Beats Music CEO Ian Rogers to Also Head Up iTunes Radio

[Parasprite]

When you try to change the store (ie, the country) associated with your AppleID, you are told that:

"You need a valid method of payment and a billing address for a country or region in which iTunes is available."

It's been a while, so I don't remember exactly how it's done. That being said...

I'm fairly certain that you have to create a new Apple ID in order to do this (you cannot have more than 1 country on the same Apple ID). You create a new one by changing the country of the iTunes store page (the small flag icon at the bottom-right of most pages–don't create an account yet). Unless they've changed it, I believe you can make a new account without payment info by attempting to download a free app (which triggers the "login or register now" but doesn't ask for payment info) but you cannot download anything other than free content until you put a form of payment in (of course). Either way, you should be able to use an iTunes gift card purchased from the country of origin to get around needing a credit card from that country.

Again, my memory is a bit hazy so the details may be a bit different or things may have changed since then, but this is more/less how it's done.

 

[manu chao]

I'm fairly certain that you have to create a new Apple ID in order to do this (you cannot have more than 1 country on the same Apple ID). You create a new one by changing the country of the iTunes store page. Unless they've changed it, I believe you can make a new account without payment info […] but you cannot download anything other than free content until you put a form of payment in. Either way, you should be able to use an iTunes gift card purchased from the country of origin to get around needing a credit card from that country.

Yes, that is how it works, which I had already referred to in my original post on this topic:

You need an Australian credit card (or gift card) to create an 'Australian AppleID'.

On the UK Apple website it says about gift cards:

This iTunes Card is redeemable only on the UK iTunes Store. To open an account, you must be […] in the United Kingdom. […] Not for resale. iTunes Cards are issued and supplied by iTunes S.à r.l. In distributing the cards, retailer is acting as agent for and on behalf of iTunes S.à r.l.​

From that I always thought that

1. Apple itself wouldn't sell its gift cards to a buyer in another country (but I tried to do so using an AppleID from another country and I got as far to the pay now button) and that
2. Apple would not allow resellers (which would bound being agents and couldn't just buy them through the consumer channel and then resell them, the latter explicitly forbidden) to sell outside their home country (but I tried some online retailers and they seemed fine shipping to another country).

Of course, Apple cannot really stop anyone from reselling the gift cards when bought as consumers at the full price (compared of the 'official' resellers that naturally get the cards for less than the nominal price from Apple) and via companies that don't have any official relationship with Apple (as the big online retailers have). And thus places like E-bay can always offer such a trans-border service. Though how many places in Australia would ship to Europe is yet another question (some E-Bay sellers certainly will).