Website of the Week: iTunes
by Fred Roed on 24/03/06 at 10:42 pm
6 comments
Debatable whether this is even a website. Call it an event. A happening. Call it a cultural revolution, call it ‘yo-o mama’, hey I don’t care. All I know is that ‘I’m back, baby!‘ I’ve been spending the last week at (my website of the week) Apple’s breakaway success iTunes.
I’ve always been a music nut, but those that know me well will know that a while back, when I (ahem) ‘ran into a spot of financial difficulty’, I sold a monumental collection of music at stupidly low prices. So I went from hero to music zero in a matter of 2 months For longer than I’d care to remember I’ve been lamenting the loss of my hard-fought CD stock. I don’t even own a CD-rack anymore. So, you can imagine my joy when Mike set me up on his UK iTunes account last week (sorry, sports fans – iTunes is not available in SA yet! You got to get hooked up on foreign soil to enter into this cornucopia of musical treasures…)
Since last week I’ve already racked 100+ songs in my ‘To Buy’ folder, you can safely say that I am as happy as Ken in a Barbie factory. My first purchase was Jamiroquai ‘Feels Just like It Should’, with its thumping bass intro, and 12 songs later, I have not looked back. At R8,50 a song, it will take me about 20 years to get my collection back up to where it was… but I’m looking forward to the journey.
So, I hear you ask, ‘how do I get signed up?’ My advice is this: phone your cousin in the UK, Canada or Oz. Ask a pen pal to get you in. Marry a Russian mail-order bride. Do something, but don’t waste time waiting for iTunes to hit our dusty African shores. It’s too good to miss out on.
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. Fred is the CEO of web marketing company World Wide Creative and the co-founder of online learning portal Heavy Chef. Fred loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. Follow Fred on Twitter here. View more articles by Fred Roed.
Andrew
Mar 25th, 2006
But is it legal? The fact that South Africans can’t sign up for iTunes shows that the license arrangements have not been worked out to allow us to buy music from an international site. I’m not sure how clever it is for you to be shouting from the rooftops that you’re doing something (potentially) illegal.
Fred
Mar 27th, 2006
This is what my lawyer says in response to your comment:
“To be an international, even a local criminal one must have intent to commit a crime. Your actions are devoid of intent and I am curious as to what your programmer is talking about.” (Hot shot laywer)
Anyway what does he know? He is, by the way, going to dig a little further into the matter…
Watch this space.
steve
Mar 30th, 2006
I heard that the russion gov has made it legal to transfer mp3s as long as a “broadcast fee” is paid into the central fund which pays it back to the artists, the licence is for personal use only and the sites distributing them charge by size of download, works out to about R8,50 per cd for 160 vbr.
check out http://www.allofmp3.com and http://www.mp3search.ru
Record companies would have you belive it is not legal, but as long as they distribute their music to russia, the loophole is open. use it wisely
Andrew
Mar 30th, 2006
I would be slightly nervous giving my credit card details to a company called “All of MP3″!
Fred
Mar 30th, 2006
It’s fine – I’ve signed up and it works. Awesome.
Just in case though, I used Andrew’s credit card, but that’s okay since I only spent money on a couple of hundred old Beatles songs. Money well spent.
Back in the USSR baby.
Steve G
Apr 22nd, 2010
this article was very well written, great .. Keep up the good work! by the way, check out http://www.iTunesGiftsCards.com People from all over the world are looking for iTunes gift cards to buy in the iTunes USA Store, but they cannot buy them since they are not from USA and Apple dont allow it, this store offer iTunes gift cards worldwide,they deliver by email within 24 hours,and are Fast & Reliable service.