Comments on: Amazon MP3 more of the same iTunes crap

By: Justin Hartman

Justin Hartman — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 01:13:36 +0000

Neil thanks for clarifying that for us all. I guess that with only 3.5million Internet users in SA it's not likely we'll see iTunes soon but I'd imagine that Amazon would come to the party sooner rather than later.

By: Neil Hinrichsen

Neil Hinrichsen — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 01:04:41 +0000

The music industry has byzantine licensing deals that are different for every country. Obtaining the rights to sell just one album in a certain country can involve several parties, including the issuing label, the music label, and the artist's representation. This is why iTunes only operates in twenty countries. For each country, they have determine whether the mountain of legal work with hundreds of parties over months, will be justified by the revenue they'll receive from selling songs at 99 cents each. For lots of countries the figures just don't work sadly. Not iTunes or Amazon's fault - it's the messed up music industry.

If you want to see this action, just try and legally license a few songs for use at an event. In SA this will involve negotiating with one body for the label rights, directly with the music publishers of each song, which don't have any single body representing them, and acquiring a mechanical recording license to legally burn all these songs to one CD for the event. These negotiations will typically take several months. Result: no one bothers, because it's just too complex (and because your chance of getting sued is also zero due to the immense complexities involved). People play music at all sorts of public events, and don't pay a dime, because the music industry has made it all but impossible to legally license the music. Therefore they make zero money from this. Talk about dinosaurs facing extinction.

PS. If you delve deeper you will find that a surprising amount (they refuse to disclose the percentage) of eMusic's catalogue is also not available to be downloaded by anyone paying with a South African credit card. These titles don't appear in their listings for SA users.

By: Justin Hartman

Justin Hartman — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:13:36 +0000

Neil thanks for clarifying that for us all. I guess that with only 3.5million Internet users in SA it’s not likely we’ll see iTunes soon but I’d imagine that Amazon would come to the party sooner rather than later.

By: Neil Hinrichsen

Neil Hinrichsen — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:04:41 +0000

If you want to see this action, just try and legally license a few songs for use at an event. In SA this will involve negotiating with one body for the label rights, directly with the music publishers of each song, which don’t have any single body representing them, and acquiring a mechanical recording license to legally burn all these songs to one CD for the event. These negotiations will typically take several months. Result: no one bothers, because it’s just too complex (and because your chance of getting sued is also zero due to the immense complexities involved). People play music at all sorts of public events, and don’t pay a dime, because the music industry has made it all but impossible to legally license the music. Therefore they make zero money from this. Talk about dinosaurs facing extinction.

PS. If you delve deeper you will find that a surprising amount (they refuse to disclose the percentage) of eMusic’s catalogue is also not available to be downloaded by anyone paying with a South African credit card. These titles don’t appear in their listings for SA users.

By: The Don

The Don — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:33:30 +0000

Are we completely locked out or are there just restrictions on certain albums? We use emusic and it mostly works but occasionally it throws up an error that the album is not available in SA. Our thought are that when there is an SA distributor the album can't be sold from the US. As emusic is mostly indie it doesn't apply, most of the time. So I guess just being locked out of certain mainstream albums would in effect be the same as being locked out of the whole of amazon mp3. Sorry, did I just answer my own question?

By: Colin Daniels

Colin Daniels — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:09:20 +0000

You need to blame the record companies, not Amazon

By: JBagley

JBagley — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:51:18 +0000

Bleh. Seems that I had jumped on the bandwagon early, and they hadn't put that geographical check in place.

I'm locked out now. Freaks.

(I'll update my post soon)

By: The Don

The Don — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:33:30 +0000

Are we completely locked out or are there just restrictions on certain albums? We use emusic and it mostly works but occasionally it throws up an error that the album is not available in SA. Our thought are that when there is an SA distributor the album can’t be sold from the US. As emusic is mostly indie it doesn’t apply, most of the time. So I guess just being locked out of certain mainstream albums would in effect be the same as being locked out of the whole of amazon mp3. Sorry, did I just answer my own question?

By: Colin Daniels

Colin Daniels — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:09:20 +0000

You need to blame the record companies, not Amazon

By: Blog Feeds about Music » Archive » Amazon MP3 more of the same iTunes crap

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:08:24 +0000

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By: JBagley

JBagley — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:51:18 +0000

Bleh. Seems that I had jumped on the bandwagon early, and they hadn’t put that geographical check in place.

I’m locked out now. Freaks.

(I’ll update my post soon)