Microsoft to open Japanese Music Site

[Woz]

From this article [networks.silicon.com],

"Microsoft is targeting the Japanese market and will officially open its online music store in the country on 20 October with a catalogue of some 50,000 songs."

"With the Japanese launch, Redmond appears for once to have beaten arch-rival Apple to the punch ..."

Onya
Woz

[bill]

Interesting development to say the least. On one hand you have Apple, which in Japan has a pretty large following. They probably have a bigger share of the Japanese market than any other worldwide. I would think that Apple would have an easy and quick transition to the Japanese market for their music.

The other problem noted in the article is a valid one. A lot of stores rent CDs for ridiculously low prices. Why pay ¥1300 to an online music service for an album when I can rent the same album for ¥100 and rip it myself...probably at a higher quality bit-rate?

[Edwin]

And rental stores also rent CD-duplication equipment, or at least some of them do. I've seen this quite a few times...