any Apple stores in Canada yet either.
W000t, the Netherlands has finally got a decent online music store. Bought me one of those U2 vertigo songs, and the greenday album.
The phrase “anal sucker” really doesn’t paint the best of pictures. But if it did, I could back it up on my iPod now!
The infamous Apple release schedule stikes again – I just brought back a 40Gb 4G iPod from the states less than a week ago!
I agree on the album art point as well, I put iArt (on the PC) through its paces on my library a few months ago, anyone know of a good alternative on the Mac? Being able to see the cover art on the iPod would be unassailably cool :)
Vut I think I saw an iTunes MS for Denmark too, in the news that you posted.
Anyway, hang on, it’ll get there.:-)
I mean, look at us. Apple has no intention of getting an iTunes MS anytime in India. :-(
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