iTunes Music Store for Australia at last

At 14:53 -0700 26/10/05, charlie_franklin wrote:
>Finally, Apple opened up the iTunes Music Store in Australia, long
>after the rest of the world. Rumours are that the delay has been
>because at least one of the big music companies was holding out on
>price. This is born out by the fact that Sony/BMG is not represented
>on the store, and is reportedly in talks with Apple over some issues.
>
>Maybe Apple got sick of waiting and decided to launch, which means
>it's muscle could be bought to bear in making Sony agree to its
>terms, rather then the other way around?

Yes it is good news but the pricing makes little sense (why does it
cost US $0.99/ A $1.33 for a song if you live in America, but US
$1.27/ A$ 1.69 if you live in Australia? Do the electrons get tired
having to travel the extra distance?), but it's a baby step forward.

Who knows what next, maybe we will able to order photo books from
iPhoto in the New Year?!?

--
Mark (}-:
Skype / AIM / iChat: gibsonm1

On 28/10/2005, at 3:43 AM, Mark Gibson wrote:
> Yes it is good news but the pricing makes little sense (why does it
> cost US $0.99/ A $1.33 for a song if you live in America, but US
> $1.27/ A$ 1.69 if you live in Australia? Do the electrons get tired
> having to travel the extra distance?), but it's a baby step forward.

Well at least part of that difference is our bloody GST. What I'd
like to know is why iTMS rejects the very same payment details
(everything from credit card number to every detail of name &
address) as paid for renewal of my .Mac account, which is also the
Apple ID I'm trying to use for iTMS, only a week ago. I even printed
out a screen shot showing the details I was entering & had my bank
check it. They said it wads OK. If my (VALID) payment details had
been accepted I would have bought some music by now.

Another beef is with the Missy Higgins Live from San Francisco CD on
offer. There are 9 tracks 4 of which are spoken intros of 39 seconds
or less. On launch day those were priced at the same $1.69 as the
songs. Now they're Album Only but the album price is $17.99, more
than $1.69 each for all 9 tracks ($15.21) & almost twice $1.69 each
for the 5 actual songs ($8.45)! Someone at iTMS has some screwy
pricing ideas.

> Who knows what next, maybe we will able to order photo books from
> iPhoto in the New Year?!?

More likely flickr's <http://flickr.com/> newly launched photo
printing service will be available here first ;)

Cheers, Pedro :-)

Web: <http://www.pedro.net.au> PGP Key ID:
387CD96F
Instant messaging... AIM: pedrofpmac.com Jabber: pedrojabber.org.au
                       Yahoo: pedro_fp ICQ: 27671678 MSN:
mailpedro.net.au

When is New Zealand going to get iTunes Store? Are we too small for Apple to even know we exist?

They won't even let us choose our own flag when we set up in X. We have to use either the Australian or US flag.

> When is New Zealand going to get iTunes Store? Are we too small for
> Apple to even know we exist?

Considering that there isn't even a New Zealand Apple branch (just a
national reseller, "Renaissance Ltd"), I doubt it will be any time
soon, if at all. A country with only 4 million people is a pretty
small market, considering all the work that has to be done to
convince the music companies that a store is a good idea. I doubt
many countries in Europe would have an iTMS if it wasn't for the EU.

For anyone that doesn't know ( and cares ;) ), there is CokeTunes in
New Zealand (as I understand it, Coke sells music in a handful of
countries in Europe as well). ~550,000 tracks available, at NZ$1.75
(US$1.23) per track (NZ$18/album).

http://www.coketunes.co.nz

A clunky, awkward interface, only working with Internet Explorer on
Windows, and providing Microsoft DRM'd WMA songs that only work in
Windows versions of Windows Media Player. (Although that's easy
enough to remove, if you consider doing so to put the music somewhere
you can actually play it morally acceptable, and assuming you have
access to a Windows machine). The wording on the website is very
anti-Apple.

There's also the much smaller Digirama (~100,000 tracks), with tracks
from NZ$1.69, also WMA only.

http://www.digirama.co.nz

It's possible that if New Zealanders end up buying a lot of music
from these that Apple (or maybe Renaissance - I have no idea what
arrangement they have) might consider a NZ iTMS (they have the domain
name), but unlikely in my opinion.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking/apple-buys-nz-domain-as-download-
wars-begin/2005/08/08/1123353237105.html

=Tony.Meyer

At 10:43 AM -0700 10/27/05, Mark Gibson wrote:
>(why does it
>cost US $0.99/ A $1.33 for a song if you live in America, but US
>$1.27/ A$ 1.69 if you live in Australia? Do the electrons get tired
>having to travel the extra distance?)

        The electrons have an easier time of it up in the cold Canadian
climate, where it costs $0.99 CAD/$0.84 USD/$1.13 AUD.

        Of course there may be ome GST (7%) and maybe even provincial sales
tax (from 0-8% depending on the province) added on top of the Canadian
pricing, however my only iTunes purchase did not seem to have any extra
taxes added.

        What I find strange is that the iTMS seems to send my receipts to
an email address that is in no way associated with the Apple ID used to
purchase the music.

--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://public.xdi.org/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *

> They won't even let us choose our own flag when we set up in X. We
> have to use either the Australian or US flag.

No, but you can get close with the flag of the United Tribes of New
Zealand by selecting Maori as a keyboard layout...

At least it's a NZ flag, even if it's 165 years out of date.

<http://www.mch.govt.nz/nzflag/history/united.html>