British consumer group: iTunes UK overpriced
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British consumer group Consumers&#39; Association has raised its voice over the iTunes&#39; pricing in the United Kingdom. Most notably, its anger is aimed towards the different pricing model Apple uses for its online music store in European countries.
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Napster launched a portable version of its digital music service in the U.S. and the U.K. on Thursday, hoping to tempt users with an "all-you-can-eat" monthly subscription model. Called Napster To Go, the company will charge users $14.95 in the U.S. and Â£14.95 ($29) in the U.K. per month, letting them download an unlimited number of songs onto compatible MP3 players as well as their PCs. Napster users can fill and refill compatible MP3 players with their choice of tracks, but must plug, or dock, the device into their PC at least once every 30 days into order for Napster to verify they are still paying customers. If a user stops paying their monthly subscription fee, the music will no longer play on the device. As with Apple's iTunes, Napster also offers users the option of buying individual tracks for $0.99 in the U.S. and Â£0.79 in the U.K. Napster is the first subscription music service to take advantage of new copy-protection software from Microsoft that allows users to listen to digital music over devices as well as on their PCs.ADVERTISEMENTWhite paper: Solutions to Address IT Control RequirementsLearn how BMC Software Solutions address requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 in this 20 page whitepaper!
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RealNetworks&#39; campaign to grab digital-music market share away from Apple&#39;s iTunes service -- most recently, with cut-rate, 49-cent song downloads -- is raising the ire of Apple loyalists. A petition placed online by Real was swamped with ...
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Tesco ainât daft, theyâve done the insurance blag and now they getting stuck into the music downloading service. They will be the first supermarket to enter a market that is worth over Â£25million and is currently dominated by the Apple run iTunes.
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ITunes has been a success for a number of reasons. Backed by a respected name (Apple), it offers a massive, ever-expanding library of songs at appealing prices.
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Apple&#39;S iTunes caused upset yesterday by securing the Band Aid charity single Do They Know It&#39;s Christmas for sale at 79p, instead of the Â£1.49 its rivals, from Napster to HMV, are asking customers to pay.
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The European Commission ended its&#160;antitrust investigation into Apple&#160;after the company agreed to reduce the price of music downloads from its iTunes Web site in the U.K., the European Union&#39;s antitrust regulator said Wednesday.Apple said that within six months it will lower the prices it charges for music on its U.K. iTunes Store to match its&#160;already standardized pricing across Europe&#160;in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and SpainUntil now iTunes has been more expensive in the U.K., where the currency remains the British pound, than in the countries that have adopted the euro, as well as compared to Denmark and Sweden which tie their currencies closely to the euro, and also more expensive than in Switzerland, which isn&#39;t even in the European Union.The European Commission welcomed Apple&#39;s plan to equalize prices for downloads of songs from the store in Europe.&quot;The Commission is very much in favor of solutions which allow consumers to benefit from a truly Single Market for music downloads,&quot; competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement.For Apple, &quot;This is an important step towards a pan-European marketplace for music,&quot; said Steve Jobs, the company&#39;s &#39;s CEO. &quot;We hope every major record label will take a pan-European view of pricing.&quot;Apple blames the record labels for charging more to distribute their music in the U.K. than in other countries in Europe, and threatened to drop any record label from the iTunes portal if they didn&#39;t cut their U.K. prices.&quot;Apple will reconsider its continuing relationship in the U.K. with any record label that does not lower its wholesale prices in the U.K. to the pan-European level within six months,&quot; the company warned.
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More than $31bn spent on electronics this year Brits spend more on consumer electronics than any nation in Europe, market watcher GfK has claimed. Together, we have spent Â£16.8bn ($31.7bn) on high-tech toys this year. Every UK household has spent, on average, Â£325 ($612) this year on gizmos, gadgets and assorted electronic equipment - Â£42 ($81) more than their nearest rivals, the Swiss.â¦
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The British Department for Education and Skills (DfES) recently launched a "Music Manifesto" campaign, with the ostensible intention of educating the next generation of British musicians. Unfortunately, they also teamed up with the music industry (EMI, and various artists) to make this popular. EMI has apparently negotiated their end well, so that children in our schools will now be indoctrinated about the illegality of downloading music.The ignorance and audacity of this got to me a little, so I wrote an open letter to the DfES about it. Unfortunately, it's pedantic, as I suppose you have to be when writing to goverment representatives. But I hope you find it useful, and perhaps feel inspired to do something similar, if or when the same thing has happened in your area.
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British download store 7digital relaunches with a promise to offer cheaper prices and greater ease of use than iTunes.
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By Tony Glover, The Business, London  Dec. 14--Music fans are forsaking Apple's iTunes music download service  in droves -- a trend that will dash the hopes of music labels like EMI.
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The Consumers&#39; Association (CA) has accused Apple of taking too big a bite out of UK music lovers&#39; money. It has asked the Office of Fair (OFT) to investigate the potential breach of competition law.
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Sony positions itself to squeeze Apple The newspapers were full of stories during 2004 about how Microsoft or RealNetworks or Napster were going to knock Apple's iTunes off its perch, and time and time again, nothing really happened. Now we have the reverse.â¦
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Apple said it would bring the prices on its iTunes digital music store in Britain in line with those on the Continent to settle an antitrust case.
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Business & money: Â· Store group challenges Tesco view on pricesÂ· Pledge to give a better deal to smaller suppliers
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BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Apple Inc. will scrap its iTunes pricing policies across Europe and charge consumers in Britain and the rest of Europe the same for music downloads, the company and the European Union said Wednesday.
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'Flagrant and systematic breach' The British recording industry has taken online retailer CD WOW! to court, claiming that the company is breaking a previous court-ordered undertaking not to sell cheap CDs imported from Asia.â¦