Why Apple changed its tune in Europe

Apple, yes Mr. JOBS, should also address the choise issue. Her in France, for instance, it is nearly impossible to find new and interesting recordings, especially Country, Rock and even Lang Lang’last Classical piano CD. Zut alors!!! Even the German site and the UK site are more up to date! Ive always legally downloaded, but geeze, why knuckle under to the SACEM (French ASCAP)? Mr JOBS HELP!!!

“The issue stems from a basic discrepancy: British customers have been paying 79 pence per song on iTunes (about $1.63 in today’s currency market) while the rest of Europe was paying .99 euros — roughly 20% less.”
— I’m not sure that I follow you here. While you (and perhaps the English as well) compare prices to the Dollar, recently a volatile and unstable currency, we here on the continent do not. The more logical comparison, especially for the European Commission, is pound sterling to the euro. One euro is currently exchanging for 76 pence. Therefore the rest of Europe are not paying roughly 20% less. The British are paying the equivalent of 1.04 EUR or you could say Europeans are paying the equivalent of 75 pence. The difference is 5%. A difference, yes, but not shocking.
What we really want here, for all Europeans, is the ability to purchase off the US iTunes store. More choice and nice prices in weak dollars.

Apple will *raise* prices if the music labels don’t “standardize” their prices. The problems originate from the music labels, themselves, not the Apple iTunes Music Store.

If the music labels do adjust and standardize their prices — then — the Apple iTunes Music Store can keep the lower prices for the U.K.

So, whether Apple *raises* the prices (for *everyone* in Europe) or lowers them (for the U.K.) is totally dependent upon the music labels…

The only tune Apple has changed here is instead of accommodating the labels’ country-by-country royalty-based pricing, it is now willing to throw out labels who won’t price consistently across Europe.

Either way, I don’t see how this is a slam on Apple.

Nice one Elmer, thnx for deleting my comment, shows that rather than respond you are happy to just press the delete key and keep up your pointless FUD postings, why don’t you get a job doing something positive for society and stop annoying the world for a living!

“What twisted logic led to the county-by-country pricing scheme is still not clear …”: It is due to the fact that royalty contracts have been set up separately for each country. In the good ol’ days of vinyl, this was the way to exploit the import barriers to maximize profit by having country-specific prices.

ex ped: Interesting. Thanks for that. –Philip Elmer-DeWitt