James Delahunty
25 Feb 2005 16:06
The EU is to investigate the pricing of the music downloads in Apple's iTunes music store. The UK music store offers over 700,000 tracks for download to UK customers at a cost of 79p a track. While 79p might look like it's not a bad price for a DRM-restricted digital download, it is actually about $1.51 in U.S. currency. UK consumer groups find this price unfair as other European music stores offer downloads for 99c (in Euro) per track, which is about $1.31 in U.S. currency.
The iTunes music store has also been under fire in the EU for not allowing customers to buy music from stores located in other EU states other than their own. For example, a British downloader could not go to the French iTunes store and purchase a track for 99c. There are similar problems across the Atlantic also, as downloads cost 99c in the U.S. and just 80c in Canada.
The EU however maintains that this is an informal investigation and they have only requested information from Apple.
Source:
BetaNews