Features
Sony Succumbs To iTunes
Sony Music Entertainment Japan has finally bitten the bullet and allowed recordings by its Japanese artists to be sold through the iTunes Japan store.
For years, Sony had withheld its artists from Apple’s digital music distribution service, supposedly because Apple’s iPod competes with Sony’s Walkman, or, at least, it did once upon a time.
Apple has been quite eager to get the Sony catalogue in its sales channels for years but, in the beginning, at least, Sony artists will cost more than most artists do on iTunes Japan.
Individual songs will go for 250 yen ($3) and albums about 2,000 yen ($25), which is pretty steep even by Japanese digital download standards.
Most titles on iTunes Japan and Amazon Japan go for 150 yen ($1.80) per song and 1,500 yen ($18) per album.
Sony will also follow Apple’s distribution format of high-quality encoding and no DRM to restrict copying, allowing buyers to do what they want with the music files.