iTunes Europe Hurdles

As obvious as it sounds, it is hard enough to work out deals with ONE country, let alone a huge bunch of them.

About time

Thats too bad. While I don't live in Europe, it would be nice for all of you over there, and it would be great for apple.

the real kicker would be if we were able to browse and order international music, after all this is the "world wide web".

As popular as it is to bash them these days, imagine what it would be like without the RIAA (and their counterparts) - orders of magnitude more complex. Not that they can't be an unrealistic pain sometimes, but they do provide a service without which stores like iTunes would be hard-pressed to exist competitively.

-Richard

Yes, being an European, from one the of the european countries (next January, Europe = 25 countries , over 400 millions inhabitants), it is clear that even there are big unified system for regulation in Europe, music market from one country to another is like black and white. For historical reason, each country has a leader as msuic label company, once fighting on the European field, then of course some disppeared, or merged, but at the end there are still more companies to deal with for Apple in Europe tha in the State.
But still apart from marketing reason (Apple wishing to introduce iTunes to the biggest number of european countries); as it is the case now, it will be possible depending on the location of the iTunes client connecting to iTMS to find out if it is elligible to the iTMS service or not. iTMS could be available in France (where most of the market is own by the world leader, actually the french company Vivendi Universal), but not available in Spain... without any difference as it is for the moment : only available in the US, not for the rest of the world...

By that time we should be using OSX 10.4 with features like, "Pick and choose the bands you like and iTunes will write songs that sound like ones from the bands you like."

Originally posted by eric67
in France (where most of the market is own by the world leader, actually the french company Vivendi Universal), but not available in Spain...

I hope Steve Jobs doesnt have to have a scrap with Jean Marie Messier to get iTunes into Europe. Gently does it Steve, he´ll outmanouvre you and end up owning Apple!

Rather than introduce a "european" service why not introduce the store on a country by country basis, this will also generate constant interest and press coverage.

Maybe...

Why don't they just move to the United States? They complain about our president and about not having iTMS. If they move here and get citizenship, they can solve both problems!