ITunes European Debut Held Up by Red Tape
Reuters says:
“Old-fashioned red tape is delaying the eagerly awaited European launch of Apple Computers’ Internet music store iTunes, a company official said on Saturday. A maze of licensing contracts, music release dates that differ by country and incompatible billing systems have combined to sidetrack the service, which many recording executives still hope will make its European debut in the first half of 2004.”
What exactly is the point with differing release dates?
Posted on January 24th, 2004 at 3:36 pm and filed under Software.
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Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen January 24th, 2004 at 5:22 pm (Permalink)
> What exactly is the point with differing release dates?
Manufactured scarcity. In this case, it’s the scarcity of label people to schmmoze with the local press, warm up the major record stories, and so on. Surely you haven’t forgotten Bobbi Flekman of Polymer Records? Bobbi can’t be everywhere at once, so there’s staggered release dates.
Nowadays you could have a simultaneous release planet-wide, but executives at the major labels (who, it must be remembered, are in the jam they’re in because of their refusal to do *anything* differently from the way their grandfathers did it) do it the old way out of habit.
Chris January 24th, 2004 at 7:03 pm (Permalink)
Ah, that explains it then. ;)