SA iTunes Music Store? Around the same time as cheap broadband?

Cherryflava echoes my own musings about a South African iTunes music store.  Lately it seems you can’t go anywhere without seeing the familiar white earbuds in someone’s ears and yet we can’t buy music from the iTunes music store.  I wrote to Apple a while ago and asked when we would be getting a local iTunes music store and was basically told it aint happening for a while and there were plans to open one.

This really doesn’t make sense to me.  I spoke to a friend who is in the music business and who works with our equivalent of the RIAA and he said there is no real reason why there shouldn’t be an iTunes store here.  So where is it?

I have already started buying music from emusic and I see that Pick ‘n Pay has launched its own online music store called Pick ‘n Play.  Unfortunately music downloaded from that service will only play in Windows Media Player so as this site catches on, together with Musica’s own Windows Media-based store, we may well see more people move away from Apple’s iTunes platform because there really is only one choice of music download in South Africa for the foreseeable future.  In the meantime, Apple is losing the advantage to a bunch of local and international initiatives when it could open the store or even grant us access to the existing stores and become a key part of our music lifestyle.

Tags: itunes, music store, apple, south africa, pick ‘n play, musica, windows media, missed opportunities