Slashdot Mirror
Exchange Rates Play With Online Music Prices
EconolineCrush writes "Those looking to purchase songs online may find that the price of music downloads varies quite a bit from country to country. Most vendors seem to be favoring 0.99/track pricing schemes, but $0.99CDN is worth quite a bit less than 0.99 British Pounds. When indexed to the US dollar, Canadians using Puretracks are getting a bargain with tracks costing only $0.76US, while UK residents using Coke's new music store are getting ripped off at nearly $1.80US per song. iTunes and Wal Mart sit between the two, with tracks selling for $0.99 and $0.88, respectively."
Why pay at all?
I have been pwned because my
+1 Obvious
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
While CD-prices differ widely in comparison - at 1996 exchange rates, a normal CD cost
below US-$ 16.00 in the USA
US-$ 14.00 in Canada
US-$ 25.00 in Japan
US-$ 23.00 in Germany
US-$ 24.00 in the UK
Source
Note, the data is indeed eight years old. (jeeze, was 1996 that long ago?) Pardon the US bias, but this still seems to reflect what I understand are current retail prices.
--H
Probably the companies spend more/less money in hosting website in those countries ... and are passing on the cost/savings to the customer.
... we are talking about the music industry
Oh wait
..and with a global economy, one can only assume it's a matter of time before the formation of some semblance of world government.
I guess maybe we'll have put region codes on music, so we can maintain price discrimination, like on DVD's.
What?
I'm in the US. Am I getting ripped off, or are foreigners?
And if it's foreigners, why should I care?
go to canada download the songs on a service that allows you to share the files or burn them to a cd and then head back to the US.
Custom Officer: and what is the purpose of your visit today sir.
Me: to download music
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Since now the Canadians are going to realise they should charge more, my tactic of shopping at eBay.ca won't work anymore! Gone are the days I could bid 7/8 of what I'd pay in the US and win!
;)
Thanks a lot Slashdot!!
libertarianswag.com
I have never noticed the pricing in CD's to be flexible with the exchange rate either.
The pricing trends you mention are more proof that pricing levels are primarily set by "psychological" price points.
I don't know if these price points actually maximize profit or sales but it seems that most retail goods follow this same model. $199 for consumer electronics, the $999 pc, etc.
The marketing dept sets the prices.
Why?
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
A plus side for having the EUR > US
can you buy at candian online music stores? wont that send american musci stores down? (i hate posting restriction, lameness filter?, calling me lame im gonna fuk up the geeks at /.)
------
mmmm round and soft...
I'd think that the online vender's would change price based on currency. I mean, sure they get great extra money from Britan, but they are getting themselves ripped off from Canada. I mean really, Britian is getting ripped off. Someone should have done something by now.
http://www.beyourowneviloverlord.tk
http://www.frozenchickenthrowing.tk
http://www.killercamel.tk
Russia's entry into online music: 1000 tracks, $14.95 per month OR a penny per megabit. Feels slimy but generally agreed to be legit.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
How is this news? People do realise that the price for petrol/gas is Europe is much higher than the U.S? That a reasonable dinner in a restaurant in Australia will cost you about $15US, which is really $10US or so? (But you don't get free refills)
The article doesn't even bother telling us how much a CD costs in the UK or in Canada. Without adding relevant information it's just more noise.
Here, random link with useful comparison info: some cruddy commercial store
The per-song "magic number" varies from one region to another reflecting the cost of living in the area, completely ignoring the global nature of the internet.
Surely 99 cents per song is more than some people make for a day of back breaking labor in some parts of the world, but really isn't much more than pocket change in most of the first world countries.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Allofmp3.com, in Russia, at a penny a MB will get you a whole album for under a buck. And it's easier enough than filesharing to make paying worthwhile. (Legal, too, if you're the type to let laws decide your actions.) Why the hell would I pay 99 cents a song?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
What ever may be the price I don't see a point in buying crippled music. The cost is relative. The amount of salary that people draw in their respective countries would also differ. BTW did you know that drugs(as in prescription drugs and generic ones ) are cheaper in canada than in the US.The same case is with books. In any case crippled music is worth nothing to me.
puretracks won't let me in the door. Apparently, I got IDed as an american with a mac. Getting 1/2 isn't bad (american on linux)... I wanted to at least browse though...
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Sure the exchange rate might give Canadians a bit of a deal but the extra 'fees' on blank media we pay makes it so we pay twice or three times for the music. Recently there have been $25 fees added to ipods and the ilk but downloading was also decided to be legal in Canada but uploading is not. CD-R's went up in price a couple times as well with the money going to the recording industry. Who would be silly enough to pay to download in Canada when the Canadian RIAA already has us paying since everyone already downloads for free according to them.
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
Thank you for visiting Puretracks.com
Currently our website supports Internet Explorer 5.0 and above on the
Windows operating system (Win 98SE / ME / 2000 / XP / 2003),
and is available to Canadian residents only.
We value our Mac audience, however the Windows Media player for the Mac
platform is not currently compatible with Microsoft protected audio content.
Puretracks is currently working to make our service available to Mac users.
(and, btw, apple said that they'll make it availible to other contries aswell, but at present time, nothing has been announced yet. *guess, we'll have to wait some more, then*)
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
I can't imagine why anyone would support Walmart. They are taking a loss just to cut down the competition because they can. Apple takes a loss to sell iPods, WTF is Walmart trying to sell (besides the soul of every American consumer)?
Hopefully more record labels will join the fight against the RIAA like New York's GoKart Records.
Sound waves should be free!
Frankly, the response pureTracks Gave me scared me. They use Winblows DRM for their tracks.... If you want to browse their website in anything other than Internet Explorer 5 on win 98, you're in tough luck
Linux (or better yet Mozilla) is going to need some sort of DRM before I can download commercial tracks.
I realise that it isn't being developed becuase it restricts freedom... But isn't the freedom to restrict my freedom being violated?
Not that I like mainstream music anyhoo. But I fear others who do wll need to pay the MS/Apple tax.
This is not surprising. There are a couple ways to price products. One is pricing what the seller imagines the product is worth. The other is pricing what the buyer thinks the product is worth. This is obviously a case of the latter.
Basically, people like Units. It's easy to compute when everything is nice and round. (Or round enough. 99cents practically equals one dollar) People obviously feel that one song is worth one of the base currency unit.
It'll be interesting to see what happens in countries such as China and Japan. I imagine that a song will go for 100Yen in Japan, but China? Who knows?
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
Why take the cheaper price if you aren't guaranteed that you'll have total control over your music? I'd rather pay a few more cents (or a dollar more) just to be able to use my music the way I want to.
The Inquirer has many articles about how the British and others routinely get shafted due to companies using exchange rates to their own advantage.
Surely 99 cents per song is more than some people make for a day of back breaking labor in some parts of the world, but really isn't much more than pocket change in most of the first world countries.
But, do you think that people that are getting $1.00 a day for backbreaking labor are also going to have computers to download music with? Not to mention a CD-Burner and some blank CDs...Do you think that these people (or their neighbors) would even have CD players anyway?
Most of the people that you cite probably haven't even heard of the Internet. Music sharing for them is dragging their drums into their neighbor's back yard.
This space for rent...
However htis problem will cease to exist with the appearance of localized online music stores. Where there is a demand - supply is soon to follow.
How many songs can you get for a confederate dollar?
It shows that the company thinks people are stupid enough to fall for the penny-less trick. It may prevent employee theft in physical stores, but online it has no use except to confuse. I for one would much rather buy music for just plain a dollar.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
So what do they offer for content. Maybe Anne Murray and Don Messer are not quite worth the .99 Pence or .99 US? Then again maybe the content on the UK & US pages is not worth the .99 CDN to the market here.
We're not talking quantity of songs in the catalogs, maybe their quality counts. (Just like the way sex is, eh!)
that the music industry and everybody between the artists and us, the consumers, have been ripping us off, so much so that even on $.99 per song, they have that much room to play with and still make money. I mean, if they can sell at .99 Canadian per song, that just means that whole CD albums should be less than $10. And for all these years, we've seen CD album prices at...$15+?
Of course, since they are not actually creating landfill destined discs of plastic, with jewel cases and inserts, they are costing even less than traditional CDs, even though they are having to pay for maintaining the service online, equipment, people, etc., I think it's still cheaper in the long run, since all they are doing is selling bits that can be copied over and over again at virtually no cost. They should be offering songs at $.50 each, IMO. I think we should be able to drive the prices down. We need to opt for cheaper music services until they reach that level.
Drive it out into the country and set it free. I mean duh.
Make sure you remove any identifying tags first.
Most CDs have about 10 tracks on them. Most CDs (at least here in the US at Best Buy or BMG) Sell for about $9.99. So for .99 a track I get a full CD with a Jewel Case, Liner Notes, Artwork, etc. and I can rip it into any format I want.
.wav files for .25 then downloading music will interest me.
Let me know when I can download
http://www.kubuntu.org/
And if WIPO and WTO are the first tentative steps of a world government, such a government will not enjoy the support of the majority. These organisation represent 'fatcat' interests even more than the US government does.
As always, when dealing with exchange rates these equivalencies are relatively meaningless. What really matters is whether UK residents (for instance) are willing to pay twice as much per download. I remember travelling through the UK and being totally shocked that chocolate bars are around $2.25 CDN apiece, but they still seemed to sell.
In economic terms, if the market price of a good is higher in a given currency compared to the US dollar, that currency is overvalued with respect to the US dollar. In the opposite case (a la Canadian dollar) it is an indication of an undervalued currency.
Theoretically, I suppose Americans could simply buy all their mp3s from Canadian stores and save big, but I imagine there's some sort of rule in place that prevents them from doing so. And if there isn't, I'm sure it won't be long before there is.
An interesting corollary, for those who are interested in the economics of foreign exchange, is The Economist's Startbuck Tall Latte Index. Definitely worth a click.
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
Now that we're going to Mars, it's time to start thinking of a Solar System Gov't. Too bad the guys on Mars will never get "first post", even if they subscribe.
I'm a karma slut - If I were a karma whore, I'd be getting paid.
What?
Um... and Magnatune.com charges $5 for an album, and it doesn't support the RIAA the way iTunes, Wal-Mart, Puretracks, and Coke do.
I wonder why more people haven't discovered this. It's cheaper, and better. Sounds strangely like something I know called Open Source.
how do they handle CDs with lots of "filler" (like 30 s) or even short tracks (~2.5 m)? The new Best of Guided By Voices CD is one cd with 33 tracks on it. Does that mean its $33 purchased electronically?
How about making copyright reform a central issue in the upcoming election?
Very likely most politicians don't know if the DMCA is fit to eat, feel Disney and the RIAA are important campaign contributors whose requests should be given priority, and music downloaders are simple thieves who deserve every bit of punishment they get.
You can change that. But it's going to take some work. There are enough people sharing music in America - more people than voted for George Bush - that if you get off your collective asses and get politically active, you can get laws passed to get the RIAA off your back.
In Change the Law, I explain that copyright is not a Constitutional right, like free speech. Instead copyright is allowed (but not required) to serve a useful purpose, a purpose which I feel has long since outlived its usefulness.
I suggest steps you can take to bring about copyright reform, ranging from speaking out to practicing civil disobedience.
One thing I'd like you all to do today is to write your elected representatives to ask their opinion of the current state of copyright law given its widespread abuse by organizations like the RIAA and MPAA, and to urge them to work towards copyright reform. Let them know your vote will depend on a positive response.
When you're done writing that letter, write to the other candidates for each office in the upcoming elections, to ask them the same question.
Sixty million American peer-to-peer file traders have the potential to raise a lot of Hell with the politicians. I want every candidate to be peppered with questions about copyright reform at every campaign stop and in every press interview. I want the repeal of the DMCA to be discussed in the Presidential debates.
People marched in protest when Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested. Dmitry is free now - but the law under which he was jailed is still on the books.
If you agree with me that something needs to be done about copyright, I need your help.
Thank you for your attention.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
It would serve those damn Apple bastards right for making a low priced, minimal DRMed, well designed, functional music service.
Yes, those damn pirates are going to ruin Apple's music service.
***The above was entirely a joke, if you didn't get it, or it simply didn't make sense, this is most likely because I am drunk. I do not apologize.***
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Ack, due to Russian music laws, people using www.allofmp3.com in Russia can pay 1 cent per megabyte of mp3 or ogg or whatever, legally. However, once you download any of that into your American computer, its illegal since the RIAA isn't getting its "proper" share of the money.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
The _current_ exchange rates and the _theoretical_ exchange rates are quite different. The current exchange rates are either determined in financial markets or by governments, according to the conditions of the international payment balance.
The theoretical exchange rate is commonly called a PPP (power of purchase parity) exchange rate, and is evaluated by comparing the cost of simmilar baskets of products in different countries.
This can be tricky, as seldom the very same product exists all over the world - and if it does, the costs involved can be very different because of relative prices. "The Economist" often publishes the Big Mac Index, which attempts to estimate the theoretical (PPP) exchange rate comparing the prices of Big Macs all over the world - since it's a product that's pretty much the same everywhere and involves the same costs.
When current exchange rates are unbalanced, there's a strong effect over the importation/exportation ratio. In Brazil, during the mid-90's, US$ 1 was approximately R$ 1, which was totally insane in PPP terms. It was a time during which everyone bought imported goods insanely, and travelled a lot abroad - while people coming to Brazil, specially from other latin american countries, could barely afford a can of coke. That happened because the government wanted to control inflation - and it pretty much worked. But after a while, it lead to a major financial crisis, because there weren't any dollars to pay the importation - exportation balance, and they had to let the dollar rate fluctuate in the financial markets.
If one was to do a very extensive PPP research that took into comparison prices like this, perhaps some of these distortions will be elliminated. But then again, there's the "just under 1 buck" factor. In any case, this should serve as a big caveat when comparing cost of living in different countries.
I'd love to pay 0.99 yen, pesos, or lira per song!
Fitehouse just released their new EP The Bomb with both tracks available as MP3 download, and one track, the anti-RIAA anthem "Running Scared" licensed under the FGPML.
The raw studio tracks for Running Scared are also provided as uncompressed WAV files. (Please be nice to their server.)
This apparently culminates their eight month postcard campaign which both highlights Fitehouse as a band and also comments on the current crisis in music.
I only just came across these guys today, but I downloaded their EP and like their music.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
It's still nothing compared to consumer electronics prices.
;)
:( Fscking extortion.
For a long time people were used to prices a little bit higher in euros than in dollars. The explanation was that it's to compensate for exchange rates while USD was for a couple of years about 1.1EUR or so. Now, that 1EUR is already more than 1.25USD, most vendors didn't even change their prices, and some changed them to ``uniform prices'': e.g. Palm T1, T2 was $399 and 399eur at the time of introduction.
Now finally new Palm models are priced according to exchange rates. Did enough Europeans buy them via eBay with shipping to Europe?
But my favourite digicam Canon EOS 300D was still $800 and 1100eur last time I checked -- half as much
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
I've been doing an ongoing series of reviews of online music services (iTunes, Napster 2.0, Wal-Mart, Bleep, EMusic, and Audio Lunchbox so far), and one thing I've noticed is that a fair number of these sites are entirely unavailable to international customers. Either for DRM reasons or for simple payment processing issues.
It seems to me that there is a huge untapped market overseas. The traditional distribution mechanisms are even more disadvantaged when compared to online stores, as the cost of transporting physical goods is significantly greater than moving a digital copy. This is just one more area in which the companies that can move the fastest toward the new media stand the most to gain.
You might be able to whore it out to that "sex with a mare" guy.
the only reason that this matters is because of the non physical nature of the product. its not as easy to buy a cd from another country and have it shipped to yours and still save some money. but its no harder to purchase a music file from another country and download it.
does this mean that we will soon see a dvd type drm that will restrict what region you can play a file in?
~Tommy Boomfiger http://www.gotapex.com/forums
Excuse my skepticism, but I don't believe for a minute that WalMart is selling at a loss. The bandwidth certainly does not cost $0.88 and pretty much everything else is in imaginary costs that can be adjusted to any value between zero and infinity.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
2 key points:
- We now have a preemptive doctrine, and our intel clearly shows that the Brits have the bomb.
- "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." An old adage, and who has America kept closer than the good old U.K.?
Look out, limeys.called allofmp3.com, get about 10 albums for 10 bucks. Thats cheap music.
or possibly the collapse of capitalism like Marx predicted...
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Feels slimy but generally agreed to be legit.
What do you mean by legit? Do you mean, they won't steal our credit card numbers (p.s. AmerExpress & Discover allow for 1 time use only credit card numbers), or do you mean that this sale of music is 100% legal in russian and there is nothing the RIAA can do about this (until they pay someone off)?
From their website under "legal":
"All the materials in the MediaServices projects are available for distribution through Internet according to license # LS-3I-03-79 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society. Under the license terms, MediaServices pays license fees for all the materials subject to the Law of the Russian Federation "On Copyright and Related Rights". All the materials are available solely for personal use and must not be used for further distribution, resale or broadcasting. Users are held liable for the use and distribution of the MediaServices site information materials according to local legislation."
There are a number of governments in power around the world that do not enjoy the support of the majority. All they need is the support of the military.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
Someone wake me up when the songs are down to .99 YEN a piece. I think thats a good rate :).
A 'United Nations', if you will...
I was sure the URL was puretracks.ca but sure enough it's .com. Moontaxi Media owns the .com and the .ca but they haven't even bothered to set up a redirect at .ca. Seems like an oversight to me. And since Dave Chalk thought puretracks was an American outfit on his call in computer show, an oversight that needs their attention.
Just came back from Argentina -- stocked up
on CDs there.
1 "current release" CD -> 23 ARS = ~ 9 USD
and they generally carry most US stuff.
Then again, almost anything there is cheap in
USD nowadays. If you happen to go there on a
business trip or for any other reason, you'll
most likely stock up on leather, clothing,
CDs, wine, etc. like there's no tomorrow.
are there any sites that offer legal music in mp3 form for a US linux user? preferably no DRM because this is looking interesting and at least these guys get payed to share so their bandwith will hopefully be better. I do beleave that the artists should get paid for their work, yes i was part of the napster/kazaa/what ever you think of movment for free music but that was only because i did not have the money for a cd and did not like them anyways too few songs.
He asked, really he did!
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I know the article is on exchange rates, but there is a site doing (or claiming to do) dynamic pricing based on demand.
.10 / track promotion.
.10 (albeit almost all songs are in crippled WMA format with limited burning capabilities). News.com.com story here.
www.musicrebellion.com
Obligatory disclaimer: I have no connection to musicrebellion.com. I just bought a dozen albums from them during their
The basic idea is that popular songs will rise in price, while less popular songs will decrease in price. To start things off they had a promotion where all tracks were
The thing that bugged me about Music Rebellion is that after the promotion ended everything immediately jumped to 90-odd cents.
I disagree strongly with that, as they have now given me little incentive to use them over iTunes. I'm willing to give them my business for some of the obscure Christian music I listen to if it's dynamically priced at 20-35 cents per track. Otherwise I'll save the WMA hassle and go iTunes. Unfortunately, the news.com article listed a floor of 50-75 cents per song (citing wholesale cost).
What I did like about them is that their customer service was responsive (some licenses didn't download correctly), and their selection was comparable to Apple's. They also seem to have some indie music promotion.
However, iTunes is so well designed (not relying on MSIE for downloads or WMP for burning) that I haven't had to use their customer service.
- Neil Wehneman
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
The author is using the lense of exchange rates to say that Candians are getting music cheaper.
This is wrong for two reasons. First, the advent of the Internet and its subsequent use as a distribution method of music has made music an information good. All music is charged at a monopoly price because the price at which music is sold is above the marginal cost of production.
Second, because all music is priced at a monopoly price, what is a "bargain" or "being ripped-off" is moot. We are all being "ripped-off" when we purchase music because we're paying above the marginal cost of production.
Yet the problem with information goods is that information is expensive to make and easy to deliver.
The story about price differences between countries is not a story about exchange rates, nor a story about getting ripped-off or getting bargain prices. It's a story about price discrimination.
In monopolies, price discrimination is good because it allows buyers to pay for the good at their respective reservation price. For instance, everyone needs water piped to their homes for say, $50 a month. The monopoly must charge that price for everyone and can't price discriminate (e.g. charge a different price for everyone). This type of monopoly is inefficient because those that can't afford $50 go without water, although the marginal cost to give that person who can't afford water is nill. Yet with the advent of digital technologies, global distribution and subsequent pricing has changed. Companies that want to sell music to different markets according to that particular market level of income can do so.
Compare music pricing to regional encoding and DVD pricing. It's the same story.
Anyone tried musicrebellion.com? Most songs are only 10 cents and the price goes up with demand. I think that is a neat idea, making popular music slightly costlier than niche music. Why should there be a flat rate?
All your favorite sites in one place!
rtfp
How did this get modded to +4 insightful? For one thing the internet has nothing or very little to do with the rise of the global economy. And the rise of a world government does not follow from a global economy, as we can see from the impotence of the UN. My only guess is this was mean the be a humorous comment and mods read it the wrong way.
residents using Coke's new music store
geez, first weed, now coke...what's next, heroin music service!?!
For anyone that's ever studied the Bible, specifically the book of Revelation, this isn't just an issue of saving money vs. getting ripped off. Rather, its eerily spooky considering that the propechies of Revelation speak a "one world government" and "one world currency" and a time when technology will be rapidly advancing. This *little issue* is proof that as the world becomes more digital and common currency will be needed. Pretty scary for the Christian and other religious /.'ers
The well respected economist magazine has a ppp index related to Big Macs
Of course they make you pay to see it..
a.
I don't think you actually understand what part currencies play in an economy, if you actually propose a way of proxy-purchasing, like you do. One example of a problem pops up to mind, did you ever see 'a beautiful mind'? (as I assume you haven't read up on John Nash and his theories). Anyway, he proposes that him and his pals will all benefit, if they don't all go for the hot babe, but rather all distribute their horniness over the 2nd class babes.
Same goes for bandwidth, if we all route through the "fastest" connection, it won't be so hot anymore. See where I'm heading? I know, I know, it's a silly and flawed way of trying to explain macro economics, but maybe you get my point anyway? Currency is like any other good, spike demand, and there goes your price, and you fuck up their economy while you're at it.
If record companies were really competitive, CD prices would be close to the cost of production (including salary of musician and others, not just pressing plastic of course). In fact, they would often sell below cost, hoping to make it up with some especially popular albums later and we should see a big label go bankrupt once in a while.
In that case, if a label can make ends meet by charging $0.99CDN, they wouldn't charge a euro for the same song in UK, lest the competitors beat them on price. We would also see $0.10 loss leaders with decent music who hope to grab the market share and then somehow raise the price and/or lower costs.
Nothing more to say except hope that smaller labels take hold and make some music that is worth itds price.
That's a good point. We already pay the RI-eh-eh to legally download our music, so why would we pay extra money to someone like Puretracks?
Puretracks must be there to undercut the global market, or for Canadian schmuks who believe in a capitalist free market so much that they want to pay $US0.76 per track anyway.
Meanwhile, the rest of us legalized pirates (dirty commies) will buy CD-Rs and iPods and watch our money go to Martingrad to pump up a centrally planned slush fund which will help us achieve our 5-year plans.
(FTR, I don't believe in downloading music without compensating artists (record labels can whither and die in this info age for all I care) and I don't believe in undercutting the free-market with a inherently doomed centralized wealth redistribution system and think our country totally sucks in this regard.)
Why not use a Canadian proxy server that will let you download music from puretracks.com. There are lots of free, public proxy servers with Canadian ip addresses.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If only the trading of music files were a liquid market. This would be a perfect arbitrage situation. Basically, buy it from one country at a cheaper rate [relative to another country's rate] and sell it there and make the profit. I mean, the profit in Foreign Exchange market works are fractions of a cent, a difference of 20 cents in some cases for music file would be an enormous take on the arbitrage.
argh..this is how I know I've spent too much time working in this industry...
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
they are charging money for something that can be infinitely reproduced with absolutely zero quality loss. as soon as music hit the digital domain, all monetary value was lost. mass production and distribution are now in the hands of the unwashed masses and, as has been driven home countless times, trying to squeeze out the last few dollars, pounds, whatever, out of an old business model is futile. turn your attention to the live concert experience which cannot (yet) be digitally reproduced and infinitely duplicated, and leave me alone.
-knowles
How is it a bargain! It's still way way too expensive. It's like you actually got a physical object which required actual real resources rather than some poof puff of air electrical mumbo jumbo some bastard managed to trick people to pay for.
We have been in a global economy since the shipping innovations of the mid-nineteenth century and British Imperial hegemony promoted truly intercontinental trade. For all of you who think that the internet fundamentally changed how the global markets worked, please review the historical impact of telegraphy. Its huge significance can hardly be underrated, and pretty much everything that Silicon Valley "visionary" philosopher/prognosticators claimed would come to pass with the invention of the internet had already happened with in the age of global telegraphy. I don't really have much respect for those rag writers, they apparently had neither technological competency (otherwise they'd have been tech workers during the bubble) nor had they a strong historical/social science backround, else they'd realize that most "big new things" have historical precedent. For reading on the telegraph see esp. Tom Standage's Victorian Internet for a fun overview of the technology and its economic impact.
Your moniker is "Dutchmaan" so presumably you should be aware of the hegemony of the United Provinces, way back between the fall of the Spanish and the rise of the British Empires? Dutch hegemony was based on international banking and shipping, way back in the seventeenth/eighteenth centuries.
Basically, my point is that if the disparity in music prices was a market economy issue, it would have been solved by wholesalers long ago. The issue has to do with RIAA content control that is taking advantage of economic differences among states to maximise their profits. The same contractual/legal issues, issues that are just as much a barrier for the internet (which is why iTunes has taken a while to expand to Europe); this has nothing to do with the internet (unless you want to talk about piracy, in which case you'd have an argument). To specifically answer your point, only after five hundred years of capitalism in Europe has a unified continental government emerged there, and certainly the consolidation of nation-states in Europe had a lot to do with the geographical reach and modes of trade, but DO NOT assume that the reach of trade implies that governance over the same area. Yes, American hegemony led to IMF/WTO trade rules, but in the post-Cold War world, anything can happen, and don't assume things won't swing the other way (in regards to increasing global market integration, or international compliance with American goals).
America could be heading for financial trouble, if the federal deficits and the state budget disasters do not get solved masterfully (and soon).. Grey Davis was the first casualty, but in the longer term it could mean the relative decline of our (U.S.) power and a reaction towards mercantilism. See Immanual Wallerstein's scholarship :)
Sooner (rather then later) the content providers and merchants will figure out they need a single price for everyone in this single information system.
...they'll realize you'll need artificial trade barriers *cough*region codes*cough*. Already you see it with online music shops being limited only to certain countries. There is no way they will charge one and the same price if they can help it.
You don't need to be an economist to see why it isn't profitable to set the same price point in the richest and poorest country of the world. To some the music will seem incredibly cheap, to others hidiously expensive. It will *always* be better for them if they can set multiple price points. Which is why the "one global price" won't happen.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
recently a belgian music service launched, sort of a 'test project'... the songs cost 2 (!!!) = USD $2,60 (?)
The Awful Truth
Record companies are the real pirates, having leeched off musicians for the past century. When you trade music on p2p systems it costs musicians nothing, and gives them the same valuable exposure they would get if you bought the CD, or just listened to the radio. Record companies have had a free ride for a long time. Now it's our turn.
I'm in the market for a digital camera. I've been looking at the Sony F828, but the retail price here in Australia is $2599. In the US, it's $999. Converted to $AUS, that's $1315. That's almost half price!!
Even factoring in postage and import duty, the price will only rise another $200. The price differential is really shocking. The only downside to ordering from the US direct, is the warranty isn't valid here. I'd have to ship it back to the US to get it fixed.
dave
You see all of these other examples work becouse the shipping costs out way any possible advantage of pricing.
The word you're looking for is outweigh: to exceed in weight, value, or importance.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Hey retards, its the internet. You don't need to cross the border.
http://www.archambault.ca/store/promotion.asp?subc at=188
Check out the story times for this article and this one at The TR.
No attribution exists on either story so as far as I can tell. As a result both 'authors' would appear to be claiming 'ownership'.
It's a small thing really but someone needs to speak up when they find this sort of thing going on. I don't care who wrote the article but shouldn't someone be properly credited? Then again perhaps they are both by the same person?
I am pro-lifechoice.
Shame on you assholes. Now you slashdotted the site, it'll get overloaded, the RIAA will get all het up, and fucking bust their asses in Elcom style. It's like how Napster, and then Kazaa, was great until so many people started using it, then RIAA poisoned the network. kwyjibo.
Let's just do the math here. I pay roughly $70/month for electricity and $45/month for 3Mbit cable. $115/month total divided by an average of (just a guesstimate) 700 songs per month brings me to $0.16/song. That's a large chunk of change I'm saving, especially since I'd have to pay that same $115 anyway.
Why not create an online currency and tie it to something like paypal? You pay 0.99 'nets (or whatever) for the song which is billed to your account...then you pay your account at the end of the month in your own currency.
Retail prices have nothing to do with actual costs and everything to do with price fixing in a non competitive, rigged, market. Everything else is made in China, blank media, jewel cases, offset printing, you don't really think big run CDs are published in the USA do you? Even if you do opt for a small US art house run of 1,000 CDs, the price is 50 cents to a dollar each. Larger runs of millions are obviously cheaper and the cost of a boat ride to and from Asia is about $300 and negligable per unit. The primary reason CDs and music cost what it does is because it can.
Most of the money you spend goes to crap you don't really want to pay for.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
we had a televisionshow on the belgium television about the "best" flemish songs of the past years, people could vote on a website:v oxpop_homepage/index.html
http://www.voxpop.be/tv1_master/subsite/voxpop/
(i didn't vote because i coudn't find 3 good songs in the available collection).
now there is an ad on the radio: "buy the songs online, for only 2.00 euro / piece" ($2.478 at the moment). but all those songs are old!
$2.5 for an old piece of music, thats probably allready on some kind of compilationsdisc you have..
rather expensive, no?
The Maltese lira is a massive currency unit - about the same relation to the UKP and the UKP is to the USD. They'd be paying about 2.50 USD if the tracks were priced at 0.99 lira.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Why only one copy? Once you have the file, you can legally make as many copies as you want in Canada.
However, I don't think you are supposed to sell them or give them away. You could assemble an awesome library of music in Canada and then make a lot of money renting the library and CD burners to Americans just across the border.
(I assume you can rent out CDs just like video stores rent out movies.)
Also, I have no idea where the courts would stand on the copyright status of music legally copied onto CD-Rs in Canada but then brought into the US. Would bringing the CD-Rs into the US be legal? Would the right of first sale apply to the CD-Rs? (I would guess not, since you can't sell or give away a backup copy without giving away the original.)
This is hardly surprising - many things in the UK seem to have a US price point but with a pound sign attached in place of the $. While you're all chearing about the sub-$1000 notebook, in the UK it's a sub-GBP1000 (...then they slap 17% tax on it). An iPod in the UK atarts at GBP249, which is about US$443. It's an expensive place. Tokyo prices without Tokyo wages.
10c
Anything more is a ripoff.
A DOLLAR a song? WHAT! For that money they could press it on digital media, make a nice cover and ship it you!
When it is a dime, Ill buy, and yes, that may be Euridimes.
"/Dread"
Do you know it's really legal? Couldn't they just buy the CDs (not the rights to sell/redistribute) and charge whatever they want for it without paying royalties, and when the RIAA comes, they just say you don't have jurisdiction here? What's stopping me from selling my personal CD collection from Sealand for $0.01/meg, or $0.25/tune? (Perhaps I would have to live on Sealand to avoid prosecution.)
I don't really understand this sort of law or Russia's integration with American laws, but it seems a little too good to be able to cover royalties to the copyright holders, let alone provide a profit margin, although I'm sure operating costs are lower in the motherland.
OTOH, if it's illegitimate, and we all sent money to Russia with love, how can people come to us and say, "you need to pay again for that music."
Almost any cd by Anal Cunt.
:)
A cd with one meaningless song broken up into 60 30 second tracks.
It seems they haven't only broken the idea of 1 track = 1 song, but they've broken the puretracks idea.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Stupid whinging poms. (Either that or get an equivalent service for free.)
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
From their small 'Legal Info' section, it's not clear to me whether or not the artists will get any money from the sale of songs on this website. If I could be reassured that the artists did get a cut of it, I'd use the service - it's just what I'm looking for.
Looking at the prices makes me doubt that the artists can be getting much, if anything from this service.
Surely this indicates that the music industry is acting as a cartel to ensure price fixing in different geographical locations. With DVDs this is then enforced through security features only allowing certain DVDs to be played in certain areas.
About time these companies were taken to court around the globe for illegal trading practices - I believe that this has already happened in Europe for CDs, although it hasn't helped us in the UK.
The UK price seems about right for the time(*), for non-chart CDs... total ripoff (chart CDs were usually slightly cheaper).
*BUT* it does include sales tax (specifically, VAT at 17.5%). Nowadays, online and supermarket competition has forced down the price of chart CDs to under UKP 10.00, and nice shops like Fopp sell many CDs for UKP 5.00-7.00 (US$9-13). Major chains still try to stiff you on the non-chart stuff, but I'm not paying that.
(*) Assuming 1996 exchange rate was 1:1.5 and 2003 rate of 1:1.8
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
It's nothing to do with that. It's all to do with sustaining price differentials.
If the record companies gave their backing, I imagine iTunes could go global tomorrow.
Here in the UK, CDs cost more than in the US, and CDs there cost a lot more than in say India. If iTunes launched as an international service, it would have to be priced for the USA (and then they'd fear losing some money in UK as prices would be cheaper) and it would be too pricey for India.
There's currently a legal case going on where the British Phonographic Industry (BPI - like RIAA) are prosecuting CD-WOW for importing CDs from outside the EU without permission of the copyright holder. That's right, there's something enshrined in EU law that allows companies with copyrights etc to stop people selling grey imports without their permission - even though they've paid for them and paid any customs charges. Their reason *of course*, is to protect the artists.
Interestingly, prices of online companies like HMV are much lower than they used to be, probably because of the pressure being brought to bear by companies like CD-WOW.
http://www.allofmp3.com/onlineview.shtml
There are a vast number of products that are sold at different prices in different markets. It used to be standard practice, in the days of minicomputers, for the price to eb 10,000 dollar i the US and 10,000 pounds in England. If I am not mistaken, prices for movie DVDs varies by country.
/. make it very obvious to consumers that this is going on. There doesn't seem to be a consistent pattern. Sometimes the pricing needs to reflect widely varying taxes and operating costs. Sometimes, a market is poorer and a company must change less in that country to sell at all.
What is new is that the Internet and sites like
If we are truly moving to a global market that removes protective tarrifs, then the Internet will level the pricing differentials except for the differences in taxes. And it will become really obvious to consumers how much their country's taxes ar raising their costs.
Make it AIFF for $.10, and we'll talk.
:)
I don't want to have to mess with windoze headers.
Seriously, though, even $.25 is insanely expensive considering the distribution cost and the size of the market for anything even remotely popular. People really need to re-think the price they're willing to pay for entertainment.
I think about $1 per album is about right, considering that I'm not getting any physical media or packaging. If I want those, I think $3 would be ok.
But I'm only willing to pay that for the convenience - I still don't think copyright is a good thing.
And nothing in the US is $4.99 anyway, since they add a random percentage when you get to the till (various taxes aren't included in the sticker price).
The price differnece must also reflect the different royalty obligations in the different countries. Here are a list of the different collective management societies existing (in case anyone wants to look further into this): Songwriters Copyright Bureau's Visit our Associations and Organisations section which contains links to worldwide copyright and licensing offices and other resources. ALCS - Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society - UK AMCOS - Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society APRA - Australisian Performing Rights Association ASCAP - American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers BIEM - International organisation in France that represents mechanical rights societies BMI - Broadcast Music Incorporated an American performing rights organization BUMA / STEMRA / CEDAR - The Netherlands Copyright Organizations CISAC - The International Confederation Of Societies Of Authors And Composers CMRRA - The Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency GEMA - German Society For Musical Performing and Mechanical Reproduction Rights IMRO - Irish Music Rights Organization JASRAC - Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers. KODA - Copyright & Performing Rights Society for Denmark, Greenland & Faroe Islands. MCPS - British Mechanical Copyright Protection Society Limited NCB - Nordisk Copyright and Mechanical Rights Bureau NMPA - Harry Fox Agency, American Performing rihgs PRS - UK Performing Right Society SABAM - Belgian Society of Authors, Composers, and Publishers SACEM - Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music in France SACD - Society of Authors and Composers of Dramatic Works in France SESAC - Society of European Stage Authors & Composers USA SGAE - Spanish Society of Authors and Publishers. SOCAN - Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada STIM - Swedish Performing Rights Society SUISA - Swiss Performing Rights Society TONO - The Norwegian Performing Right Society
Jax
Big macs, cafe lattes, and pharmaceuticals are all significantly cheaper in Canada. Purchasing power parity suggests that the greenback is still significantly overvalued compared to the loonie. Given that Canada's current account is positive and the U.S.'s current account is negative (which means there should be a greater demand for the C$), many economists think the greenback will continue to fall. 'Course currencies don't always listen to economists. Very few things in this world do.
They offer ogg as an online encoding format!
Effectively these services operate like radio stations, and pay over a certain amount, either per track downloaded, or a flat fee negotiated, to these organisations. The general consensus is that they are legal in their home countries (and for Weblisten, presumably in all of the EU). I believe that Weblisten has been sued by the Spanish RIAA-equivalent but has prevailed. Weblisten has been around for 6 years, and allofmp3.com for 2 years, so one would expect that they would be gone by now if they were not legit.
You can find a good third-party review here - he also received a confirmation email from the Russian copyright organisation confirming allofmp3.com's legitimacy.
I've been signed up to allofmp3.com for a while and had no problems with my credit card, although I've always used a 'one use' number. Customer support is quick and efficient; they've responded within minutes to my queries. There doesn't seem to be any recurring billing either, you just sign up for a fixed term.
They allow online encoding into MP3/AAC/WMA/OGG/MPC but this is taking quite a while at the moment (in the queue for several days rather than only minutes) - presumably due to this mention on Slashdot. Your order is transcoded from 384k mp3 files rather than the uncompressed originals. This hasn't bothered me, but audiophiles might take issue.
Are we (Canadians) already compensating artists with the extra fees? That is what the fee is for. I can download guilt free... if there was anything left that I wanted to download.
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
These folks buying tracks in the UK are not getting "ripped off". Hopefully some of you have heard of economics. The UK economy is inflated, and those who work there recieve inflated income. The price of music set at .99 sterling pound is right on track with the economy.
club.mp3search.ru is a supposedly legit Russian MP3 site that charges only US$20 for 2 GB of downloads. Most albums are less than US$1 each, and most songs are less than a dime each.
"Burn the land and boil the sea You can't take the sky from me" -- Joss Whedon - Firefly
it's a matter of time before the formation of some semblance of world government.
Multinational corporations are trying their best to merge what they like from the United States, unfettered free enterprise, (they dislike the instability of democracy which might compromise that), with what they like from the People's Republic of China, authoritarian suppression of dissent (they dislike all that Marxist rhetoric the Party was founded upon).
Arguably, if you strongly control both the United States and China you pretty much have the world wrapped up these days.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I've given up on online music for now. I can get almost whatever I want on CD for about $7.50 (including 3 day shipping) in new or nearly new condition on half.com. No DRM or lossy compression. Is it as good as what online music should have been? No. But it's better than online music currently is.
It amazes me how many people here in the U.S. do not understand this!
I have friends and relatives who are still accumulating more debt for unnecessary things.
Unfortunate uniform behavior of both the general public and Federal government. The situation is a little different for the state governments: they know that they can not print money.
-Mark
I don't know anything about these online music stores. If they use the same format, and if they can be re-sold (are you allowed to re-sell?) then there might be room for arbitrage.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Pure capitalism utterly collapsed in 1929. It was and never could be sustainable. Pure communism is the same way. We have a hybrid now, and as a centrist I like it.
-no broken link
Hey everyone. We can go to websites in russia and get music for a lot less. Yay!
Hey everyone. These executives are sending their programming jobs to russia because they want to save a quick buck! Waa!
I know that
-no broken link
Any pay-per download service selling to Canada is counting on Canadians to pay more attention to the US news than to Canadian, which is probably a pretty safe bet.
Let me get this straight......they offered a limited time promotion......which you took advantage of......and then you were bugged when they stopped it and disagree with them stopping a limited time promotion?
I'm sorry, but excuse me if I have little sympathy for you.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
What about mail order? Do the companies that sell on www.pricewatch.com charge extra to shipments with Canadian addresses? Are shipments held at the border by Canadian Customs until the 29% surcharge plus customs duties are paid?
Customs are definitely enforced...especially on hardware. I tend to shop with companies that support BorderFree (e.g. ecost and creative labs) that will tell you UP FRONT exactly what the final cost in CDN dollars will be. The other way you get your shipment right away no problem (i.e. they're not held), but then you get billed a few weeks later by some random company that paid your customs for you.
Formerly this didn't happen to me with thinkgeek, but it has in the last couple of years. And a friend of mine has repeatedly had to pay tobacco tax on his tobaccoless cigarettes, annoyingly, despite their clear labelling as such.
You can sometimes get better deals (especially now with the weak American dollar), but you've got to watch it pretty carefully. Amazon.ca pretty much trumps everyone in the CD/DVD market, 90-95% of the time.
I was trying to work out how much my music collection is worth to me and i reckoned for the average track i would pay between 10p-50p, and something i liked maybe 50p-1, anything teeny-poppy would be worth less than 10p. I dont think people deserve in the range of millions for one pretentious im-so-amazing-and-special song thats been made up of reused melodies and badly sounding midi instruments.
Also i went to Egypt recently and their exchange rate is totally messed up! 2 egyptian pounds is worth about as much as 1 to us but the exchange rate is 11 egyption pounds to the british pound! the result - you can have a good full lunch in the best hotels in egypt for the same price as mcdonalds in london!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Firebird on win32 gets:
Thank you for visiting Puretracks.com
Currently our website supports Internet Explorer 5.0 and above on the Windows operating system (Win 98SE / ME / 2000 / XP / 2003), and is available to Canadian residents only.
We value our Mac audience, however the Windows Media player for the Mac platform is not currently compatible with Microsoft protected audio content. Puretracks is currently working to make our service available to Mac users.
Phillip
Damn, I'm good.
Yeah, right.
My problem was not that the price jumped, but that it jumped that much. They said in the news.com.com article that they would use a floor of 50-75 cents a song, but I saw NOTHING that was at that price immediately following the end of the promotion. Everything was .90 or more. To my knowledge this is still the case.
- Neil
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
But if I'm wearing out my welcome, I'll avoid such posts anymore.
You can help by suggesting other sites which would welcome me posting a link to my article, sites that aren't likely to be frequented by the Slashdot crowd.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Ah, no offence meant - it was relatively early morning for me, and I'm not a mornings person :-)
:-) I guess you've already sounded out k5 on the subject, but I've not regularly read there since people started fleeing to HuSi.
I also seem to remember seeing this exact same(?) comment attached to a number of articles here recently, which did grate a little - in a "we *know*, we get the message!" sort of way. To be honest, my beef is more with the moderators that continue to mod it up, but that's another gripe entirely...
As for other sites, well, I only really read here and HuSi at the moment, and I would advise against posting it to HuSi, as it's by no means a tech site. Post it once, we'll go "yeah, it's shit, whatever"; post it two or three times, we'll get arsey
It's official. Most of you are morons.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Can't Canadians download for free now? Who the hell would pay 67 cents for a song they can't resell, burn, or share?
Why? Because the global economy is currently on the verge of a systematic virtual overload and is being held together precariously by strands of black/green ether that will eventually explode. When this happens the only recourse will be to seek assistance from outside the known parameters, hence congruence will emerge. Into to the consistent light which propagates the semi-translucent wavelengths of time.