Apple announces online music store ITunes coming to Canada in November
TORONTO (CP) – Canadian music lovers who’ve been itching to get into the ITunes online music store will have the chance next month.
Apple confirmed Tuesday that it will make ITunes available in this country in November. But Simon Atkins, a spokesman for the company in Canada, said Apple isn’t ready to announce an exact date yet, or the price for songs here. The word of a Canadian November debut came as the company launched a European Union version of its store for downloaders in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.
Speculation about a Canadian launch has heated up in recent weeks, with a spate of media stories. A billboard promoting the music store has even popped up at the Ryerson University campus in Toronto.
“I have been waiting for iTMS to come to Canada, I’m jealous of my friend who has a US billing address so he can get music off of the US iTMS,” says one posting in a macrumors.com forum.
The ITunes Music Store allows PC and Mac users to legally purchase and download music online. It’ll provide competition for Puretracks, which established in Canada more than a year ago, as well as www.napster.ca and www.archambault.ca.
Besides the United States, ITunes is already available in the U.K., France and Germany. The EU store gives users the ability to play songs on up to five personal computers, burn a single song onto CDs an unlimited number of times, burn the same playlist up to seven times and listen to their music on an unlimited number of IPods.
“ITunes is the world’s number one online music store, with more than 150 million downloads and over 70 per cent market share in the U.S. and U.K.,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice-president of Applications, said in a statement Tuesday.
“We’re excited to bring the ITunes Music Store to even more music fans across Europe, and with this expansion we now reach customers in almost 70 per cent of the global music market.”
The EU ITunes Music Store features over 700,000 songs from four major music companies and more than 100 independent record labels. It has exclusive tracks from a variety of artists, including Marc Anthony, Andrea Bocelli, Black Eyed Peas, Destiny’s Child, Duran Duran, George Michael and Gwen Stefani.
The company hasn’t announced how many songs will be available to Canadian consumers.
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