So all those 99c tunes will be only 54p each here at the current rate of exchange. Yay! Except the news story says the songs will be 79p each ($1.44!!!) but doesn't mention that means they will be 25p (almost 50%) more expensive over here. Boo! Greedy bastards.
I'm used to the straight quid to dollar conversion on hardware prices etc because the American companies have got the frequently used excuse of 'transatlantic transport costs'. So what transport costs do Apple incur hosting mp3s? Fscking gayers. Well they can stick their iPod up their arse too - I'll buy the Sony or Microsoft one instead.
Currency conversions courtesy of the Universal Currency Converter.
EDIT: Message for Mr Jobs
22 comments:
You sure it's not the record labels that are the greed-mongers?
Yea, joining up on Sony's ATRAC MP3's route or MS' hoard of $60 BILLION in cash - that's the way to strike back at the greedy record labels ...
Plus, it's not like London or Paris are cheap places to do business - last week, gas in London was about $5.50 a gallon (well, after the litre to gallon conversion) - everybody pays for gas in US dollars so in theory you should be saving money with the dollar down versus the euro - but hey, as long as you guys are willing to pay a huge amount for everything PLUS a VAT - not our fault you prefer to pay a lot for everything.
It could very well be the record companies greed. I see they think 99c is too low. Howeveve the price differential between America and UK or even UK and France surely doesn't have to be so big.
The Sony/Ms bit was a flippant throwaway comment. I too agree the ATRAC stuff stinks. I've commentedon this site about it before somewhere or other. As for contributing to MS's hoard I've been doing that for years anyway - several licenced copies of Windows, my XBox and all my Xbox titles have seen to that. I won't lose sleep over giving them more.
As for London or Paris and price of oil. It is an internet company selling software without packaging. It could be run from a business park in Newcastle, a garage in Gateshead or even from wherever the servers are located for the American market. Petrol prices do not come into it except to maybe have a marginal effect on hardware costs.
We don't prefer to pay more. There has been a label knocking around for years now - Rip Off Britain. We keep getting ripped by greedy corporations. What else can we do? "I'm not buying from you anymore - I'll fly to America to buy" doesn't quite work. I stated in my main post I was prepared to pay the quid dollar conversion, which seems to be the unspoken rule of thumb, for items which physically need to be shipped as they have associated transports and storage costs. For unpackaged software? Give me a break!
Thanks for your comments - you're the only one out of hundreds of visitors to have left one. The interweb is obviously full of shy bairns! ;)
We prefer to pay more for everything in Britain? Are you mentally challenged? No sorry you live on Planet America. Ok then I will give you the nice, slow, big pictures version. This guys blog post has sweet Fanny Adams to do with petrol prices or anything else. He's just pointing out the fact though Job's and his cradle to grave monkeys had the opportunity to set a global standard for the pricing of itunes downloads and apparently will not do so. Why? Perhaps the record companies have said no way our profits in the UK are too high don't torpedo the market. Alternativly, perhaps Apple have just realised if they pitch their downloads just under the price of a CD single in the UK, punters will still buy their music downloads but profits will be higher. If you think that a company which sells you a proprietary operating system usable on only hardware made and sold by them is out to help you take down 'the man'. They are 'the man' you utter retard! They control the users of their products completely! OS, hardware,and many peripherals! Why do you think that itunes downloads only come in proprietory Apple format? Its so you have to buy their player. When a company has this kind of monopoly it leads to a very slow progression which is bad for the consumer. Why do you think there is no powerbook G5 yet? Simply because there is no competition no one else makes PowerPCs. If two competing groups made the hardware you can bet it would be better. Potentially once they have enough market share Apple can sit on their trustafarian asses drip feeding tech upgrades at a costly and maddeningly slow rate, raking in the cash. Innovation is driven by competition, without it product quality suffers and progress grinds to a halt. In short the consumer gets the shaft. A point worth noting here is that everyone says Bill Gates is Satan but at least you get to choose the hardware upon which you run Satan's OS. The same cannot be said of OSX. 'The man' owns your little hump baby, body (hardware) and 'soul' (software). If he doesn't want to give you the opportunity for a reach around believe me he doesn't have to......
:lol:
First FMJ reference of the day!
What about a comparison with the McDonalds Index ?
Or is this a new one...the price of digital media around the world. Hmmm.
http://www.economist.com/markets/Bigmac/Index.cfm
I think you might be on to something. Oh, and just incase you missed this, it's an article from The Sun (UK tabloid newsrag), that relates the size of the breasts in a popular men's magazine (Playboy) versus the market. Apparantly it's big jugs during economic decline, and small perky tats when the market is more optimistic. Yay for 5138008!! Of all sizes!
Now, tell me about ze relationship you have with your mother..
</sigmund>
For this using the BMI would be flawed. The exchange rate would be worked out on relative costs of Big Macs. We are already overcharged in Rip Off Britain and Big Macs suffer from the same overcharging. So using that as a standard would have built in allowance for overcharging for us - which would seemingly suit Apple down to the ground.
At the end of the day its simple. Use currency as the exchange as that is what I get paid in and what I buy stuff with. We are being overcharged by almost 50% for a service that has no physical stuff to transport and could well be run by the same hardware that is servicing the American market. It's a rip.
What? ATRAC and WMA aren't proprietory? Thats news to me. At least apple pushes a standards based format such as AAC.
News to me too. However I don't see anyone claiming they aren't proprietary. Imagine that bit did you? Or would you like to post a quote from above to support your irrelevant question?
Um, VAT?
I'll interpret that non sentence as:
Would VAT account for the discrepancies in the pricing structure?
In your language:
um, nuh.
In mine:
I doubt it. The other countries in Europe pay VAT too and they are getting a better deal than the UK. Besides which it is almost 50% markup from US pricing. VAT is 17.5%. And that's of course ignoring the sales and state taxes in some areas of the USA.
It's still simple - Apple are greedy bastards.
Sorry to distract you from the arguement, but don't peeps in America have to pay a VAT equivalent too? Most Europeans do too, but that doesn't mean our ipod's cost the equivalent of $379.04+17.5% to cover VAT. Oh... hold on, er.. it does. (Quote based on a 20Gb at amazon.com and amazon.co.uk)
Erm... have you seen how cheap PS2's are in the US compared to over here? We're the third biggest market in the world, and they treat us like skanky $2 dollar ho's! Parp!
If UK would get on board with the EURO instead of just milking the profits off the new currency then perhaps you'd be paying the same as the other EU countries. Stop bitching about Apple and bitch to the Gov. Then while your waiting for your sorry Sony product to download your songs over the inferior USB you can write another post to the Blog complaining about some other thing you cannot change.
Not Anonymous, just too lazy to sign up.
...and too lazy to type your name/URL. ho hum.
So it's now the Government's fault that Apple are greedy twunts? I missed the bit where Gordon Brown announced the 6th test for adopting the Euro was along the lines of 'Will Apple charge us a fair price for songs?'. Of course of we hadn't got a huge bill for America's war on Iraq we may have had tax cuts and I would have had more money in my pocket and wouldn't have felt as aggrieved. Blame what you like - at the end of the day we are being charged for iTunes songs than anybody else in the world - yet it costs exactly the same to get the product to us as it does to everyone else.
I'm not buying a Sony - see a few comments back. I was definitely going to buy an iPod (a FOAF is off to NY soon and was going to pick me up a mini) but that has now been knocked on the head. You say I can do nothing about it - I just did. OK Apple don't need my particular sale as they are extremely popular items atm but they haven't got my cash.
You seem to imply it is a sad thing to rail against whatever the fsck I feel like on this site. Where does that leave an anonymous comment appended to a useless whinge? Parp!
*charged more for iTunes songs
What rake-off does Apple take from the 99/c in the US? I heard somewhere that it was about 5/c per track...? On the basis that the this covered costs and a nominal profit. Most of the 99/c goes to the label, of course.... I would be surprised if the labels in UK/Europe were any less greedy too. At 79p there is conceivably room to pay the artist at least something, but you probably couldn't go much lower...
If you pay more for itunes music in the UK the artist gets a bigger cut? WTF are you talking about? The process goes something like this the record company sells the licence to trade their song to Apple. Apple sells the song to you. Apple takes their cut. They then pay the record company based upon number of units of that tune sold. The record company then pays the artist (if they actually own the rights to their song)their cut. If apple makes a greater profit from UK sales than do from US they are not going to side step the record company and to give the artist more money!
"Here you go Tiny Tim you can get yourself a warm meal""Awww gawd bless you guvnor! If it weren't for people like you Mr J03s I would still be giving handjobs for crack just to get by! Now I can make further valuble contributions to society....well at least to Porsche and Gucci". "That's ok tiny tim. Now if you will excuse me I am just off to de-worm some orphans in Somalia"
"Thanks again! You are my hero Mr J".
"No problem Tiny Tim god put me on this Earth to help little people like you"
I somehow don't really envisage anything like this do you? Any extra profits made probably goes straight in J03's back pocket. What I would like to see is a short post on the Apple site with a pie chart giving us a breakdown of exactly where that extra 50% is going. If they are planning on sticking their itool into the arse of the British public I somehow doubt they are going to be too keen to do that. If most of it is not going to the ijunk Ferrari fund I would be deeply surprised. So come on 'Uncle Steve',you crazy old hippy dictator you, if we are having to pay more to the taxman in the open the books and we will shut the hell up. If the books don't validate you then you are deliberatly hiking prices son because you think you can get away with it. This is hardly the laid back hippie rebel creed normally associated with you and your brand. Instead this strikes me more as a simple cold blooded "We fuck3d you because we could.....".
I can see many of the aforementioned company's staff reading this post and then placing bets to see if this happens. They will I predict attach somewhat slim odds to this outcome. To be honest I think we have the same chance of seeing Christ popping back to earth to open a new branch of W411-M4rt as we do of seeing where the extra money every person who uses the UK site will have to spend on every tune they buy is really going to be going.
Who woke the sleeping dogs? :)
I'm glad someone made the comment above about how the extra wedge probably won't be going to the artist. I was going to say something along those lines but haven't had time so far. Thank you anon - you've saved me the bother! :)
I think it's a moot argument anyway. When was the last time any of the people on here bought an MP3 or in fact any digital media? You havn't because you've all got a copy of Kazaa or Grokster or Gnucleus or whatever and download them for free. On the subject of taxes I think it must be remebered that however ropey it is we do have an NHS and social service system which attracts admirers from Albania, Uganda, Iraq, Nigeria..........
I can understand when you say that American are spoilt, in fact their all about to go on an all expenses paid holiday including a free gift of an M16. Yes indeed you lucky people can say hello to Iraq! As your canny government have decided to sneak back in the draft. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1077906,00.html). You too could be 12" shorter and be the proud owner of a blind fold and oranage jump suit.
Back on the topic at hand, the neo-liberal economies are all absolutely mortified by the rates of growth experienced by the Dirigiste economies of the Asian countries. So much so in fact that in the next 20 years China is expected to have a a GDP in excess of that in the America. Can you say "do you want wontons with that?".
Drunken Munkey
That's pretty big assumption to make! And a wrong one at that.
I buy digital media all the time. I've licenced shareware I've downloaded off the net, buy film DVDs, VHS videos (in the olden days as my daughter likes to call them!), audio CDs and audio tapes for various Walkman I've owned, have got lots of bought games for my Xbox, GBA SP, Dreamcast, PSX, PC and all the computers and consoles I've owned since the early eighties. God knows how much I've spent in total on software/music/films. All that stuff could also be obtained for free.
I haven't bought digital music as yet as I haven't had hardware where it was needed. I would have started when I got my iPod - this is no longer going to happen.
Fsck me! Where've you been? And you don't have to answer that if it will incriminate you. :)
I'll have to give you a shoppping list next time!
Email me at my home address - I'm on a new box as my old one has given up the ghost and I haven't had time to recover stuff like my address book off the drives.
Use Musicmatch. Cheaper, better, faster!
Post a Comment