Apple Taking Heat for ‘Unfair’ Prices
iTunes Music Store users in London are being charged about 20% more per song than their European brethren in, say, Paris. Beaurocrats in the UK are up in arms, screaming the Apple is extorting them or something or other. You’ll read about it in the news, along with some catchy media writers saying that Apple is getting their just desserts for ratting out Microsoft’s foreign exploitative pricing schedules.
Here’s the problem: Yes, the iTMS prices for the UK are higher than for Europeans. But so are CDs. And so are other online music services available to citizens of Great Britain. Artist and publisher fees are on different levels between the two, and Apple decided to go in with the current market price instead of undercutting current offerings (and their own profits).
Is Apple expected to adjust their online music prices with the currency exchange rates? The UK wants to remain separate from the EU, and market prices and currency exchange are part of that, as are all forms of commerce, brick and mortar and online. I’m sure if Apple didn’t have to invest the time and money in securing different services, legal practices (and protections), and contracts to do business online in the UK, that they would all be tied into the same network for the iTMS as the rest of Europe.
Posted Thursday September 16, 2004 in News by Derek Jones
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What’s kind of funny is that one of the reasons iTunes is not in Japan, apparently, is because they are too inexpensive compared to CDs.
By Paul Burdick on September 21, 2004 at 02:05pm link