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iTunes Europe Goes Live
Spad writes "The Register is reporting the launch of iTunes in the UK, France and Germany. "iTunes will carry 700,000 songs from the five major record labels and independents, and prices for the download service start at 79 pence or 99 euro cents per song." It's not ideal (99c is about 55p) but it's better pricing than expected. I for one will be signing up to use it."
So I'm curious as to what sorts of predictions people have for when the market gets completely saturated with music services. Particularly with ones like OD2's which is a generic music store that they sell to lots of people which leads to a lot of the same stuff with different branding.
Will we start seeing buyouts? Which ones do you think will go out of business?
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Why not all of Europe?
Well, probably, because they could not agree with the record companies. That's why.
I can't use it with my Apple operating system, and I'm expected to pay nearly 50% more than Americans?
Seems like a huge own-goal to me, and I'm a Mac fanatic.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
You do understand that the difference between XP/2K and 98 is pretty huge when it comes to underlying technology, right? Of course you don't, otherwise you wouldn't make a comment like that. Apple would much rather focus on making it work well on the platforms that people use now, vs. grandfathering in a 6 year old OS.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
0.99 euro also converts to 1.19788 dollars. ;)
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So just imagine how much you get shafted when compared to the U.S.
However, to be honest
1. You should be used to this, especially compared to the U.S. Software prices are in the order of 15-40% higher here. One might argue 'shipping costs' but fact of the matter is that the same price difference applies to 'download only' versions of the software.
2. They needed a nice psychological number. 0.99 is one in many countries, but would put the price too high in the UK. 0.49 is another, but would put it too low. So go in the middle - 0.79
Or, more likely
3. When the Euro was first instated, the exchange rate was 1 Euro = (almost) 79p.
And it is as legal as the black market. Just what I want. I like getting visits from men in dark suits after downloading 100 songs from Russia that are 100% legal. Sign me up!
iTunes Europe might not be as successful as in the US since not all people listen to music in English. Until iTunes finds a way to customize the selection based on geography, I for one would not be willing to navigate through the site searching for my music.
Also, many artists have their recordings in multiple languages (like Eros/Laura in italian/spanish/portugese etc). Would be interesting to see how they unify or resolve the cultural differences
Doesn't that 79p include the VAT as well? The 99cents price in the US does not include sales tax. You need to consider that before you start whining about the high price...
Removing the 17.5% VAT, the price is about 67pence. Which is about $1.21. So you are complaining about a 22 cent difference... And do you think Apple should be adjusting the price when the exchange rate changes? Right now the dollar happens to be really low. What happens when it gets higher? Apple would have to raise the prices. Do you want that?
Peace
Seriously, don't worry so much. If you are afraid that "men in dark suits" will visit you after "downloading 100 songs" you clearly have problems and should probably seek professional help...
Remember that it has taken time for independent labels in the States to sign up. Just because they haven't done so yet doesn't mean that they won't; You can bet that the indies have a high proportion of iPod-toting staff who'd be keen on iTMS and the bosses won't want to pass up the opportunity to make even more money. Patience!
Now here is a good example of using big words in titles that are not at all covering for the real thing. "iTunes Europe goes Live". I didn't know that Europe was only UK, France and Germany. This is the same thing as to say that USA is California and Florida.
The 51st state is Afghanistan, and the 52nd is Iraq. Haven't you been paying attention?
The whole idea of having some content exclusive to only parts of the world is just stupid. It really shows the media companies are living in some bizarro alternate marketplace where a bigger audience is not preferable over control. Apple should try to bring everyone together in a single gigantic music hub. I want to listen to what the Japanese market listens to, the UK indie scene, Swedish garage bands, etc. Right now iTunes is simply your local music store in digital form but it could be so much more!
Why not simply go the full mile? I want every music track, movie, tv-show and computer game ever produced, and I've got an attention span of about 30 seconds so you better hurry up. Sell to me dammit, I've got cash! It's the inevitable conlcusion to all of this, being able to queue up that one funny episode from your fav sitcom from Poland from the 80's, and having it instantly. The money the media companies could be making is a magnitude greater than what they get today, by truly selling on a global level absolutely everything they've got in their dusty archives and all future productions. It's ultimate distribution channel so if it can be digitized and sold it should.
Sigh, something tells me they'd rather just work on DRM and new region encoding schemes.
It's like deja vu all over again.
Incidentally, the technology you're speaking of is background services. iTunes uses them to perform any task that might take processor time away from music playback...they use separate services for managing the iPod, downloading from the music store and burning CDs.
It's kind of an unusual practice in the PC world...generally, services are used for things which run all the time and are related to maintenance of the system. So why does iTunes use services as opposed to threads? Well, I dunno. My theory is that contacting services is similar to contacting the background threads used in OS X, making it easier to adapt the existing codebase.
Anyhow, if you're still using Windows 98, throw it away! God, that operating system is a piece of shit....Windows 2000/XP is worth the price just for the time saved from not having to reboot all the time or worry about bluescreening.
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I'm in the Netherlands, I've had to fix Macs for a living alongside "normal" pc's.
I haven't seen a lot Macs, even though that the store that I worked for was one of the biggest Mac-retailers in the NL.
Could it be because Macs don't break as often?
Uh, actually the services DECREASE the damage from a crash. If iTunes crashes, your music downloads still go through. If the Music Store crashes, your music still plays. I've never had to restart gearsecurity, and it DOES get shut down when it isn't in use. Furthermore, the resources it "sucks down" are paltry compared to Nero (20 meg) or DirectCD (14 meg). Anyhow, it's not that Apple can't HANDLE multithreading, just that they didn't. They chose to modularize the program. Which is kind of commendable...it's nice to know if I'm not burning a CD, it's not loaded into memory. Or that if I didn't use my iPod, I could turn off iPod support. Worthwhile when your music program wants to use 60+ meg.
Anyhow, the reason they "worry" about the music is that iTunes, unlike many other jukebox-type apps, is built to handle massive amounts of music. I have 20,000 files in my database. Doing anything in that database -- adding to it, removing from it, even sorting it -- could take massive resources from the processor and lock the program, stopping the music. Adding a few thousand songs CAN cause the interface to freeze for a minute, but it doesn't stop the music, mostly due to some clever design including the threading model. Furthermore, iTunes is one of the few music programs I've seen that doesn't stop playing while a CD is spinning up on my old Athlon Gig. Although, it does bother me that it has to skip a second to update track info in a song that's currently playing...it doesn't do that on the mac.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Personally, I agree that it's not a good deal for purchasing an entire album, for the reasons you listed. Where it is a really good deal, is purchasing individual tracks. For example, there are all sorts of tracks by my favorite artists available only on compilation albums. I don't want any of the other tracks on the compilation album, just the one. So it's great that I can pay 99 cents and get the song I want, rather than $18.99 in a store for the entire album, which I wouldn't listen to. The same goes for many reissued albums--Sonic Youth have put out a "deluxe" version of "Dirty". I already own the cd, but would like to have some of the new extra tracks without repurchasing the whole thing.
You also choose
- NOT to support artists, who have no say in whether or not their music is on allofmp3 and get little to no money in return
- NOT to support change in the US by saying "hey, I am willing to buy music for a fair price," but instead demanding an impossibly low price.
- NOT to support the concept of copyright, which is all artists have to protect them from rampant piracy. It's not just there to make corporations money, you know...there are artists whose work is so heavily pirated they've basically become unviable (several hip-hop acts come to mind).
- CHOOSE to support a black market whose "legality" is based on a crooked organization who has assumed control over music it had no part in making and plays no part in supporting. You may think that it should be legal, but in my eyes it's no better than KaZaa.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
That the majority of users are not using windows XP. The majority of windows users are still at the win 98 stage. Apple is instead trying to make it work well on the newest platform available. People who spend mor eto upgrade thier computer are more afluent and therefore are a better demographic to have running their software. Plus, it probely wouldn't look as "good" as it does on XP. Thats most likely the real reason.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Hey, if you don't like it, don't pay for it. One could make the argument that $5 is too much to pay for sugared water, a lump of plastic, fried potatoes and seared meat between bread. That doesn't lower the cost of a happy meal.
Plenty of people like iTunes. They've sold 70 million songs in a little over a year. Obviously these people think they're getting something worthwhile. I think it's great that people are willing to pay for what's essentially a bunch of bits. Seeing as I like computers and creating content for them, I'd like to eventually be able to sell some of my bits...and through iTMS, there's now a market for them.
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About time! What are the middlemen value-added services again?
dani++
Typically, a "media" company owns its own content. Apple owns no real content (either than its ads), nor is it making a play (yet) for a content company (or vice-versa, e.g. Sony buying Apple); so it doesn't appear that Apple is moving towards becoming a media company.
However, as you noted, Apple is certainly branching into consumer electronics, so it's more likley that they will continue to be a hardware company, but just one not completely focused on the computer market only. Given Apple's numerous awards for industrial design and cachet as being "sexy" and "upscale", it's probably a smart move (as the success of the iPod has proven).
Hardware was, is and probably will remain to be what Apple's all about.
Son, let me tell you about this thing called "Copyright law"...
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Let's say you walked into a showroom in France, and were quoted a different price than the Belgian who walked in before you, for no other reason than nationality, in order to protect price controls.
In the iTunes example, if iTunes launch 20+ different sites, one for each country, and each has different prices, but each allows anyone from anywhere in the EU, and makes no differentiation based on nationality, that would be acceptable. In the case of sites like, for instance, Amazon, I think that it's probably OK to charge different shipping.
There was a recent case where people were getting different airline prices from different countries in the EU.
There are *no* shipping costs, yet i-tunes US won't sell music to a UK customer, presumably because they figured out they can extract more money from them...
.99 per song they would be happy to just sell through one world-wide store and not have to come up with hundreds of different ones in each different country. Sure, maybe they could gouge a little extra profit out of the U.K. but then again they are losing sales from all the countries they will *never* set up a store for as well as a year or more worth of sales while they were setting up the Euro-iTunes.
Or presumably because it would get them sued by copyright holders because the deal under which they sell songs in the USA only covers the USA or indicted for tax evasion because each nation has it's own laws & taxes.
I'm sure that if Apple is making a profit at
Wasn't the original copyright period in the US something like 14 years (with a possible 14 year renewal)?
Seems like its been more than 28 years since 1973.