Why can't I download the albums I want from iTunes just because I'm in America?

Rights are negotiated on a country by country basis. If a band doesn't have representation in a country, then their items cannot be sold there (easily). iTunes doesn't do imports. We get exactly the same the other way round. There are many American releases I cannot buy, because I'm in the UK. One solution is to copy. If these people aren't going to bother serving my market, I won't bother buying their stuff until they do. I am not ashamed to admit this, and do not consider it unethical if I am given no options. Another solution, usually if they're a smaller artist, is to buy their CD on CDBaby or from their own digital download systems.. but very few artists use these systems. If they do, however, I will use them and make sure they get the $$.

Which band is it that you like? Just curious..

Which band is it that you like? Just curious.. What, you think I'll just open myself up for that kind of ridicule? Seriously, I fugured it was something like that. It just seems silly, especially since I can go to the british Amazon site to buy music and have it shipped here with no problem at all. If the hard goods can be made available for direct import, I just don't see why the soft goods can't be. Ah, well.

You could try http://www.allofmp3.com - not exactly "legal", but way cheap and no restrictions.

I second All of MP3. It's dirt cheap. You're paying rubles to the pound, as it were, and it's entirely legal within the setting of Russian law. As for the legality of foreigners using the service...it's not specifically illegal, but it's not sanctioned either.

Just wanted to point out that UK iTunes is £0.79 per song, or about $1.50. $15 an album too. So even if you could buy from them, it wouldn't be quite as cheap as US iTunes. Is buying direct from the Amazon UK store really that much more expensive than that?

Does iTunes allow customers to resell songs with other customers? Seems like wackybrit and Lokheed could have the start of something big if they were each to buy what the other person wanted and then swap the two albums.

Actually, AllofMP3 is not entirely legal within the setting of Russian law. They do not have the permission of the sound recording owners and are facing various legal investigations. What's more, even the one licence they do have (from ROMS) is currently being called in to question. They have no right to distribute music to foreigners, either. Still - it's a fantastic service, dirt cheap, no digital rights management and very reliable! It has been shown previously that an iTunes track can be resold - it does involve sharing your iTunes password, however, which may not be something someone wants to do. As for the licensing issue, unfortunately music licensing is still carried out territory by territory, as if the internet was not an international medium. The only service I know of that does license on a global basis is EMusic.com. What complicates things is that there are two main rights in an album - the composition right and the recording right - and it's not unheard of for these to be owned by different companies in different territories. Plus, songs can be written by multiple people, who themselves are represented by different publishers. So it only takes for one of these interests to disapprove of digital distribution in a particular territory (or more likely, not have got round to it yet) for the album not to appear in your local iTunes store. Finally, iTunes themselves have a backlog - so it's quite possible the tracks will eventually make it up onto the store.

Is buying direct from the Amazon UK store really that much more expensive than that? For an average CD from amazon.co.uk, once you add on the air mail shipping and do the currency translation, the cost winds up being roughly $25. I could also pick up an import copy of the CD at my local Virgin Megastore for about $30. So yeah, even at $15 it's a good deal. I checked out the Russian website (where it looks like I can get the same album for about $2), and if nothing else I finally got to listen to the album - which was nice. I hesitate to actually buy from them, though, since clearly none of the money would ever make it back to the band. Having listened to several of the tracks, I'll probably wind up paying the ~$25 to buy the CD. I'd rather pay the money and support the band.