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Canadian iTunes Music Store Opens
Trillan writes "After appearing on December 1st, iTunes music store Canada is now officially open. Price is only $0.99 CDN (about $0.83 US) per song, so it's less expensive than the US store. This is probably fair since our CDs are usually cheaper here, too, at least on the west coast."
potential marketsize-wise, it's a no brainer where the next iTMS has to be: japan.
In other country Apple had problem getting indies onboard, one would have thought they would be prepared this time. This ain't gonna work if they have no music from here to sell us, The rest of Canada might appreciate but the national fiber is too strong here for a majority of people to adhere to a service that doesn't sell them their own music...
"No George Bush."
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
"Don't expect the store to be up for long."
Yes, I will chalk that bit of insight up there with the infamous, "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."
If you think the fact that iTunes is one of the few "legal" places to download music is the reason for its success in the United States, you might be right. Fortunately for them, it isn't.
Some things to ponder...
Via your Canadian "free" channels, how hard is it to find a COMPLETE album, with all of the correct song and album information, converted consistently well to digital file format, complete with album cover art embedded? Because on iTunes it is easy-as-fucking-pie.*
There is something to be said for being able to fire up iTunes, type in "Old Hundredth," sample the recordings available, find one I like, and buy it AND have it on my hard drive in a matter of 60 seconds.
* Not to be confused with pie-fucking.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
That's irrelevant; as someone here once said, $1 is still a $1 here, no matter what it's worth anywhere else.
Because partitioning the market makes the market less efficient. The less efficient a market is, the more it can be exploited for profit. And they can do this because the music copyright holders don't compete based on price. They can maximize profits by charging Canadians one price and Americans a higher price, but only if Americans are barred from shopping in the same store as Canadians.
A bit of a side rant: Is anyone else out there really annoyed that corporations militantly defend their right to source work and materials from wherever's cheapest, but fight tooth and nail to prevent consumers from buying goods from wherever's cheapest? When I try to sell my labor, I have to compete in a global market, but they get to price their music on a country by country basis.
Fair for us, not you. :)
There are many, many differences between Canada and the United States -- including, in this specific case, entirely different organizations for Apple to negotiate with.
ITMS US has the rights to distribute the music on their store as negotiated with the US companies who hold those rights.
But, and this is crucial, those companies don't hold the rights to distribute those songs in Canada, or the UK, or Spain, or any other country but the US. So in order to sell the songs to Canadians (or in the UK, or in Spain) they have to negotiated the distribution rights with the people who do hold the rights in each of those countries.
Hence each country needs its own store, with distribution rights negotiated with the local rights holder, which only sells to credit card billing addresses within the country to which those distribution rights pertain.
Easy with the conspiracy theories. Canadian content laws only apply to broadcasts on the public airwaves.
In all liklihood, the problem is that the local Candian rights holder for the Foo Fighters hasn't signed on with Apple Canada yet.
Actually, price discrimination (what you call partitioning the market) is often more efficient. However, it may allow a producer with market power to obtain greater profits.
The argument is this: if Canadians have a lower willingness to pay for online music than Americans, then producers can make more profit by charging a lower price to Canadians than they do to Americans. However, if producers are forced to charge the same price in both markets (or if Americans can easily buy in the lower-priced Canadian market), then some Canadians will be priced out of the market, which is a deadweight loss to the economy (i.e. it is inefficient).
Allowing the producer to "partition the market" and charge different prices in different markets may increase profits but it may also increase total welfare (i.e. increase efficiency), since some consumers that would otherwise be priced out of the market can now obtain the good.
In the limit, if a monopolist can perfectly price discriminate (i.e. charge each consumer their reservation price), then there will be no deadweight loss. From society's perspective, this is the most efficient outcome. However, the producer will capture all the surplus (i.e. profit).
Thus, you can validly object to price discrimination on distributive grounds (as you appear to be doing, by complaining about music copyright holders' profits), but you cannot necessarily claim that their practices are inefficient.
And just like the US store, I'm sure it'll feature:
A lot of pop artists;
A good selection of works by earlier groups in various genres;
Not a whole lot of imports; and
A lot of partial albums for major singers, because some corporate asshat out there thinks that's good marketing.
I used to download lots of music from Napster in college. Burned it CD, played the hell out of it. But I didn't keep most of those mp3s, and today with a steady job and a little different viewpoint, I'm willing to pay money for good copies and to support artists I like. So I checked out iTunes and loved it. I've spent about $80 there in the first month.
But when I run across artists like Enigma (whose albums have been chopped to hell) and Genesis (none of the most notable songs from the Peter Gabriel era are available), what do I do? I load up my p2p and start searching.
I don't blame iTunes. I commend them for doing the best they can to bring fire to the music industry cavemen. I admire what they're doing, but if the music makers want me as a consumer, they're going to have to deal with me on my level.
Step 1: Buy $10 plot of Land in Canada and stick mailbox on it. Step 2: Apply for credit card. Step 3: Save money in canadaian iTunes store!
>Via your Canadian "free" channels, how hard is it to find a COMPLETE album, with all of the correct song and album information, converted consistently well to digital file format, complete with album cover art embedded? Because on iTunes it is easy-as-fucking-pie.*
Indeed. I purchased "Vertigo" (duh) on my Windows XP desktop, but my old Thinkpad 760XL laptop can only run Win98SE (P166MMX, 104MB max), so I tried to convert the protected AAC file to MP3. Oups, it's got DRM, it won't allow me.
Fine then, I'm in Canada, I could've downloaded it freely, but heck now I even paid for it, nothing's stopping me from downloading it (not even a guilty conscience).
Well, what do you know. It took me no less than NINE downloads before I finally found a file that wasn't 25 MINUTES OF SILENCE.
Then, on the two files I got that had the actual tune, one was badly encoded/ripped or something.
Heck, a quick check in my P2P-downloaded tunes shows up a lot of tracks that are 128kbps but only 22KHz.
Seems the industry is fighting from the inside now (silent files and crappy encoding). Can't blame them, and it's fine by me. They're playing within the P2P rules, and I'd rather see them poison P2P networks than send stupid multi-million dollars lawsuits onto kids and grandmothers.
At 0.99$CAN per track (9.99$CAN for most albums), I'm sure as hell not gonna waste my time on P2P anymore if iTMS has what I want.
Now that we have a TRUE music store (screw those idiots who sell Microsoft WMA crap), I hope they'll remove that stupid surtax.