Japan's iTunes Music Store

On Aug 5, 2005, at 8:57 PM, Wilson Hill wrote:

> There are a few times when I would like to be able to get a Japanese
> song. They're not available at the US store, so when the new one for
> Japan opened, I thought my problem would be solved, but the J store
> wouldn't let me sign in with either my dot Mac account or AOL
> account. What is a person like me supposed to do?
>
> Copyright or trade agreements aside, if I as a consumer want to buy
> something that is publicly available, shouldn't I be able to?

Trade agreements are what allow you to buy it in the first place.
Apple have a license to sell particular songs in the US via the iTMS;
they don't have a license to sell other songs. The set of songs they
can or can't sell varies by country, and needs to be renegotiated for
each country. The way they determine if you're in the US or not is
the billing address on your credit card.

The people with the rights to sell the song get to make the decision
about what they want to sell where -- or what they want to license
Apple to sell. I think the particular decision they've made is ill-
advised in the short term and suicidal in the long term, but if
they've got any sense they've already realized their business model
is dead, and they're just making their senior executives' retirement
packages better.

As for myself, I order lots of import CDs.

Charlton


--
Charlton Wilbur
cwilburchromatico.net

On Aug 5, 2005, at 8:57 PM, Wilson Hill wrote:

> I encountered a problem with the new Japanese iTunes Music Store, and
> I'd like to get your take on this.
>
> There are a few times when I would like to be able to get a Japanese
> song. They're not available at the US store, so when the new one for
> Japan opened, I thought my problem would be solved, but the J store
> wouldn't let me sign in with either my dot Mac account or AOL
> account. What is a person like me supposed to do?

I hope you know someone in Japan.

I too am a bit disappointed about this, since my wife listens to a
lot of Japanese pop music, and would have loved to have been able to
access iTMS-J. But, didn't we have this same discussion a few years
back when iTMS first launched, and people in Europe and elsewhere
were complaining that they could not access the store unless they had
credit cards billed to a US address? For example:

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=1921>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2094>

Then as now, the problem is probably incompatible copyright laws,
royalty arrangements, various marketing contracts, etc. that stands
in Apple's way.

I suspect that given the dominance of American pop culture, the
pressure to open up iTMS-US was very great. Certainly much larger
than the demand for foreign access to iTMS-Japan. If Apple wouldn't/
couldn't do it with the US store, there is no reason to believe that
with a much smaller demand they would try for the Japanese store.

Moreover, if Apple were to open up the various national iTMS to
international customers, the pricing differential they have
instituted would immediately collapse. For example, songs in Japan
are at 150 yen (about $1.36 US) but they have a second tier of songs
priced at 180 yen (about $1.63). Allegedly this was a concession to
Japanese labels to make iTMS-J happen. And we've all heard the
various complaints (even lawsuits) leveled by consumers in Europe (in
the UK for example) for differential pricing. And yet Apple
persists---probably out of necessity.

I don't like the situation any more than the next guy. And I would
be thrilled with an iTMS-world. But that would require a
harmonization of laws, business practices and contracts across so
many markets, that it is probably not going to happen in the
foreseeable future. (Remember that even Canadians couldn't get
access to iTMS-US.) In the mean time, I guess we all just have to
have a lot of friends in foreign countries willing to set up
local .mac accounts for us.

What irks me more than the access issue is the fact that Sony-BMG is
withholding their significant catalog from iTMS-J. I guess they are
determined not to have their music service lose to iTMS on their home
turf. (That the venerable "Walkman" brand can't touch the iPod in
terms of sales/popularity on their home turf is a bit of a sore point
for Sony. So they are playing hard ball. Expected, certainly.
Standard business tactics, probably. But still irksome, nonetheless.)

Tn

On 05 Aug 2005, at 18:57 , Wilson Hill wrote:
> Copyright or trade agreements aside, if I as a consumer want to buy
> something that is publicly available, shouldn't I be able to?

As far as the Content Cartel is concerned (or really, any business)
if something is not available in your market area, then you are not
allowed to have it.

Disney, for example, sells Song of the South in Japan and will not
release it in the US.

On 6 Aug 2005, at 1:57, Wilson Hill wrote:

> Copyright or trade agreements aside, if I as a consumer want to buy
> something that is publicly available, shouldn't I be able to?

Yes and yes.

But.

You can't set aside "Copyright or trade agreements" in this case, as
they are likely specific, and as you have found, music on the
Japanese iTunes Music Store is not "publicly available". It is
available only to those with a Japanese address/ credit card,
probably because of the aforementioned "Copyright or trade agreements".

Just because you can see something on the internet doesn't mean that
you can buy it.

Chris. T.

Wilson Hill <marshall10mac.com> wrote:

> Am I right to be exceedingly disappointed (just a step or two below
> angry), or am I getting upset over nothing?

There have been comments elsewhere in Cyberspace about the limitations
of this service. Seems you can only use it if you have a Japanese credit
card with a Japanese billing address.

It's a bit like the problem we have of paying for our mac.com account.
We do have a dollar credit-card and want to use it, but because we live
in Japan, we have to pay in yen and accept an extra currency-conversion
fee.

________________________________________________________________________
                   Louise Bremner (log at gol dot com)
   If you want a reply by e-mail, don't write to my Yahoo address!

>Copyright or trade agreements aside, if I as a consumer want to buy
>something that is publicly available, shouldn't I be able to? I evenhave a
>credit card denominated in Japanese yen (billing address in
>the US), but if I can't sign in, how can I use it? It just seems to
>me that all the legalities just go too far.

Nope, you are not permitted to do so for the very reason noted. You MUST have
a billing address in the country that 'hosts' the iTunes store. I expect that
Apple/aka iTMS has negotiated contracts with each country's media cartels on
the explicit understanding that those contracts will not be used to
cross-shop across national borders for (c) reasons.

[FWIW: This has the same effect as preventing me from giving/receiving gift
certificates across national boundaries too.]

I've heard the press releases on how well iTMS-J is doing here in Japan (so far at least), and I cannot help but wonder why. The continued popularity and availability of CD rental shops around this country would seem to limit iTMS-J's popularity--except impulse buys where someone just HAS to have a specific song now.

That said, the English language music selection is not very good at the rental shop we frequent, so some people may be focusing on that segment. But, looking at iTMS-J for what's sold well today, I'm seeing a lot of J-Pop on the top 10 list....

On Aug 17, 2005, at 10:53 AM, home444 wrote:

> I've heard the press releases on how well iTMS-J is doing here in
> Japan (so far at least), and I cannot help but wonder why. The
> continued popularity and availability of CD rental shops around
> this country would seem to limit iTMS-J's popularity--except
> impulse buys where someone just HAS to have a specific song now.
>
> That said, the English language music selection is not very good at
> the rental shop we frequent, so some people may be focusing on that
> segment. But, looking at iTMS-J for what's sold well today, I'm
> seeing a lot of J-Pop on the top 10 list....

Well, there are probably a few factors at work:

Convenience: Not everyone lives within convenient walking distance
of a CD rental shop. In some neighborhoods (especially in the
suburbs or even the residential neighborhoods of Tokyo) rental shops
are surprisingly difficult to find.

Economics: Aside from the monthly membership fees (usually about 1500
yen), these places charge something like 150 yen for an overnight
rental of a single-CD, and 300 yen for a full CD, more if you rent it
for multiple nights. Add to that the hassle of having to burn a copy
once you get home, and the iTMS-J pricing starts to look pretty
reasonable---and for that you now legitimately own the song.

Legitimacy: When iTMS was originally launched Jobs said something to
the effect of: if you make it easy and inexpensive to do what is
right, then most people would choose to purchase their music
legitimately rather than stealing it. Of course he was talking in
the context of file sharing, but something similar might apply to the
rental stores. Everyone knows that renting and listening to a CD is
legit, but everyone also knows that burning a copy of that CD before
returning it is not. So perhaps iTMS-J gives people an convenient
and reasonably priced alternative.

(And by the way, it's probably the phenomenal ease of use of iTMS-J/
iTunes/iPod combination that is critical, gauging by the relative
failure of other attempts at online music distribution in Japan, most
notably by Sony. Sony's product wasn't easy enough for people to
choose it over rental shops, but apparently iTMS-J is.)

Selection: I read an article in Nikkei discussing this phenomenon
that the average rental/retail store carries maybe 100-120 artists.
So if your musical tastes run to something other than the 100 most
popular artists (especially foreign ones) you are out of luck.
Certainly the million song catalog of iTMS-J must be appealing in
this respect.

Demographics: The same Nikkei article notes that CD rental shops are
used by a very narrow demographic (mostly teens and early 20s), and
that outside of this demographic the use of CD rental shops drops off
sharply. (The article doesn't say why, but says that these shops
tend to have a poor image---a sense that something illegitimate is
going on.) iTMS would cater to a much broader demographic.

Fad: Japanese are a notoriously fad-prone people. This might just
be the initial surge as people jump on the coolness factor of the
iTMS-J to feed their iPods, but the long run level might be
considerably lower.

Just a few speculations.

Tn

On Aug 17, 2005, at 10:53 AM, home444 wrote:

> I've heard the press releases on how well iTMS-J is doing here in
> Japan (so far at least), and I cannot help but wonder why. The
> continued popularity and availability of CD rental shops around
> this country would seem to limit iTMS-J's popularity--except
> impulse buys where someone just HAS to have a specific song now.
>
> That said, the English language music selection is not very good at
> the rental shop we frequent, so some people may be focusing on that
> segment. But, looking at iTMS-J for what's sold well today, I'm
> seeing a lot of J-Pop on the top 10 list....


Think of the success of iTMS-J in terms of marketing and what it does
for Apple's stock, not just sales. In a restricted and protected
market for music and devices that play it that has traditionally been
dominated by Sony, iPod has kicked Walkman's butt in terms of product
sales in Sony's home market, and iTMS-J is making significant and
impressive gains in selling music in a market, as in the US, in which
music subscription services have not been successful to date.

If I remember correctly, about a year ago Sony did release a hard
drive music player under the Walkman family and music subscription
service that were supposed to be iPod/iTunes killers. But to date,
the once successful Walkman line has become another Betamax or Minidisc.

As in the US, iPod and the iTunes store is a product that is wildly
successful in just about every market segment. Harajuku girls,
salarymen and women, corporate scions, soccer moms, joggers,
commuters etc., etc., love iPods. Pop stars wear them in their
videos. Across the globe, people are trading playlists, making mixes
and shuffling songs for friends.

The fact that J-Pop is selling well in iTMS-J is a testament to the
success of Apple as a neutral party that resells and doesn't produce
music.

I'm wondering if Podcasting is starting to take off in Japan, and if
iTMS-J will be enabling podcasting as it has been in the US.

Marilyn

>> I've heard the press releases on how well iTMS-J is doing here in
>> Japan (so far at least), and I cannot help but wonder why. The
>> continued popularity and availability of CD rental shops around
>> this country would seem to limit iTMS-J's popularity--except
>> impulse buys where someone just HAS to have a specific song now.

It is indeed true that the rental shops are all over the place, but I have
to say, iTMS is a *lot* more convenient. When I wanted to rent a disc, I'd
have to hop on my bike, ride fifteen minutes to the nearest Tsutaya or
Warehouse or Kenbunroku (are they even in business still?), and hope not
only that they actually stocked the discs I wanted, but that they had it in
when I went. While it was, undeniably, quite fabulously convenient (although
a definite DRM strike) to have blank tapes on sale next to rental CDs
bearing stickers telling renters the total playing time of the disc, it
still breaks down like this:

Rental:
1 Cycle/drive/walk to video shop
2 Choose disc
3 Choose tape/blank CD/blank mini-disc
4 Pay for disc
5 Pay for blank media
6 Cycle/drive/walk home
7 Rip disc to computer/dub disc to blank CD or mini-disc

ITMS:
1 Launch iTunes
2 Select music
3 Pay for music
4 Download music

Given that a rental costs in the order of ¥500, and blank media much the
same, suddenly renting, with its associated hassles, doesn't quite look
quite as much of a bonus as it might at first sight seem.

>> That said, the English language music selection is not very good at
>> the rental shop we frequent, so some people may be focusing on that
>> segment. But, looking at iTMS-J for what's sold well today, I'm
>> seeing a lot of J-Pop on the top 10 list....

I realise that this isn't *entirely* on topic, but anyway...this sort of
gaijin-centric attitude was one of the things that really bothered me during
my ten years in Japan.

No, the English-language music section in most rental shops isn't up to
much, but then, I don't remember seeing much in the way of Amuro Namie or
Ulfuls (one of which I'll listen to, the other is atrocious ‹ I'll let you
figure out which) in my local music shops here in Florida. The reason for
this shortage of English music is simple ‹ the foreign population of Japan
is only about 1.4%. The majority ‹ the *vast* majority ‹ of Japanese want
too listen to Japanese music (not that I can, for the life of me, figure out
why). And yes, I realise that there are some Japanese who are all
cosmopolitan and worldly, and want to listen to American music, the circles
that most foreigners move in in Japan are likely to be very heavily weighted
toward just those foreign-friendly types, who are not, in my experience, in
any way typical of the Japanese as a whole.

Consider who is most likely to be downloading from iTMS. It's most likely,
I'm assuming, the OL ‹ the office ladies who live at home and have the
disposable income that's the target of everyone from Apple to Sanrio.
There's a reason why the iPod mini has sold a bundle in Japan, and, more to
the point, why the pink is the leading colour. It's not merely kawaii ‹ it's
cho-kawaii. The twenty-to-thirty girls love them, they're the ones who'll be
filling them up with Morning Musume and whoever else Johnny's Jimusho have
foisted on them this week, and they're the ones who'll download this from
Apple. And, trust me, they have no more interest in ABCKO releasing the
rights to the Stones' back catalogue than I have in getting the collected
works of SMAP.

There. I feel better now.
Steve

On Aug 19, 2005, at 12:30 PM, Big Steve wrote:

>>>
>
> Consider who is most likely to be downloading from iTMS. It's most
> likely,
> I'm assuming, the OL — the office ladies who live at home and have the
> disposable income that's the target of everyone from Apple to Sanrio.

Speaking of the color pink, iPods, Sanrio & Japan - this proves Big
Steve's point:

http://i-kitty.jp/index_pc.html

BTW, I wish they would have sold them here.

Marilyn