Not in Hong Kong

Buy an iPod? No, not me, they're over-priced and not really that much better than any other MP3 player. That was my view, so about a year ago I bought a small Creative MP3 player. Nothing much wrong with it, but it's not exactly user-friendly.

So now I have an iPod Nano. The GUI is user-friendly, and iTunes is easy-to-use. The problems so far are that if I am half way through listening to a podcast when I synchronize it disappears (because it thinks I have listened to it), and it 'freezes up' a bit too often for my liking (though it does make a full recovery after a reset). Apart from that it's very good. I think I am convinced,

However, the iTunes Music Store is STILL not available in Hong Kong, which means that I'm still looking for somewhere legal to download music. The latest possibility is eMusic - the plus point is that there's no copy protection, the negatives are that they don't have deals with the major labels (so their selection is quite limited - even more so for Hong Kong residents), the previews are far too brief and you have to subscribe for a set number of downloads each month. So far, I'm struggling to find enough songs to download to justify the monthly fee.

I think they could help by making the site easier to navigate (such as allowing you to view all tracks by an artist rather than forcing you to select an album first), having a track rating system (enabling them to make better recommendations), and (ideally) offer full previews rather than limiting them to 30 seconds. Actually, I think what I really want is Musicmatch, but that isn't available in Hong Kong.    

On the subject of iTunes, it was reported recently that sales at the iTunes Music Store were down by 65%:

Forrester said it got its figures by analysing 2,791 US iTunes debit and credit card purchases conducted by members of its consumer panel.

While overall US sales at the iTunes Music Store were down 65%, the number of monthly transactions had declined 58%, while the average size per purchase had fallen 17%, Forrester said.

Except that Forrestor now say that their report was misunderstood by Reuters, and reading the summary on their website this does seem to be the case. The report led to a fall in Apple's share price, which is even weirder when you consider that their profits mainly come from selling iPods, not selling music.  Apple say the report is wrong, but have not elaborated any further, and probably have no need to do so because the point of the Music Store is to boost sales of iPods (which they do announce, and which are still going up).

And still no news of the iTunes Music Store coming to Hong Kong.

Comments

[E@L]

As I understand you can only copy an iTunes song three times before it locks up. This is something that even Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing.com has had trouble with. If you are moving on to a second new iMac your old songs may not move with you.

Fucked! Beware the evils of Apple.

E@L

[Hong Kong Phooey]

I buy my music off AllofMP3, used to be a Russian site, pretty nice and tons of new updates. Each song cost US$0.15 or so. Don't have the link here in the office, I'll post it up when I get home.

[Chris]

Well, yes, but that site is basically illegal.

[Hong Kong Phooey]

The website is http://www.allofmp3.com

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Didn't know it was illegal. Hmm....

[Phillip]

All I do to get around the iTunes issue is to buy prepaid USD iTunes cards ($15, $25, $50 value). I have friends visiting HK about once every 2 months. I'm sure some of us in HK have people traveling all the time between these two countries. I then create a prepaid account in iTunes with a USA address - it doesn't have to be a real address - but the ZIP code needs to be accurate. Hope this helps.

[Chris]

Well, I suppose it helps, but I can't really be bothered to go to all that trouble.

That's my point, really - if the music industry wants people to buy music they should make it as easy as possible, otherwise people either won't bother or they'll download from somewhere like AllofMP3.com

[Leon]

Word on the street is that the iTunes store is launching in Hong Kong within four to eight weeks.

Spoke to an agent at Apple in Hong Kong to find out about workarounds for getting the stupid new apps on my first generation iPod Touch and he told me the happy news.

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