Apple’s iTunes Music Store Japan will be gaining more content from Wednesday with the addition of songs from Victor Entertainment Inc.
The recording label, which is affiliated with Victor Co. of Japan Ltd. (JVC), will add 18 albums totalling 209 tracks to Apple’s online music distribution service, it said. The tracks cover mainly Japanese domestic artists.
The iTunes Music Store, which allows people to buy digital copies of songs for playback through the iTunes desktop client or iPod music player, was launched in Japan in August this year with the support of a handful of local and international record labels including Toshiba-EMI Ltd., Columbia Music Entertainment Inc. and Avex Group Holdings Inc.
The service was been well received by users, who downloaded 1 million tracks in its first four days of operation, but its success has been limited by the absence of several major Japanese record labels. The result is that tracks from only 3 of the year’s top 10 best-selling pop artists are available through iTunes Music Store Japan and in 2 of those cases the available tracks are only a small fraction of what was released during the year.