Attention, overseas Mac-using music fans: are you still stewing over the fact that we Ugly Americans here in the U.S. are the only ones with access to the iTunes Music Store? Does it irk you to no end knowing that we and only we have ridiculously easy access to over 200,000 songs, obtainable with a single deft click of the mouse at the low, low price of just 99 cents a tune? Do you refuse to accept the fact that the iTMS is actually an insidious and addictive blight on American society, draining funds from otherwise fiscally responsible citizens at what can only be described as a crippling rate? Well, don't worry; you'll all know the Joy of the Single-Click Download (and the accompanying Horror of the Cumulative Massive Debt) soon enough. Some sooner than others.

We'd already mentioned that Apple doesn't expect to get its licensing issues hammered out in Europe anytime soon, so the iTMS for that continent is delayed until sometime next year (meaning, Europe, that your economy gets a brief reprieve from this unstoppable monetary vampire). Canada, on the other hand, may not be quite so lucky. According to the Globe and Mail, the Canadian Recording Industry Association (think RIAA, we suppose, but with more hockey fans and a real flair for teen melodrama) will have "completed negotiations to set up a framework for paying music publishers and composers whose music is downloaded on pay-for-play systems" by "mid- to late September." Once that's all smacked into shape, "U.S. systems such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes 'music store'" can work their magic north of the border.

Note, however, that just because the negotiations will be done in September doesn't mean that the framework will be. For all we know, it might be another six months before the iTMS is live in the Great White North; personally, we figure it'll be running long before that (we assume that the legal negotiations take a lot longer than the actual implementation; the article hints at "the fall"), but we just thought we should mention the possibility, so that our faithful viewers in Canada don't spend all of September repeatedly clicking "Music Store" in iTunes in hopes that it'll suddenly spring to life. There are better things to do with your time. Like, say, Aleph One.

So, to recap, Canadians may not have to wait too much longer to send their life savings to Apple 99 cents at a time. Or, uh, with the exchange rate, make that $1.36 CAD at a time. Hmmmm... somehow "$1.36 CAD a song" doesn't have quite the same ring to it. But fear not; the marketing folks will get that all hashed out in plenty of time for the iTMS to nuke the entire North American economy by mid-2004.