iTunes Store US vs. UK — song quantity, selection, and iTunes Match

I don't have any numbers or comparisons, but what's in the stores and Match (have they even started Match in the UK yet?) will depend upon licensing by the distributors. A distributor could say one thing in one country and something else in another. It isn't culturally based. 🙂

Rudolfensis wrote:

Does the UK iTunes Store have the same songs as the US Store? I mean this in terms of both (1) quantity (e.g. 18 million?); and (2) selection/choice (e.g. both have US releases and UK ones

No.

Since it's all Anglo-American music nowadays anyway, shouldn't there be the same exact songs available in the US as the UK?

Should it? One would think so.

However, licensing & copyright issues are the main reason countries have different selections.

The iTunes Store does not make it easy to determine the number of songs for sale. However, at Amazon MP3 you can get the counts, and here they are as of today:

Amazon MP3 USA 18,152,637

Amazon MP3 UK 19,488,214

I would guess that the two countries' iTunes Stores have similar numbers.

There are iTunes Stores for over 100 countries, butless than a quarter of those sell songs. For reasons Chris and Limnos mentioned, the selection of songs is different in each.

In the future, I wonder if I could get the best of both worlds: get iTunes UK to match up everything they have, and then take that same stuff and shove it into the US one...?

Rudolfensis,

Interesting idea. It would, however, take more than a "shove," since you can only use any country's iTunes Store if you are physically in that country and have billing credentials in that country.

You have to be in the US to access the US store?

For browsing, no, but for purchases, yes. Here is the official word from the iTunes Store USA Terms and Conditions:

"The iTunes Service is available to you only in the United States, its territories, and possessions. You agree not to use or attempt to use the iTunes Service from outside these locations. Apple may use technologies to verify your compliance."

Of course, these restrictions only apply at the time you make a purchase. Once you have the song, you can use it anwhere.

while true, they haven't verified me ever. I'm overseas, with a usa based credit card/billing address and no problem.