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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."
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
The economist just added a Starbuck's tall latte index (a purchasing-power parity test) similar to their Big Mac Index. How long will it be until they add an "mp3 index"?
Both the tall latte index and the Big Mac index show that the Canadian dollar is undervalued compared to the US dollar (which means that we get things cheaper here!). Sweet.
Well you can download a tank of gas? You see all of these other examples work becouse the shipping costs out way any possible advantage of pricing. That is to say even if you save 3dollars a gallon buying in the US, shipping just one tank of gas cost you more then if you just pay the overcharge in europe. Also most of the overcharge is due to taxes, so if you import the customs agent is going to ask for his tax money. Now the net doesnt really have customes agent. So people in .UK could just buy albums in The US site and download the content directly paying the US price. Cost of distribution is nill on the net, while in meat space it keeps you in line. Similarly we in the US should just use the .CA music as its cheaper then ours. I think the true solution is a single global monetary system. All of these exchange rates just play on old world devliery systems, in a information age they are a relic. To combat this system lets just setup a company in what ever country has the cheapest music, use it to proxy all purchases no matter where the end user lives, thus everyone gets the same lowest price. Sooner (rather then later) the content providers and merchants will figure out they need a single price for everyone in this single information system.