iTunes scrotum store II - October 25th, 2005
So the iTunes store in australia has finally been launched. After over a year of whinging that there is nowhere to legitamately download songs in australia without using the horribly horrible bigpond feces music store that i could never get to work on my mac anyway.
Just like the Japan store, Sony is not on board, and that seems to have a bigger impact than i thought it would, but there are rumblings that a deal has been signed or is very close to being signed. I’m sure all the music in their catalogue is ready to go and just waiting in the wings for that pen on paper. I can’t imagine they’d be unprepared for such a deal.
Searching for a lot of artists gives less than mediocre results, for an Australian store launch, you’d think that an icon like John Farnham would have got a guernsey, but alas searching for him returns only limited results, and even those are for the Johnny Farnham of yesteryear.
However i would have thought that an artist such as Pearl Jam would be well represented, but alas, they don’t even rate a mention.
So there’s still a fair way to go, but i am very pleased it is finally here and i have already ramped up my involvement in music. I figured there wasn’t much point buying anymore discs until this thing launched as i was only going to digitise the music and lose the disc anyway. I’m quite happy paying $16.99 from iTunes.
For the record, my first purchase was the pre-release EP of Bernard Fanning’s Tea & Sympathy. It’s very good. My only hope is that the catalogue gets the attention it deserves and ITMS release dates don’t get too far behind.