South Africans can finally download music from Apple’s iTunes Store, the US firm said in a statement on Tuesday. The news comes just a day after the company announced that the iPhone 5 would be launched in South Africa on 14 December.
“Apple today announced the launch of the iTunes Store in Russia, Turkey, India, South Africa and 52 additional countries featuring an incredible selection of local and international music from all the major labels and thousands of independent labels,” the Apple statement reads.
“The iTunes Store features local artists including Elka in Russia, Sezen Aksu in Turkey, AR Rahman in India, and Zahara in South Africa, international artists including The Beatles, Taylor Swift and Coldplay, and world-renowned classical musicians including Lang Lang, Yo Yo Ma and Yuja Wang. Customers can choose from over 20m songs available to purchase and download on the iTunes Store,” it continues.
Although the iTunes Store offers movies and television shows in many markets, it appears the South African store is offering only music for now. In its announcement, however, Apple says “movie fans can choose from a wide selection of films available for rent or purchase from the iTunes Store”. Market talk is that the full iTunes Store will be available in South Africa soon.
Songs costs R6,99/track. Album prices vary.
All music on the iTunes Store comes in iTunes Plus, Apple’s digital rights management-free format with high-quality 256kbit/s AAC encoding.
The company is also offering iTunes in the Cloud, which lets users download their previously purchased iTunes music to their iOS devices at no additional cost, and new music purchases can be downloaded automatically to all of a user’s devices. “In addition, music not purchased from the iTunes Store can gain the same benefits by using iTunes Match, a service that stores your entire music library in iCloud for access at any time, from any iOS device. iTunes Match is available for purchase in the new countries added today.”
Taryn Hyam, spokesman for South African Apple distributor Core Group, says the company is “ecstastic” about the development. “We know that Apple leads the digital music revolution with iPods and the iTunes music store and it’s great that South African consumers now have access to the store.” — (c) 2012 NewsCentral Media