iTunes Music Store Is Coming To Europe; Eventually

by , 10:00 AM EST, January 29th, 2004

Americans are currently enjoying a plethora of services that allow the legitimate downloading of music. For a price, of course; nothing's free to the honest man, but in this new way to buy music, we are pretty much alone in the world.

There are music download services in some countries, but differences in marketing, compensation, and other aspects of the business of music keeps any one service from being adopted across Europe. It is not because no one is trying; representative from Apple's iTunes Music Store and the new Napster are both trying to untangle the web of disparate laws, dictribution deals, and royalties that is currently prohibiting widespread adoption of services like iTMS and Napster.

eWeek is reporting that both Apple and Roxio, owners of the new Napster, are pushing to get their music services available to Europeans, but are running into problems. From the article, Napster, iTunes Eye Europe, Issues Await:

Now that they've proven US customers will pay for digital music online, Napster and Apple's iTunes are preparing to launch legal download sites in Europe.

If only the market weren't such a minefield.

Europe is scored by a patchwork of different licensing and retail practices. From Sweden to Spain, an album often has different prices and staggered release dates. An Italian singer with a devoted following at home, for example, often doesn't have a distribution deal in Britain.

One big problem: No pan-European agreement exists between record labels and the various agencies that collect royalties for songwriters and music publishers.

For now, companies that sell music online in Europe have to negotiate royalty rates in each individual country -- a nightmare of red tape. Record labels and representatives of writers and publishers across Europe are trying to reach an agreement to make things simpler.

Read the full article at eWeek News.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Imagine if each state in the US required national companies to do business in that state following laws and regulations that are only valid in that state. We not talking about local impact laws and such, we mean laws that govern how agreements and licenses are made, but share no similarities to the laws in a state right across the border. Now you can see what a headache the folks at Apple are facing while trying to bring iTunes Music Store to the European masses.

Europeans must be frustrated, seeing their American counterparts enjoying the ease and simplicity of iTMS, while they are stuck owning an iPod and iTunes without being able to use one of its main features. Hopefully the company will be able to work out these issues sooner, rather than later.

Napster, ITunes Eye Europe, Issues Await