Lost My Music - Anime music on iTunes UK

Written by A. H. on 08 Feb 2011

As part of the seemingly unstoppable shift away from physical media, particularly within the music industry, iTunes has fast become one of (if not the) de facto place to buy music digitally online, with over 10 billion songs downloaded worldwide.  Given that its become "the place to go" for legally available music, iTunes UK must be packed with great anime music, right?

Wrong.  While the US fares slightly better and Japan naturally has far more to choose from (although perhaps not as much as you might expect), the UK is naturally a poor relation when it comes to finding anything much anime-related within the iTunes store served up to our own shores.

Of course, there are ways and means around this, such as creating an account for the US or Japanese iTunes store (a relatively simple process that you can carry out simply enough if you search around online), but putting that to one side for now we'll be using this article to take a look at what you can get quickly and easily from iTunes UK for your listening enjoyment.  So, insert some vague platitudes about quality being more important than quantity here, and let's see what we can find!

Death Notes

Perhaps the most high-profile anime-related albums on iTunes UK come courtesy of Hirano Yoshihisa in the form of both of the Original Soundtrack releases for the Death Note anime (available in itself via Manga Entertainment in the UK).  Volume one and volume two of this OST are available to download in their entirety, at a cost of £7.99 apiece, and are definitely worth a look for any fans of the series.

One of the few other full album soundtracks on iTunes for the UK is the first original soundtrack for Bleach, again costing £7.99 and consisting of over twenty slices of composer Shiro Sagisu's genius together with a few other notable tracks including TV-sized version of the show's first opening and ending themes.  Sadly, none of the later Bleach soundtracks are available at the time of writing, but maybe Wasabi Records (the copyright holder for both this and the Death Note soundtracks) will see fit to release further instalments in the future.  Still, the first soundtrack is still the best one anyway, right?