Thanks to my friend Armen for this trick. This tutorial will guide you through the steps required to buy or rent content that’s only available in the US version of the iTunes Store, from Canada. I would be hugely appreciative if you could give this a try if you live in Australia, England, France, Italy or any country other than Canada and let me know if it works by leaving a comment.
- The most important part of this trick is to purchase a MasterCard gift card (a temporary/disposable MasterCard). These are available in many stores across Canada, including Macs and Shoppers Drug Mart. They come in $25, $50 and $100 denominations.
- Launch iTunes. Select iTunes Store from the left navigation, and if you already have a Canadian account, click on the ‘your email address’ button in the upper right corner.
- Click the Sign Out button.
- Now back in the iTunes Store, click the Sign In button.
- Click the Create New Account button.
- On the intro screen, click the Continue button.
- You’ll be asked to enter your credit card and address info. Don’t. Look for the line that says If the billing address is not in Canada, click here, and click the click here link.
- In the Select a country: drop-down list, select US. Now click the Change Country button.
- You’ll be taken back to the iTunes Store, where once again you’ll have to click the Sign In button.
- And again, click the Create New Account button.
- Notice that the iTunes Store now thinks you’re in the US. Enter in the gift card MasterCard info, and a US billing address. You can probably just make one up, but you might want to confirm that the ZIP code and city match up. Update: using an address in Oregon is a good idea as they have no state tax. Thanks @staciebee!
- Once you’ve filled in all the appropriate info, click the Done button.
- Now you’ll be signed in to the US iTunes Store. Navigate to whatever content it is you want to buy/rent and go for it!
- You should have no problems downloading the movies/music/TV show etc.
FYI: Texas, Florida, Delaware, and Hew Hampshire also have no sales tax.
Scratch that: only Delaware and New Hampshire have no sales tax–the ones I mentioned before have no income tax. Oops. No idea where my head was.
I’m assuming this violates Apple’s ToS… and now that the work-around is pretty visible, how long before Apple takes action?
Part of me wants to say they won’t care, because after all, they’re getting money and no harm done. But Apple sometimes seems lawyer-crazy :-\
This works great… the only drawback is the $3 activation fee on the prepaid cards.
Another thing to note is that I tried to “gift” my new account and a found out that a Canadian account cannot gift a US account. – sad times
Let me know if anyone has success with iTunes France. Am able to get downloads of French podcasts from the French iTunes Store, but not music downloads. I’m really surprised in this day and age of digital access that Apple is so restrictive.
This isn’t a workaround at all! There are much simpler ways of getting iTunes accounts/content from other countries.
Firstly, you don’t need to buy a credit card gift card, particularly since it seems it has a $3 activation fee.
Since you’d have to be in or near the US to buy a credit card gift card, it’d be easier to just buy an actual Apple iTunes gift card. There’s no activation fee and it allows you to start a new account in whichever country the card is from and download content from there.
I’d say 99% of the time people get iTunes accounts for countries they’re not actually residing in, it’s because they’re not residing in them and quite possibly not even near that country. That itself makes it difficult to actually buy an iTunes gift card from that country let alone a credit card gift card from that country.
If you know someone in the country from which you’d like the card/account/content and they have an iTunes account you can just give them money and they can give you an iTunes gift card through email.
I do this for US and Australian accounts all the time. I know people there and I give them money and they buy email gift cards for me. I don’t like in the US or Australia and it’s always worked just fine.
@ Matthew – It does violate the TOS but it’s always been “visible”, as you say. They may stop it one day (it even says so in the first line of the TOS) but it’s not because people have just started using this “workaround” because people have always used it.
@Me -
I think you might have missed part of the idea of this tutorial – “Since you’d have to be in or near the US to buy a credit card gift card, it’d be easier to just buy an actual Apple iTunes gift card.” – That’s not accurate. You can purchase these MasterCard gift cards IN Canada. That’s pretty much the point of the “trick”. You go to your LOCAL store, buy a gift Mastercard, and use it to create a US iTunes Store account. You just enter ANY US address when filling out the form. That way you don’t need to bug your friends in the US to buy you iTunes gift cards etc. You just do it all yourself, and takes much less time.
OMGosh, it actually worked! Aha. I wasn’t expecting it too, more like hoping, but yeah, this works 100%.
Hmmm, if those clowns inisst on making you jump through hoops to actually PURCHASE songs just tel them to go jump and download what you want via TPB.
If these idiots want people to actually pay for their media then they had better well stop making it so goddam hard to do so.
Torrents annoy me. I’ve had to jump through so many hoops for torrents.
I just tried this with the new iTunes 8.1 and it won’t accept the security code on from the back of the card. I wonder if Apple has figured this trick out and turned it off?
Oh, false alarm on my earlier comment. Turns out Pharmasave did not properly activate the card (calling to get the balance reveals this). Phew!!!
I might try this out since the paypal arrangement I had with a friend has ended. Now itunes is asking for updated working billing info and I was wondering if adding another credit card and a ‘fake’ US address is the only workaround.
This was great, thanks! Worked just as described, so I can finally get full BSG HD seasons!! Cheers.
Does anyone know if this work around will allow you to download iPhone apps? In particular I’m wondering if this will let you download and run a working version of the Skype app for the iPhone.
I live in the U.S but I want music that’s on the Canadian itunes store that isn’t the U.S. store. It would be so much easier if they would just allow us to buy music from the other stores because either way it goes we are wanting to buy it.
you can save that fee by buying itunes gift cards for various countries on ebay’s international sites. to only download all the free stuff on itunes for any country without a credit card or gift card: open the itunes player, scroll down to the bottom to choose the country you want, scroll down again to choose a free app, click get app, click create account, when you get to the payment page there will be the “none” option for payment. works everytime for any country. detailed instructions at usitunes.blogspot.com
if i buy something in canada using itunes do i have to pay using american money or can i use canadian?
When apple decides to do something about this they will probably void all content you have downloaded. Careful here you could loose everything you paid for.
Just so you know, the itunes terms of use now actually states that pre-paid credit cards will not be accepted. I am in a bit of a bind right now because I paid for some stuff using a pre-paid Mastercard, and half of it cleard while the other half didn’t, simply because the new policy came into effect between the first and second purchases. While the video has not been disabled from the computer, I imagine if they can they will and I will be out that $30.
From now on in I will buy iTunes cards on ebay.
I have been using the itunes gift cards from the US to access the american itunes store from Toronto, Canada. Suddenly, a screen is coming up on my apple TV stating that if am not in the US they can find out and they will come and get me! The whole reason I bought the damn thing is to access the US store.
Is there a way around this?
Thanks.