Apple's iTunes Store opens in Australia.

[Mythor]

For those who might've missed it, Apple's iTunes Store is now available in Australia, finally.
Most major labels and artists are supposedly available.

Single songs cost $1.69, with albums seeming to be around the $16.99 mark. As the story says, that's below the retail cost of most CDs.
As a comparison (because it's one I've bought myself) Chris Rock's "Bigger and Blacker" CD, which is almost 6 years old (according to iTunes), can be had from iTunes for $16.99, whereas an actual CD copy from an online retailer (e.g. DVDCrave) runs to $21.89. Shipping will cost extra, of course, as does the bandwidth to download the album.
But iTunes gets it to you now. DVDCrave might get it to you by Thursday.

The restrictive nature of the file formats they use is definitely a downside, of course. If you have an "MP3 player" that isn't an iPod, you're probably going to have to jump through hoops to get the song into a format your player will be able to use.

I think a bigger concern is the rather glaring lack of certain artists.
It's not particularly surprising that Metallica songs aren't available - they're money grubbing cunts.
But Britney Spears? Search turns up a single result - "Boys" from the Austin Powers soundtrack.
Weird Al Yankovic? Nothing.

The list of artists that aren't available that the SMH printed is very (deliberately) deceptive, in my opinion. I have a sneaking suspicion that more people will care about Britney and Weird Al not being available than Franz Ferdinand... and there'll definitely be a lot more that care about any of those three than the two 'Idol' losers combined.

Anyway, poll!
Will iTunes opening in Australia cause you to signup and actually buy legitimate digital copies of songs?

[JD3000]

Not while I'm still in the Stone Age on Dial-Up!

Also, with my taste in music, I doubt that there will be much of interest on there.

[Mythor]

The file sizes actually don't seem too bad - 65.8mb for "Bigger and Blacker", for example (1.1 hours) - but yeah, I can see how you'd not want to be getting many songs on dialup.

The selection is fairly eclectic, but it is very frustrating when you think of someone to search for, but they're one of the "missing" artists, so you get nothing.

[Laney]

yes, sure the full album might be cheaper than buying the real thing, but you don't get a cd with that, and you don't get a cd case with that.

i haven't checked, but the songs that i assume would be easier to get are going to be the more popular songs. more popular songs are played on the radio every day. i would want to have songs which are hardly ever played on the radio or which are rare.

having said that, my musik taste is pretty restricted to non-popular musik, so there's probably no chance of me finding stuff i want at the itunes store. IF for some reason i found something at the itunes store that i've never been able to find on limewire or soulseek then i MIGHT possibly think of spending money on buying it.

if there's a band i really like i'll buy their cd, because i like having the artwork and the cd that goes with it

[Mythor]

I have blank CDs. Many blank CDs. And blank DVDs for that matter.
I don't go in much for the bits and bobs that come with CDs. Look at em once and then they just sit in the case.

Name something obscure and I'll run a search?
Older stuff does tend to be a bit hit and miss as well though.
Illegal sources are still likely to have the greatest variety, but this is really more about showing a bit of support for the concept, at least for me. I'm certainly not saying that all of my future purchases will be via iTunes, because that's just not going to happen.
But if they get the variety up to scratch...

[Kylie]

Is there a limit on how many times you can burn the songs or how many computers you can have it on?

[Laney]

if britney spears only comes up with one result, the selection must be pretty poor. But i guess it's got to start somewhere, and with the way Apple is going i'm sure it'll eventually be a success.

mebe owning cds nowadays is like owning vinyls. not really somethign you need, but you want to have for a collection. i haven't bought a cd for aaaaages, with the amount of musik i own though, i should probably do my bit and pay for some musik

[Mythor]

Yes (sort of) and yes.

Originally Posted by SMH article

Users can play songs on up to five personal computers, burn a song to CD an unlimited number of times, burn the same playlist up to seven times and listen to their music on an unlimited number of iPods.

I'm not sure why the restriction on burning the same playlist a maximum of seven times. I'm guessing the theory is to stop people burning off multiple copies for friends... But couldn't they just keep making new playlists?

[Mythor]

Originally Posted by Laney

if britney spears only comes up with one result, the selection must be pretty poor.

Jive Records (Britney's record company) is owned by BMG. BMG owns half of the SonyBMG thing. I think that's why. Unless I got lost in Google-land.
It's probably the same thing for Weird Al and probably assorted other people who are conspicuous by their absence.
I find it incredibly hard to believe that a list of SonyBMG's top artists would even include most of the people listed. Maybe Alex Lloyd.

Hrm.

[VAxwell]

Ha Ha. Myth listens to Britney Spears...

But, seriously... I signed up - put in my credit card number and everything - but I probably won't use it too much. I'll definately download the freebie each week, but I wouldn't really buy a whole album.

You can ususally get the album pretty cheap from JB or a sale somewhere, and, like Laney said, you get a physical cd with album artwork when you buy it from a shop.

That said, I may use the shop for single songs.

The annoying thing is that you can't preview any of the songs. They should put a 30 second grab on there too. I mean, I wanted to buy Robbie Williams (haha, vax listens to robbie williams - beat ya Myth ) album eventually, and I like the song tripping, but other than that, I don't know any of the songs. If I went somewhere like sanity or that mega huge book place with the coffee shop inside, I could preview each of the songs. I don't listen to much commercial radio, so I'm not likely to hear any on there.

And, like Myth, I find it shitly that Australian's can't access the videoclip section yet.

[Mythor]

I'm sure I've seen some preview clips available, but since I've actually actively gone looking for them, I can't find a single one.
"Boundin'" by Pixar has a preview clip... But it's Pixar.

I'll probably try and remember to get the freebie ones. And I've "Subscribed" to the Dr Karl podcast. But that's not an actual iTunes STORE thing as such.

And you can blame the new Doctor Who for the Britney song.

[VAxwell]

I've been subscribed to the creativecow.net podcast for weeks.

** Creative cow.net isn't a website for bovine art freaks - it's a community for digital art professionals.

[brunswickfi]

I'm finding that a lot of my favourite people with their own studios are releasing individual songs on an adhock basis on itunes. Has been very frustrating to know that there are Spoon and Ben Folds' songs out there that I haven't been able to access - so will be purchasing from i-tunes in the near future.

[Renee_Turner]

Other, please explain:

I have no iPod, thus this service is essentially useless. I also have a shitful computer.

[Edward]

Originally Posted by Mythor

And I've "Subscribed" to the Dr Karl podcast.

The Science Show and Science Friday podcasts are well worth checking out too - more science news and less talk-back than Dr. Karl's show.