According to music industry experts, a regional iTunes Store is being held back because of the difficulty involved in making sure the right people would get paid for their music. An iTunes Store would help protect the Middle Eastern music industry, but the lack of a proper music rights society has made it extremely difficult for iTunes to set up a regional store.

"If iTunes wanted to enter the UAE, they would be forced to spend a huge amount of time and money to identity each rights holder of the music pieces, so they would need to make a significant investment to find out who owns what," said Hussain Spek Yoosef, a music industry observer. The lack of a legal digital music distributor has increased the amount of illegal downloading and piracy in the region.

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