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iTunes Music Store Goes Live in 12 New European Countries

Wednesday September 28, 2011 3:20 pm PDT by Eric Slivka
Late yesterday, we reported that Apple appeared set to launch iTunes Music Store offerings in ten new countries, all from the European Union, "at any time". Reports are now flowing in from users in those countries that the music offerings have been gradually going live over the past few hours and are now essentially fully functional.

Contrary to the earlier report from Polish media, all twelve European Countries that had been without iTunes Music Store access now appear to be offering music content to customers. The list of countries includes Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

Apple is also making other expansions to its iTunes Store content offerings today, with reports coming in from a number of European countries where users are seeing their first movie downloads available for rental and purchase and the first paid content coming to the iBookstore.

Update: Pigs, Gourds, and Wikis reports that the iBookstore expansion includes 25 new countries, and authors and publishers are now able to select the new countries where they wish to distribute their works in iTunes Connect.
Christian Peters just alerted me to the fact that he can choose Spain as a market for his books on the iBookstore. Before today, you could only choose US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, and Canada.

Now, you can add twenty-five new markets for your iBooks: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Replublic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portgal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland.


[ 45 comments ]

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DTphonehome
106 months ago
Nice. Glad they aren't going to waste 20 minutes with this on Tuesday.
Rating: 7 Votes
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Ballis
106 months ago
tv shows for eu now, and it be perfect! still a great update for us europeans though!
Rating: 4 Votes
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phasornc
106 months ago
What to do you mean Latin America doesn't have iTunes. We've had it here in Miami for years!;)

...when is Apple going to place its eye on Latin America? Do they know that Netflix already rolled over here, right? right?

Sarcasm aside, I don't blame Apple, I blame movie studios and music labels. Their archaeological way of doing business is quite irritating. Here in Latin America we have a very sincere lust for paid content at a fair price and good service and again and again they block Amazon, Apple and others to expand content not only to Latin America but the rest of the world as well. Yes, I know there is something called Copyright laws, but when it comes to money and their survival, does that archaic rules apply? Wake up guys, you're not in the 20th century anymore.

Rating: 3 Votes
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Žalgiris
106 months ago
Finally i can buy some overpriced music.
Rating: 3 Votes
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InsightsIE
106 months ago

tv shows for eu now, and it be perfect! still a great update for us europeans though!


I know, we totally need TV Shows. And the same catalogue as USA as in UK you can barely get HD! (Living in ireland, i'm sure we nearly have the same tv license deals!)
Rating: 3 Votes
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prspectiv2
106 months ago
There are 12 new European countries?!! Fantastic! The mommy and daddy countries must be so proud.
Rating: 2 Votes
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lantinian
106 months ago
Yes

I am from Bulgaria guys, got my first iPhone there in Sep 2007.

This is huge news for me. I can finally tag a song with SoundHound and buy it if I want it bad. :D
Rating: 2 Votes
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cudo
106 months ago

Friendly English grammar note - "Sweden" and "Polish" (noun and adjective) should be capitalized since they refer to countries.


lol, I guess he/she followed Polish grammar where adjective, even if it refers to a country keeps lower case. Only country name gets capitalized.

As to the store itself i got some questions:

Where is Polish music? (I don't mean Brodka)
Where are books? (Project Gutenberg?)
Where are movies? (We don't need subtitles!)

Is it April fools' day yet?

Apple, never gonna change.
Rating: 2 Votes
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lukaszsw
106 months ago

Friendly English grammar note - "Sweden" and "Polish" (noun and adjective) should be capitalized since they refer to countries.

It was easy to recognize that "here in sweden" should have been "here in Sweden".

However, on first reading "a polish store" would be a store that makes things shiny (it "polishes" them).

Just a helpful comment - my French is mediocre, my Spanish bad, my German and Italian barely understandable - but my Thai is fine in restaurants (although tonal languages are very hard for me - I get confused because to me "I'd like sauteed eggplant" and "your grandmother is a slut" sound very similar in Thai). I assume that the waitstaff is being polite and assumes that I'm talking about eggplant, regardless of what I actually said.


I actually know that but it I choose to use my native language grammar rules ( because it was 2 a.m) and I typed it twice hoping that iPad would correct me ( again 2 a.m.), then gave up.

Back to the topic: iTunes Store. Poland. Finally.
Oh, the prices are in € obviously and because of that we pay 1.4 times the price. Not that attractive.
Rating: 2 Votes
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SockRolid
106 months ago
Just in time for iCloud

iCloud paves the way to Apple's future. The same way iTunes paved the way to where Apple is now. The more people Apple can get onto iTunes and iCloud, the better for Apple.
Rating: 2 Votes

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