YES. The “rumors”:/2012/06/itunes-music-store-asia-soon/ are right and it is “HERE”:http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/06/26Apple-Launches-iTunes-Store-in-Hong-Kong-Singapore-Taiwan-Nine-Additional-Countries-in-Asia-Today.html!

bq. Apple® today announced the launch of the iTunes Store® in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and nine additional countries in Asia featuring an incredible selection of local and international music from all the major labels and thousands of independent labels. The iTunes Store features local artists including Jay Chou, Girls Generation and Andy Lau, international artists including ADELE, The Beatles and Jason Mraz, and world-renowned classical musicians including Lang Lang, Yo Yo Ma and Yuja Wang. Customers can choose from over 20 million songs available to purchase and download on the iTunes Store.

After so many years, Apple has finally launch the iTunes Store for Singapore. Available today is the Music and the Video store. The Books section still only consists of freely available books. Besides Singapore, iTunes Store is now available in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

h3. So what do we get?

At the Movies store, you can rent and purchase HD quality movies from 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, The Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures.

While at the Music store, we get the best of both western and eastern music – with popular artists like Maroon 5, Katy Perry to the top Asian artists like Jay Chou, Wonder Girls. We also get regional artists from Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Vietnam who are also getting the iTunes Store.

All the music downloaded from iTunes Store comes in iTunes Plus®, Apple’s DRM-free format with high-quality 256 kbps AAC. If you have iCloud and have multiple devices, you can also make use of iTunes® in the Cloud to download music you have purchased before.

Also with iTunes Match, you can match your existing music tracks to those in iTunes and download the higher quality 256 kbps AAC files for a yearly fee of S$31.98. This means that songs you have ripped and coughdownloadedcough, with correct tagging, when matched with those in iTunes, you will automatically will own all those tracks that are matched. Those that aren’t available, you can upload them to the iCloud to access them on other devices.

h3. Pricing

Songs are priced at S$1.28 per track while albums prices ranges from S$5.98 onwards.

Movie rentals start from S$3.98 and you’d have to pay more for newer movies or for the HD version. If you like to own them, the prices starts from S$14.98 to get the SD version and more if it is a new release or if you want the HD version.

Do note, for movie rentals, you have 30 days from the time of rent to watch your movie and 48 hours after you’ve started to finish it. Once that’s done, it will be removed from iTunes.

h3. FAQ that you might want to read:

• “About Movie purchases and rentals”:http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/movies/
• “About Music purchases”:http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/music/
• “About iTunes in the Cloud/iTunes Match”:http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/in-the-cloud/

So tell us what’s your first purchases?