Tuesday, October 25, 2005

....and it's about BLOODY TIME


Finally, it's here. Australia's iTunes Music Store, without doubt the most anticipated music event of the decade, launched officially at 6 am today and the first download began within a second of the electronic doors opening. Finally the Government come to its senses and made amendments to the copyright laws to allow people to copy music they own to their ipods, and CD's etc, paving the way for this store to open. As Apple revealed it was our draconian copyright laws that were holding up the store for the past 12 months. It has taken Parliament that long to amend our laws to get this store up and running. When other countries amended their laws within weeks (most didn’t need to, as they already had a fair use law) , Australia takes 12 months.. good to see the old Australian Government working hard and fast for the Australian people, as it does always for all the things it does for its citizens!

Since the opening of the itunes store, the big servers maintained in the main Australian cities by US internet caching company, Akamai have been busy feeding what looks like a music feeding frenzy.

Some fans began trying to log into the store from about midnight sitting beside their computers hitting the refresh button every minute or so and drinking black coffee to keep themselves awake. It made queuing for the first Grand Final tickets look dated.

The music store is launching with 1 million songs, tailored for the Australian market, including what Apple's chief of iTunes, Eddy Cue, calls the biggest and best selection of local independent music yet assembled for an iTMS opening.

HOORAY!

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