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iTMS for Canada
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Price predictions
Canada will be $1.50 + Tax
European users get to pay extra - EU1.50 + TAX.
The UK will get the extra special premuim price of 2 pounds.
The record companies will ensure that non US customers get ripped off - just because they can - especially in the UK where its "Rip Off Britain".
Canada will be $1.50 + Tax
European users get to pay extra - EU1.50 + TAX.
The UK will get the extra special premuim price of 2 pounds.
The record companies will ensure that non US customers get ripped off - just because they can - especially in the UK where its "Rip Off Britain".
If you converted the US store prices over to Canadian currency, right now we'd be paying about $1.36 CDN per song. As for tax... well, maybe Apple will make it $1.50 per song with tax already included (probably just GST), so you know exactly how much you're paying. $15 per album in most cases.
What I'm sincerely hoping is that Apple manages to sign a lot of Canadian labels/artists in one fell swoop, especially if they can nab electronic artists. I don't remember them having a lot of the more Canadian-oriented Nettwerk artists on the US iTunes store, for example. BT? Delerium? I'd love to see them there, if they aren't already. I'd also like to see artists like The New Deal or Misstress Barbara on the store.
What I'm sincerely hoping is that Apple manages to sign a lot of Canadian labels/artists in one fell swoop, especially if they can nab electronic artists. I don't remember them having a lot of the more Canadian-oriented Nettwerk artists on the US iTunes store, for example. BT? Delerium? I'd love to see them there, if they aren't already. I'd also like to see artists like The New Deal or Misstress Barbara on the store.
Re: Question
The answer is 'yes' you can. My son who is in Australia with a US bank account, has used it from day one just as if he were here.
The answer is 'yes' you can. My son who is in Australia with a US bank account, has used it from day one just as if he were here.
$1.50 sounds about right. Well, close to the price point Apple will probably ask. I see it at $1.49, because that extra penny means so darn much. Whatever.
A buck and a half is still too much given the lower price of music in Canada. New release albums regularly cost $14.99; an encoded version should sell for less. The absence of physical media, album art and liner notes/lyrics alone should reduce the price. Don't forget usage restrictions and any sound loss from encoding. IMHO $1.25 is more reasonable with $12.99 per album of 11 songs or more.
But on another tangent, the iTMS' pricing scheme is too rigid. I still think Apple should sell some of it's 128 kbps AACs at $0.75 U.S. ("a cut for 3 quarters.") Considering the sometimes flaky quality of the encoding (check out the tinny, quavering chorus of Rhiannon on Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits, for one example-- uugh) it makes no sense to buy a track or album so inferior to a CD at comparable price. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of examples of great encoding on the Store (just about late 1990s-or-later album will do.) It's the broad inconsistency that makes the lone rate bothersome.
I noticed the iTMS' album rate is especially exorbitant on Universal's 20th Century Masters collections. Here in Canada they sell for $7.99-$8.99; that's ~$5.80-$6.50 U.S. And the iTMS wants $9.99 U.S.? Please. I know Apple's in a bit of a bind considering regualtions and contracts, but it's pricing scheme needs flexibility. It doesn't account for discount compilation albums or quantity-purchase discounts retailers offer. Perhaps something closer to the Amazon model (various prices with plenty of sub-retail discounts) would be more reasonable.
A buck and a half is still too much given the lower price of music in Canada. New release albums regularly cost $14.99; an encoded version should sell for less. The absence of physical media, album art and liner notes/lyrics alone should reduce the price. Don't forget usage restrictions and any sound loss from encoding. IMHO $1.25 is more reasonable with $12.99 per album of 11 songs or more.
But on another tangent, the iTMS' pricing scheme is too rigid. I still think Apple should sell some of it's 128 kbps AACs at $0.75 U.S. ("a cut for 3 quarters.") Considering the sometimes flaky quality of the encoding (check out the tinny, quavering chorus of Rhiannon on Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits, for one example-- uugh) it makes no sense to buy a track or album so inferior to a CD at comparable price. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of examples of great encoding on the Store (just about late 1990s-or-later album will do.) It's the broad inconsistency that makes the lone rate bothersome.
I noticed the iTMS' album rate is especially exorbitant on Universal's 20th Century Masters collections. Here in Canada they sell for $7.99-$8.99; that's ~$5.80-$6.50 U.S. And the iTMS wants $9.99 U.S.? Please. I know Apple's in a bit of a bind considering regualtions and contracts, but it's pricing scheme needs flexibility. It doesn't account for discount compilation albums or quantity-purchase discounts retailers offer. Perhaps something closer to the Amazon model (various prices with plenty of sub-retail discounts) would be more reasonable.
So it's a sticky situation. Develop the international versions of the music store at the risk of slowing down the Windows version, or speed it up in order to tie over sales before windows is ready?
I know that what I said was confusing (very, very confusing) but hopefully I threw so much out there that something made sense.
Confusing? No. Dumb? You bet! What a programmer does and what Apple legal does with the record companies are so totally seperate I would be surprised if they even knew where each others offices are, if they are even in the same building. Yes....that's it....I'll program and do my own legal!! Sheesh.
I know that what I said was confusing (very, very confusing) but hopefully I threw so much out there that something made sense.
Confusing? No. Dumb? You bet! What a programmer does and what Apple legal does with the record companies are so totally seperate I would be surprised if they even knew where each others offices are, if they are even in the same building. Yes....that's it....I'll program and do my own legal!! Sheesh.
$1 vs $0.99... international pricing structures
With regard to pricing once iTMS goes to canada and beyond, is it common practice in other countries to use slightly less than whole unit increments?
For instance, a $1 item in the USA is often priced $0.99. Heck, gas is priced using 0.9 cents ontop of the base price (e.g. $1.299/gallon...). Do other countries do the same, or is it common to have an item for exactly 1 euro, 1 pound, 10,000 lira (in italy before the euro)... will we be buying songs in turkey for 999,999 lira, or will they round it off to a cool million?
With regard to pricing once iTMS goes to canada and beyond, is it common practice in other countries to use slightly less than whole unit increments?
For instance, a $1 item in the USA is often priced $0.99. Heck, gas is priced using 0.9 cents ontop of the base price (e.g. $1.299/gallon...). Do other countries do the same, or is it common to have an item for exactly 1 euro, 1 pound, 10,000 lira (in italy before the euro)... will we be buying songs in turkey for 999,999 lira, or will they round it off to a cool million?
First off, I'll refrain from making this a personal attack.
I understand that my idea is obviously flawed, as pointed out by many already. The connections between developing the Windows iTMS and the international legal situation are almost none, so I see how what I said was wrong.
On the subject of the pricing, especially in Canada, I think it will be $1.49.
P.S. If you would like to quote a post, click the quote button. That will allow you to respond in that forum while quoting a particular post.
Unfortunately no, it says you have already downloaded all purchased music.
If you go to purchase the music you already own, it says you already own this music, do you wish to purchase it again.
Lousey design. I can understand if they have bandwidth costs, but the recording industry should not take their share out of it if I have to pay for their bandwidth costs of downloading music I already own.
Of course I'm a developer. I'm also an experienced beta tester. I have beta tested Windows since Windows 95 OEM SR 2. However normally I wouldn't expect that type of bug during formatting a partition, that it formats another as well. Maybe Disk Utility was messed up, as I did not know I had a blank 4.8GB partition....maybe it just decided that it wanted one and adjusted the size of my other partition and displayed it as if it was the current valid partition map, I dont know. All I did was change the format of the blank partition and bam, both got erased. The closest thing I ever had from MS was a Fat32 bug in a beta of Windows 2000 that caused Windows 2000 installer to erase a Fat32 hard drive.
But getting back to the point....what should I backup on a computer? I had a few projects on here, most not so important. My cocoa apps, backed up and I stopped developing them a long time ago. My video projects? too bad, werent that important. My music? never though of it. Shouldn't have had to think of it.
You certainly don't need to de-authorize anything to backup your music files. De-authorizing affects your computer, the files themselves never change. Just copy them onto a CD and they can still be played on any computer you authorize. It's not that difficult.
Well, I've had it work for me in the instance of a single song. I don't know what to tell you, except contact customer service. They've been pretty good to me in the one or two problems I've had.
Actually the dollar isnt really rising, it onlly seems to go up, because we compaire it to the u.s dollar witch is falling. if you compaire it to the euro, it isnt realy gaining or loosing value
aethier
Panther is not even alpha yet, the fact that you would consider installing it on your main system is beyond me. It clearly states the condition of the software and that you should backup, it's not Apple's fault.
This is something I agree with, Apple should have a system to re-download.
I seriously doubt the fact you claim you are a developer, but anyone can be a Microsoft beta tester. Anyone with the smallest amount of understanding in computers would know that changing the format of a drive will destroy everything, that includes partition tables. (Except FAT and FAT32 on one drive)
This is a very closed view. As I said, the fact you installed Panther on your main system without a backup is beyond me. However, lets assume all OS's were perfect and never destroyed your data. Not even a full format with zero all data destroyed your data. What happens if your hard-drive fails? What happens if your computer is stolen? Saying you shouldn't have to backup makes it sound like it is Apple's fault, when it is entirely your own.
The first part is not entirely accurate, but as many people have already pointed it out no doubt, I'll just add that if you make your music folder on your iPod visible...voila you have the ability to copy your music back. There are even programs that will do this for you.
AppleMatt
You doubt that I am a developer? Check all my .NET threads on MacRumors pointing out why .NET is better than Java.
I have 2 years history with .NET, 10 years with C++, I have worked in Pascal, x86 assembly, Cocoa, Apple Basic, and GW Basic, along with JavaScript, ActionScript, and PHP3 and 4. I have worked with Linux, MacOS, MacOS X, BeOS, OS/2, Windows, and several flavors of DOS and CPM. I have changed partition types many times on my PCs without affecting other existing partitons.
Second, I didn't say anything about formatting my main partition. I said Panther's disk utility said I had a second partition that wasnt being used of 4GB, and I formatted that partition expecting only that partition to be touched (Infact, I locked the Macintosh HD partition first to prevent the utility from changing it, which from what I understand, is the correct way to do it).
Third, this is a personal computer, I would of course backup my XServes (which I own two of). I would not classify Panther as an alpha. It is technically close to feature complete, with only bugs being worked out, according to the latest rumors. That is more of a beta.
not a bug
But are you part of Apple's Developer Connection or did you go get Panther off of LimeWire or something? If you are an experienced mac user or beta tester, you should know that you cannot erase one partition on a drive. Partitions cannot be resized or reformatted without initializing the entire drive. My guess is that Disk Utility even told you that (as it does in Jaguar) and you blindly clicked Continue without even reading it.
But are you part of Apple's Developer Connection or did you go get Panther off of LimeWire or something? If you are an experienced mac user or beta tester, you should know that you cannot erase one partition on a drive. Partitions cannot be resized or reformatted without initializing the entire drive. My guess is that Disk Utility even told you that (as it does in Jaguar) and you blindly clicked Continue without even reading it.
As others have said, if its $1.49 CDN per song, forget it. I can buy CD's for about $13 usually (A&B sound) It better be $0.99 a song, or I'm taking my business elsewhere.
I was watching the National I think a few weeks back and there was a Toronto Company that was starting a Canadian Music Store online that would be available in the Fall. Anyone know the name of it? It sounded fairly competitive. The good thing was it wasnt tied to a US company that would need to convert dollars. It could set the market price according to Canadian dollars.
I was watching the National I think a few weeks back and there was a Toronto Company that was starting a Canadian Music Store online that would be available in the Fall. Anyone know the name of it? It sounded fairly competitive. The good thing was it wasnt tied to a US company that would need to convert dollars. It could set the market price according to Canadian dollars.
Re: not a bug
Actually it did, but it didn't say what you say, and the online help is not available during the install process.
I didn't resize any partitions, I just changed the partition format for the small 4GB partition. Disk Utility did say it could not be undone, but without stating the entire drive would be wiped out, I went with the assumption of no-duh, the partition I am working on will be cleaned off. Which is standard operating procedure on most UNIX and intel based machines I may add.
Actually it did, but it didn't say what you say, and the online help is not available during the install process.
I didn't resize any partitions, I just changed the partition format for the small 4GB partition. Disk Utility did say it could not be undone, but without stating the entire drive would be wiped out, I went with the assumption of no-duh, the partition I am working on will be cleaned off. Which is standard operating procedure on most UNIX and intel based machines I may add.
Thanks I did not know about that, I read in my MacWorld mag that you could only copy music to an ipod, not from it, to stop people copying other peoples music.
Expanison of Music service sales will enable Apple to lower computer prices
Since software and services have much higher potential gross margins than computer hardware for Apple, an expansion of music sales will enable Apple to decrease the average price of Macs sold to consumers. Apple has already stated previously that the company is willing to sacrifice some gross margins to increase unit volume. Well, without an increase in higher margin service or software that will be very difficult to do since the company has been losing money on sales for most of the fiscal quarters in the last two years from (Apple made a profit in most fiscal quarters from interest on savings).
To illustrate the potential gross margin differences between computer sales and software, Apple has about 28% overall gross margins, Dell has slightly more than 18% overall gross margin on sales and Microsoft has 81%. It's obvious that as Apple rapidly increases sales from fee based software and services that the overall gross margins for the company will rise unless margins are cut somewhere. The most logical place to cut margins is in computer sales since much lower prices on computers should increase unit sales and that will enable Apple to sell more software and services. For every computer that Apple sells there is also now the potential for annually selling a $129 OSX update, a $99 .Mac subscription and songs at 99 cents each. Over the expected ownership of 2-3 years for a computer, that would add increased sales and gross margins for every computer purchase. Neither HP nor Dell has a counter to Apple's advantage in this. Potentially this should enable Apple to match or beat Dell in prices on computers in the near future. Along with lower prices and increased features this should also bring increased marketshare for Apple.
Apple's music store is only available in the U.S. and only to those that use OSX. So, music sales are limited to less than 1/2 of all Mac users. With Mac sales running at about 2.3% of worldwide PC sales, then the expansion of music sales to Windows users will increase the potential customers of the service by 100X from what it is now. Instead of 500,000 sales a week it should be several times that by the end of the year when the service becomes available to Windows users.
Look for Apple to announce lower prices on consumer computers this week in New York and probably another round of cuts in the last quarter of this year just before the Christmas season starts. That could potentially bring the base price of a entry level Mac to $599 or less by the end of the year. Since Apple seems to be moving back into BestBuy in August, these additional 500 stores will also enable Apple to cut prices since the increased volume of sales will spread out Apple's fixed costs over more unit sales.
Since software and services have much higher potential gross margins than computer hardware for Apple, an expansion of music sales will enable Apple to decrease the average price of Macs sold to consumers. Apple has already stated previously that the company is willing to sacrifice some gross margins to increase unit volume. Well, without an increase in higher margin service or software that will be very difficult to do since the company has been losing money on sales for most of the fiscal quarters in the last two years from (Apple made a profit in most fiscal quarters from interest on savings).
To illustrate the potential gross margin differences between computer sales and software, Apple has about 28% overall gross margins, Dell has slightly more than 18% overall gross margin on sales and Microsoft has 81%. It's obvious that as Apple rapidly increases sales from fee based software and services that the overall gross margins for the company will rise unless margins are cut somewhere. The most logical place to cut margins is in computer sales since much lower prices on computers should increase unit sales and that will enable Apple to sell more software and services. For every computer that Apple sells there is also now the potential for annually selling a $129 OSX update, a $99 .Mac subscription and songs at 99 cents each. Over the expected ownership of 2-3 years for a computer, that would add increased sales and gross margins for every computer purchase. Neither HP nor Dell has a counter to Apple's advantage in this. Potentially this should enable Apple to match or beat Dell in prices on computers in the near future. Along with lower prices and increased features this should also bring increased marketshare for Apple.
Apple's music store is only available in the U.S. and only to those that use OSX. So, music sales are limited to less than 1/2 of all Mac users. With Mac sales running at about 2.3% of worldwide PC sales, then the expansion of music sales to Windows users will increase the potential customers of the service by 100X from what it is now. Instead of 500,000 sales a week it should be several times that by the end of the year when the service becomes available to Windows users.
Look for Apple to announce lower prices on consumer computers this week in New York and probably another round of cuts in the last quarter of this year just before the Christmas season starts. That could potentially bring the base price of a entry level Mac to $599 or less by the end of the year. Since Apple seems to be moving back into BestBuy in August, these additional 500 stores will also enable Apple to cut prices since the increased volume of sales will spread out Apple's fixed costs over more unit sales.