BMG Japan and Apple today announced the availability of top Japanese and international artists on the iTunes Store in Japan. The addition of the BMG Japan catalog brings top J-POP and international artists to the iTunes Store beginning today, including Alicia Keys, Avril Lavigne, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Foo Fighters, Justin Timberlake, Kasabian, Outkast, Pink, Seamo, Suga Shikao, Sukima Switch, Usher and more.
“BMG Japan is delighted to join forces with Apple to make the wealth of our catalogue available through the iTunes Store in Japan.” said Mr. Daniel DiCicco, EVP and co. general manager of BMG Japan, in the press release. “We look forward to continuing to drive BMG Japan’s digital development through this very important relationship by connecting the iTunes community to top J-Pop and international artists from BMG Japan.”
“Top artists, breakthrough pricing, seamless integration with iPod and groundbreaking personal use rights have made iTunes the number one online music service in Japan,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes, in the press release. “We’re thrilled to bring BMG’s impressive catalog to iTunes so fans in Japan can download and enjoy even more great music.”
The iTunes Store in Japan now features a catalog of more than two million songs, 3,500 music videos, Disney and Pixar short films, 65,000 podcasts and 16,000 audiobooks. Over 90 percent of songs in Apples iTunes Store are priced at 150 yen per song. iTunes is the number one online music service in the world, with over 1.5 billion songs purchased and downloaded. BMG Japan will continue to add more of its extensive catalog to the iTunes Store in the coming months.
iTunes 7 for Mac and Windows includes the iTunes Store and is available as a free download from http://www.apple.com/jp/itunes/
Purchase and download of songs and videos from the iTunes Store requires a valid credit card with a billing address in the country of purchase. Music fans in Japan have the option to use iTunes Cards for cash purchases on the iTunes Store.
BMG Japan is the wholly owned music entertainment company operated by SONY BMG Music Entertainment within the Japanese market and its labels include Arista, J Records, RCA and Zomba.
Capitulation can be a beautiful thing.
Related articles:
Apple launches ‘Summer of Music’ in Japan – August 09, 2006
Apple iPod, iTunes Music Store absolutely rule Japan’s digital-music player market – February 24, 2006
Apple tramples Sony in Japan: iPod grabs 60-percent share of DMP market, Sony drops under 10-percent – December 22, 2005
Japan Today: Apple iPod+iTunes exposes ‘lame-ass efforts’ of Japanese competitors – November 20, 2005
Apple iPod & iTunes Music Store both number one in Japan; iPod market share nears 60-percent – November 16, 2005
Why aren’t Sony, BMG, Warner, Victor making their artists’ music available on Apple’s iTunes Japan? – October 06, 2005
Apple’s iTunes Music Store takes just four days to become Japan’s undisputed online music leader – August 08, 2005
Apple’s Japan iTunes Music Store sells one million songs in first four days – August 07, 2005
Apple’s Japan iTunes Music Store debut more bad news for Sony – August 04, 2005
Apple launches iTunes Music Store in Japan – August 03, 2005
And the hits keep coming!
With all the money they lost on faulty batteries, I guess Sony was looking to recover some costs and finally let Apple sell it’s content.
How much damage has the battery fiasco done to Sony’s bottom line?
when you’re down
in trouble
and you need a hand to hold….
“BMG Japan is delighted to join forces with Apple to make the wealth of our catalogue available through the iTunes Store in Japan.”
Nice spin, Sony…
Does that mean no more “partial albums” from Sony in the iTunes Store??
Oh man! Maybe my lifelong dream will come true soon enough! Zamphir, the pan-flutist on iTunes!!!
Tommy Boy –
Sony have just reported a drop in profits of 94%
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6086598.stm
They made only $14 million in their last quarter, compared to ( by my rough calculations ) $234 million is the same quarter last year.
Apart from the massive drop in profits, they are setting aside something in excess of $400 million to deal with the 9.6 million faulty batteries.
Oh – and Playstation 3 has been further delayed and will miss the US holiday season.
Should we be referring to beleaguered Sony these days ?
Still, at last they should be able to sell some music on-line, so that should help them.
Correction
Things appear to be worse for Sony than I originally mentioned.
Another source says that “The company reported an operating loss of ¥20.8 billion against an operating profit of ¥74.6 billion in the same period last year. The loss includes the estimated ¥51.2 billion that Sony will lose as a result of the battery recall currently under way.”
The figures I previously quoted were net income ( $14 million ), the operating profit and battery costs are the same figures as I quoted, but expressed in Yen.
1.5 billion songs!
In the press release, note that Apple quietly announced they’ve passed 1.5 billion songs, which means the iTS music sales rate has been no worse than flat since they crossed 1 billion songs back in February.
Good, maybe we’ll see more John West and Royal Hunt CD’s on iTunes. He’s more popular in Japan.
I hear Tom Waits is big in Japan.
Resistance is futile. Prepare to be assimilated.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face—I can’t believe it took them this long to put their cataloge on Japanese iTunes. Crazy. Sony lost the format war, they need to start selling music!