Downloading music in Japan

One thing that bugs me about living in Japan is when you surf the internet, some websites, particularly the big ones like Microsoft and Google automatically default to the local language, which in my case is Japanese. This isn’t too much of a hassle as it’s relatively easy to locate the language settings and switch to the English version.

Recently I decided to register at the iTunes store so I could legally download all those songs I hear everyday on the radio as I drive through the billion traffic lights on my way to work.

iTunes lets you switch between the stores in different countries, so I headed for iTunes UK and tried to register there. No luck. It automatically sent me to the Japan store. Now, shopping should be a pleasure, right? While I understand a fair amount of kanji, I don’t want to have to decipher everything when searching for a song, so I gave up.

Two weeks later, my craving for some new tunes got the better of me and I decided to swallow my pride and register with iTunes Japan. I’ve found most of the songs I’ve been looking for, but it drives me crazy that songs such as Paolo Nutini’s Last Request and Beyonce’s Listen are available in the UK store and not in the Japan store.

This is a list of search results for “Last Request” in the iTunes UK store. As you would expect, Paolo Nutini dominates the results.

Here are the results for the same search in the iTunes Japan store. Paolo! Where are you?!

I mean, these songs are played every hour on Japanese radio. Why play them if you can’t buy them? Are there legal restrictions preventing iTunes from offering the same songs at all their stores? And why do they let you browse other countries’ stores but not let you purchase from them? Like i said, crazy!

Perhaps I should just stick to the radio.

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