“Apple Japan, Inc. is set to launch an Internet music business, the company has said. Yoshiaki Sakito, president of Apple Japan, made the announcement on Tuesday in Tokyo. Digital music players have recently become very popular. The forthcoming entry of Apple Japan, a subsidiary of Apple Computer, Inc. that markets the popular iPod, will likely speed up growth of the digital music market here, industry sources said,’ The Mainichi Shimbun reports.
Full article here.
“Apple Computer Inc., a key player in the online music field, plans to start a Japanese version of its iTunes store in the near future, sources said,” The Asahi Shimbun reports.
Full article here.
so long as they don’t start offering Japanese pop music on the American site, that’s great.
Japanese Top 40…the most unlistenable crap in the universe. Lawrence Welk meets Cyndi Lauper…
While I respect your right to the opinion beatsme one of the things I look forward to is access to music from around the globe. Personally I love Brazilian music, but it’s hard to get the good stuff here in the U.S., so I’m looking forward to the iTunes Brazilian version to feed my habit.
And would “the near future” be anything like April 28th which is the second anniversary of iTMS?
Slightly off-topic, it seems that Apple has stopped reporting iTMS achieving 50 million increments. The last one should have been achieved this time last week, so either the rate has slowed down (possible, but hardly probable) or Apple has decided that it is no longer demoralising enough for the WMA industry and has decided to start reporting 100 million increments instead (which could be deemed by many as being mean and vicious behaviour – which means it’s probably true).
Japanese Hip-Hop is worst than JPop.
I do like some Japanese R&B though.
And in case you were wondering, the next 100 million (taking us to 400 million cumulative) should be achieved around 9th May.
MCCFR — Good point about the 100 million song increments. Let’s hope it’s true.
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YEAH MAN MACINTOSH IS THE BOMB YEAH DOG
I bet Apple will announce the cumulative downloads during the quarterly report.
Japanese groups and singers I’m looking forward to having access to…
Polysics
BoA
Utada Hikaru
Koda Kumi
Nana Katase
The Pillows
Psycho le Cemu
and a handful of other indie JRock groups and Anime soundtracks…
I just hope I’ll be able to buy them.
Yeah, popular Japanese music tends to be utter crap, but some of the more underground stuff is pure gold. I fell in love with a band called “advantage Lucy”, but they never took off in Japan and I’ve never met anyone in the US who’s heard of them, other than the guy who loaned me the scratch-up pirated CD.
“Japanese Hip-Hop is worst than JPop.
I do like some Japanese R&B though.”
Isn’t that like French Jazz? A Non sequitur.
Now the question remains what the pricing will be.