iTunes songs are cheapest in Canada! · 2006-04-22 01:16 by Damian
Not too long ago, a good indicator of how expensive it was to live in a certain country would be to compare the price of a Big Mac menu. While that is still a valid comparison, I got a different idea after yesterday’s story about Japanese iTunes. Why not compare the prices on iTunes, since the store is now available in 21 countries.
Taking today’s exchange rates, I set out to compare three things, songs, music videos and audiobooks. Let’s check it out!
Songs
The most basic comparison, how much will a song from iTunes set us back in the different countries? The middle column shows the price in the local currency, rightmost column shows the equivalent price in US dollars using today’s exchange rates.
| Country | Price (local) | Price (USD) |
| Canada | CAD 0.99 | $0.87 |
| USA | USD 0.99 | $0.99 |
| Switzerland | CHF 1.50 | $1.17 |
| Sweden | SEK 9.00 | $1.19 |
| Euro zone 1) | EUR 0.99 | $1.22 |
| Australia | AUD 1.69 | $1.25 |
| Norway | NOK 8.00 | $1.25 |
| Denmark | DKK 8.00 | $1.32 |
| UK | GBP 0.79 | $1.40 |
| Japan 2) | JPY 200 | $1.71 |
1) Euro zone = Countries using the Euro currency and having an iTunes store: Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Greece, Germany, Ireland, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain
2) Japan has some songs selling for JPY 150, but most new releases sell for JPY 200
Well, what do you know, Canada comes out on top. The Euro countries keep a unified front, not completely unexpected. Japanese record companies usually keep the prices pretty inflated on normal CD’s and iTunes is obviously no exception.
Music videos
The next step is music videos. While this is not offered in all countries, it still shows a different picture than songs.
| Country | Price (local) | Price (USD) |
| USA | USD 1.99 | $1.99 |
| Canada | CAD 2.29 | $2.01 |
| Australia | AUD 3.39 | $2.51 |
| Japan | JPY 300 | $2.56 |
| Euro zone 1) | EUR 2.49 | $3.07 |
| UK | GBP 1.89 | $3.36 |
1) The only Euro countries that offer music videos at this time are France, Germany, Ireland and Luxemburg.
Well, there the picture changes, Japan makes a recovery and surrenders last place to Britain.
Audiobooks
Since audiobooks seem to have less restrictive marketing deals, they are usually the same in all the iTunes stores. Prices vary rather freely between different books, but for the sake of this comparison I took a look at “The Complete Harry Potter”, a mammoth package that contains the first six Harry Potter books. That’s 101 hours of listening. But it does come at a price, a price that varies quite a bit…
| Country | Price (local) | Price (USD) |
| USA | USD 249 | $249 |
| Canada | CAD 299 | $263 |
| Australia | AUD 435 | $322 |
| Switzerland | CHF 421 | $329 |
| Norway | NOK 2165 | $339 |
| Japan | JPY 40,000 | $341 |
| UK | GBP 195 | $347 |
| Euro zone | EUR 299 | $369 |
| Denmark | DKK 2277 | $376 |
| Sweden | SEK 2846 | $377 |
Ah, Sweden, Sweden… It seems like 25% sales tax does its part in putting you at the bottom of the list this time. Harry Potter ends up being 50% more expensive in Sweden than the US.
Summary
The differences ended up being larger than I had expected, especially for normal songs where Japan is 68% more expensive than the US. However, keep in mind that this was just a simple comparison made for fun, since people in different countries have different disposable income, you can’t really draw too many conclusions from it.
Having said that, I certainly hope that the days are numbered for regionally controlled music/video releases. It would be plain stupid for the content owners to try to keep enforcing something like that now. If people can’t buy the music or films they want due to regional contraints they’ll find a torrent instead. I’m hoping for a global iTunes store within three years….
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