It's about 2 weeks since Australia got its own version of the iTunes Music Store. It had a few glitches in the opening week with pricing of some albums still being adjusted, and some other oddities like tracks being labelled as 'Album Only' purchases, yet where the 'Buy Album' button should be, it says you can only buy it "By Song Only".Despite launching without music from Sony BMG's catalogue, it was been very warmly received by the press and although no sales figures have been released, it seems like the Aussies are on a shopping spree after having made to wait for this long, and after several false alarms with rumoured launch dates. Apple Australia has struck an agreement with Coles-Myer Limited for them to be the exclusive distributor of the pre-paid iTunes Music Cards, which means you can get them from Myer, Officeworks, Coles, Coles Express, Bi-Lo, Harris Technology, Target and K-Mart. I've already purchased some music and it is just too easy to buy songs there. My first track was Madonna's new single, Hung Up which is a very catchy track that has a sample of Abba's Gimme, Gimme, Gimme. I also bought The Sims 2: Nightlife Soundtrack which is unlikely to be found in stores here. These are tunes from the latest Sims expansion pack with new music and some familiar tunes from the game are given a dance twist by big-name DJs. I've also downloaded some of their free-music-of-the-week tracks. I've also created my first iMix, which is basically a playlist you publish onto iTMS. I compiled a list of songs used in the iPod Ads. It is not complete as iTMS Australia doesn't carry all the tracks that I found in my research. With such a high market penetration of the iPod here in Australia, it's surprising how long it took for Apple to bring the iTunes Music Store to these shores, but now that it's here, I'm sure it would be hugely popular like everywhere else they have opened up.

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