Apple has introduced its iTunes store in 56 new countries, including Russia, Turkey, India and South Africa, the company announced on Tuesday. The move nearly doubles the number of countries in which the store operates, and is also the latest step in a rush among various digital music services to capture new markets overseas.
With those additions, the iTunes store now operates in 119 countries around the world, and since it was introduced in 2003 has sold more than 20 billion songs. The announcement of its expansion comes a few days after Apple released - a month or so late - the latest streamlined update of the underlying iTunes program, to mixed, but mostly positive, reviews (not counting a few outright screeds suggesting that the program has outlasted its usefulness).
As the popularity of streaming and cloud access for music grows, digital services are sprouting up quickly all over the world, leading to an increasingly crowded marketplace. Subscription services like Spotify, Rdio and Deezer are racing to plant their digital flags around the planet; Google's Play store is heading to Europe; and Microsoft recently introduced Xbox Music, which combines the features of many such services.
The iTunes experience still largely revolves around downloading files, although its newest version more closely integrates its iCloud feature, which gives users ac cess to their collections from any device. Next year, Apple is expected to introduce a Pandora-style Internet radio service, moving it squarely into the growing, streaming market, although the company has not commented on those reports.
SoundCloud Grows: SoundCloud, which has been described as the “YouTube for music†- it lets users upload tracks that can be easily embedded into blogs, Tumblr and other social sites - is also evolving. In announcing a platform upgrade on Tuesday, the company said that 180 million people now interact with it online each month; the company did not update its reported number of registered users, which as of May was more than 20 million, a spokeswoman said.
SoundCloud has caught on with musicians and record companies, particularly in the electronic and dance worlds, as a promotional tool, but it also has accounts from publications like The New Yorker and The Economist, and even a stream from the White House. According to SoundCloud's announcement on Tuesday, some 10 hours of audio are uploaded to the site every minute. (By comparison, YouTube adds some 72 hours of new video each minute.)
Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.
