Well, that seems stupid.

that's bad news!

I hope they do put it back up, or else I know where I won't be buying any more J-pop from. Forget that. I can use ebay, I can save my pennies. Heck, I can just not use their ridiculous service anyway. Amazon is just a click away, after all.

Of course, if Avex decides they don't want to release stuff with no DRM in so many markets (and affecting so many artists), I have to wonder what that will do to their sales. Can they really think that ignoring a global audience that evidently buys their stuff is a good idea?

yeah I checked itunes last night and saw ayu's stuff wasn't there anymore. I hope it's just an upgrade thing...

Though, I only use the itunes store on my ipod touch, all the charts are gone apart from the "itunes" top 10. So I reckon they are just upgrading or something with it.

kind of saw that coming lol

that's so freakin' nightmare if they're removed permanently!

....but, i'm not really care though since i don't buy from iTunes, :D

I'm sure it's just being taken down for a bit....

yes, they are removed.
avex mostly likely did not agree to DRM free sales, and thus they won't be sold at all

however, theres nothing saying that they wont agree to it later on.
The Office tv show was unavailable on iTunes for most of the 4th season due to NBC and Apple disagreements but its been resolved now, so maybe in the future avex and Apple will sort something out.

It's not just Jpop that has disappeared from iTunes. Now that iTunes Plus is the standard Apple is pulling any music that is lower quality. Avex and other Japanese labels will have to provide have to provide higher quality copies of their music before it will show up again on iTunes.

I'm not so sure avex music is on the iTunes US priority list though. And avex is pretty stingy...

I'm not sure what you mean. The stuff I previously downloaded from iTunes that's now unavailable (such as Ayu) is the same quality as anything else in the iTunes store, as far as bitrate and such. The DRM-free issue seems a more likely culprit.

they have artist like kana (well moon kana), Gackt, BoA, and one dragon ash song(by the way idk that they did a song for tokyo drift)

and for ayu they dont even have The Orb remixes thakfully i bought SURREAL and kanariya singles before this happened

maybe avex didnt renew their contract with itunes or smthin. hope it comes back =/

omg why would they take ayu off! baka i-tunes lol! I'll still use it for songs but why D: I think ayu makes lots of sales for them in terms of jpop sales.

they have her in the Japan iTunes

exactly.
so it will be a while before ayu comes back onto US iTunes, if ever.

I guess some user already noticed it in chat room, isn't it?