Apple Launches iTunes Store, iCloud, iTunes Match in Latin America

Apple launched its iTunes Store and iCloud service in Brazil and 15 other Latin American countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela. Apple brings its entire 20 million-plus song catalogue to these countries, including international artists like Coldplay and Rihanna, but the new iTunes Stores will also feature local artists from the countries, such as Brazil's Ivete Sangalo, Roberto Carlos and Marisa Monte.

In order to make all iTunes Store purchases available on every iOS device, Apple also launched its iCloud service in these Latin American countries, which automatically downloads previously purchased music to all your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices. In addition, Apple also introduced its iTunes Match service, which similarly costs $24.99 for one full year of service. iTunes Match automatically stores one's entire iTunes library in the cloud, and songs, albums and playlists can be downloaded onto the device whenever they want for anytime listening. Every song uploaded to iTunes Match also gets automatically upgraded to iTunes Plus, Apple's DRM-free format with high-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for crisp audio listening.

iTunes in the Cloud is available in all 16 Latin American countries, while iTunes Match is only available in Brazil.

Apple's iTunes Store in Brazil has the same available features as the U.S. iTunes Store, including more than 500,000 apps and over a thousand movies to rent or purchase from major film studios, including 20^th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures, and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

On Monday, Apple released version 10.5.2 of iTunes, which adds several improvements for iTunes Match and fixes an audio distortion problem when playing or importing certain CDs, according to a statement from the company.

The download requires that Mac OS X users have version 10.5 or later. Windows users must have a Windows XP service pack 2 or later, Vista 32-bit or Windows 7 32-bit, and 64-bit editions of Windows also running iTunes 10.5 or later.