Hey everyone, since Japan isn’t shipping stuff to Brazil at all because of the pandemics I’ve been thinking about buying stuff from Apple Music, starting with 首振りDolls’ new album. Since I never bought anything there, I have some questions that might be basic to some people here:
Do I need to have an Apple Music account?
Do I need any software to buy/download it?
When I buy something in there, am I able to download it to my computer and share with other people, or is it only going to be available to me online?
I think Apple Music and iTunes are different things, Apple Music is the streaming service and iTunes is the store. If you have an Apple device like an iPhone, then the iTunes Store and the Music app would already be downloaded. If you want to do it from a Windows PC then you probably need to download the iTunes app, which contains both the store and the library.
While I’m not sure exactly how it is in your region with your favorite bands, some labels/bands only open their music to Japan. In that case, you would need to make a Japanese iTunes account which requires a Japanese address to make, also you would need to buy Japanese iTunes gift cards from online retailers because the system doesn’t accept foreign credit cards. If your music is sold in your region then you can just go ahead with a normal iTunes account and use your credit card. If you download music from your library, it will be stored as a file (forgot the extension sorry) on your computer that you can transfer anywhere. If your phone is an iPhone, then you can sync it to your phone’s library. I don’t know if there’s a cap of how many devices you can sync to a computer, but you can only sync one account from one computer onto a phone so be careful. However you can buy and store the purchases from multiple accounts onto a single iTunes library on your computer and you can purchase items from an account on your phone that’s different to the one on your computer.
I just had my wisdom teeth pulled so I’m kinda out of it, if you need me to explain anything better, just ask.
Buying digital purchases are possible with iTunes (do make sure the release are available in your region).
In most cases I’d recommend to buy digital purchases through ototoy, they usually release digital releases also in lossless which Apple digital purchases dont (they use .m4a / 256kbps quality files).
Yes, you’re able to download to your computer, it will also let you re-download them if you ever lose those files up to 4 devices if I’m not mistaken. You can share them with friends for example but do note: People can see your personal info on the files you share; the apple ID and your real name you use for the account you made are viewable to anyone.
It works almost the same like apple itunes, but you can buy and download your music purchases directly to your computer in your preferred audio format that’s available from the site.
Feel free to check out the website and its content, they do have a lot of J-Rock / VK music available too.
From my experience, you’ll pay the same price you’d pay for the CD though. While the Kubihuri albums are like 15€ each, you’ll pay like 3000 Yen on ototoy.
Makes sense but there are shipping cost and eventual importing taxes, so it would end up being more expensive than buying the digital version. Besides, I think that Japan isn’t shipping stuff to Brazil besides DHL or something equivalent to it, and I particularly don’t have any CD player nowadays lol
Not on Apple, CD only albums in vkei are almost always 3000 yen (around $28) but on iTunes the same album will cost like $10-$15 depending on number of songs. CD singles standardly are 1500 yen (around $13) but are usually under $5 so it’s less than half.
