iTunes pricing unified across UK & European stores

There's nothing to stop you buying from another european store anyway (single european market) so there's no point in differentiating the prices.. everyone will just go onto another store.

Don't know why they don't go the whole hog and unify the content.. but I could ask the same as Amazon, etc. (I frequently buy from the french and german amazon stores when their prices are cheaper).

Let's be honest here: the reason Apple is making this change is due to a European Commission anti-trust investigation that Apple neatly failed to mention in their press release. The Commission's press release is perhaps more informative ...

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/22&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Notice something peculiar? "The Commission’s antitrust proceedings have also clarified that it is not agreements between Apple and the major record companies which determine how the iTunes store is organised in Europe." So, this apparently has much less to do with the labels than the summary makes seem ...

As already mentioned at the rate the pound is falling against the euro the cost will more than likely go up if we look for parity with Europe. It would be good however to be able to shop in whichever iTunes shop i like.

I hate when folks refer to Apple as a group or more than one entity. "It's nice to see Apple are..." Refer to Apple as a "thing," for lack of a better word.

Okay, please continue.

I don't think the individual Stores should be integrated, since the musical taste in Spain is hugely different than that of, say, Finland.

HOWEVER, I think they should allow users to buy from any EU store (i.e. I have a iTS Spain account that would allow me to buy songs from Spain AND any other EU country). That would make a lot more sense.

The English shouldn't be so stubborn and simply accept the €

With the rate that Sterling is falling we could end up seeing the UK price for iTunes tracks go up!

I'm sure there were two different EU anti-trust cases against Apple. This price differential case never really had any legal weight. The national restrictions one is the important case.

Finally, it's nice to se that Apple are rethinking their pricing policy. I don't mind loosing out because of the exchange rate (£1=$2 hehe!) but it was a little bit annoying that the French et al got stuff cheaper. It's probably 6 month due to a contract clause to protect the record labels from the "Apple Mafia". To be honest though Apple don't have to do this at all. Until UK properly integrates itself into europe (a day i hope never comes) we can't get too annoyed if the rest of Europe enjoys policies that we don't, the open border policy is the first that comes to mind

Simon

@sipedia.co.uk

Now, what about other European Union countries rather than mentioned?

I know know it takes two "pan-European" references to annoy me in one SJ quote for some reason. As for Apple's plan, why the 6 month delay? I say just tell the labels you have two weeks or we cut you off. How much negotiating is involved if the end goal is to match already set terms or be cut off?