Chinese music in iTunes Store
Even though iTunes doesn’t have a Chinese store, I have always know that the US store does contain some Chinese music in it. When I found out about it a couple years ago, there was only some old “Best of…” albums. Nothing really exciting, not to mention the cataloging was a mess, not to mention the song names are difficult to guess with names like “Yu Zhong Di Lian Ren Men.” Seriously, it took me a while to realize that is “雨中的戀人們”!
Today I was searching something in iTunes and to my absolute surprise I come across Miriam’s latest album “Meridian”! I didn’t think iTunes would have the latest Chinese album from her last year. Then more I search, the more singers I come across, many of them contain new albums from as recent as December of last year! In addition, many of them are in iTunes Plus format – non-DRM 256 AAC tracks!
Another discovery is that some of them are in Chinese characters while some others have actual English translation. It was all great but the inconsistency is even worst than before now with 3 types of cataloging. Not to mention the albums of the same artist can be listed separately under the English name and the Chinese name, and sometimes, two identical English names! It’s a complete mess and I think Apple needs to hire someone *cough* *librarian* *that knows Chinese* *me* *cough* to fix that! :p
In any case, this is a welcoming discovery to know so many recent Chinese songs are actually in iTunes. The only thing puzzling me is that why do they have it? Cos we really don’t see Apple have any intention to open up a Chinese iTunes store targeting Hong Kong or China or Taiwan. So why would they spend money digitalizing these records? Simply just for the Chinese Americans? I highly doubt they are that accommodating and it does not make any economic sense. Anyone has any theories?
Related posts:
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
Subscribe RSS
Leave your response!