iTunes Store Launches in India and other 55 countries
The iTunes Store has just been launched in a multiple number of countries and more specifically, India is one of them. Its nice to see that Apple is now starting to consider India as a full fledged market for its product offerings. The iTunes Store unlike the App Store is a media seller. This means that you can now download all your favorite songs and movies from iTunes itself at a price.
Selling Media at a Reasonable Price, but is it enough?
Yes, We Indians are very used to piracy and not many people want to pay for their movies but the Store has set a pretty good bar for its price with new songs priced at Rs. 12 which is ~0.22$ and whole albums for Rs. 96 which comes to ~1.75 The new pricing is pretty nice as it is competitive but iTunes lacks one feature that its competitor the Nokia Music Store offers unlimited downloads for a week for Rs. 55 which is a complete steal. The plus point of iTunes is that anything brought from the Store is automatically available to be synced across multiple devices via Apple's iCloud. This is a major step for Apple in promoting the music bands themselves but I as a user don't think India is the right market to be pitching to.Full Press Release by Apple
MOSCOW—December 4, 2012—Apple® today announced the launch of the iTunes Store® in Russia, Turkey, India, South Africa and 52 additional countries featuring an incredible selection of local and international music from all the major labels and thousands of independent labels. The iTunes Store features local artists including Elka in Russia, Sezen Aksu in Turkey, AR Rahman in India, and Zahara in South Africa, international artists including The Beatles, Taylor Swift and Coldplay, and world-renowned classical musicians including Lang Lang, Yo Yo Ma and Yuja Wang. Customers can choose from over 20 million songs available to purchase and download on the iTunes Store.
Movie fans can choose from a wide selection of films available for rent or purchase from the iTunes Store, with many available in stunning HD, from major studios including 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, The Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures, as well as leading local distributors.*
The iTunes Store is available in 119 countries and is the best way for iPhone®, iPad®, iPod®, Mac® and PC users to legally discover, purchase and download music online. All music on the iTunes Store comes in iTunes Plus®, Apple’s DRM-free format with high-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings.
iTunes® in the Cloud lets you download your previously purchased iTunes music to all your iOS devices at no additional cost, and new music purchases can be downloaded automatically to all your devices. In addition, music not purchased from the iTunes Store can gain the same benefits by using iTunes Match?, a service that stores your entire music library in iCloud® for access at any time, from any iOS device. iTunes Match is available for purchase in the new countries added today.
Customers also have access to the revolutionary App Store? with more than 700,000 apps available in 155 countries.
What do you as a user think about the new iTunes Store? Would you pay a small price to have a song legally or wouldn't mind carrying on with pirated one? Let us know in the comments.
iTunes Store Launches in India and other 55 countries
The iTunes Store has just been launched in a multiple number of countries and more specifically, India is one of them. Its nice to see that Apple is now starting to consider India as a full fledged market for its product offerings. The iTunes Store unlike the App Store is a media seller. This means that you can now download all your favorite songs and movies from iTunes itself at a price.Selling Media at a Reasonable Price, but is it enough?
Yes, We Indians are very used to piracy and not many people want to pay for their movies but the Store has set a pretty good bar for its price with new songs priced at Rs. 12 which is ~0.22$ and whole albums for Rs. 96 which comes to ~1.75 The new pricing is pretty nice as it is competitive but iTunes lacks one feature that its competitor the Nokia Music Store offers unlimited downloads for a week for Rs. 55 which is a complete steal. The plus point of iTunes is that anything brought from the Store is automatically available to be synced across multiple devices via Apple's iCloud. This is a major step for Apple in promoting the music bands themselves but I as a user don't think India is the right market to be pitching to.Full Press Release by Apple
MOSCOW—December 4, 2012—Apple® today announced the launch of the iTunes Store® in Russia, Turkey, India, South Africa and 52 additional countries featuring an incredible selection of local and international music from all the major labels and thousands of independent labels. The iTunes Store features local artists including Elka in Russia, Sezen Aksu in Turkey, AR Rahman in India, and Zahara in South Africa, international artists including The Beatles, Taylor Swift and Coldplay, and world-renowned classical musicians including Lang Lang, Yo Yo Ma and Yuja Wang. Customers can choose from over 20 million songs available to purchase and download on the iTunes Store.
Movie fans can choose from a wide selection of films available for rent or purchase from the iTunes Store, with many available in stunning HD, from major studios including 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, The Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures, as well as leading local distributors.*
The iTunes Store is available in 119 countries and is the best way for iPhone®, iPad®, iPod®, Mac® and PC users to legally discover, purchase and download music online. All music on the iTunes Store comes in iTunes Plus®, Apple’s DRM-free format with high-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings.
iTunes® in the Cloud lets you download your previously purchased iTunes music to all your iOS devices at no additional cost, and new music purchases can be downloaded automatically to all your devices. In addition, music not purchased from the iTunes Store can gain the same benefits by using iTunes Match?, a service that stores your entire music library in iCloud® for access at any time, from any iOS device. iTunes Match is available for purchase in the new countries added today.
Customers also have access to the revolutionary App Store? with more than 700,000 apps available in 155 countries.
What do you as a user think about the new iTunes Store? Would you pay a small price to have a song legally or wouldn't mind carrying on with pirated one? Let us know in the comments.
