A Good Day To Be Canadian

Finally after all the rumors we finally have it! Our very own iTunes Music Store. Wow, what a great day to be Canadian.

See for yourself:
http://www.apple.com/ca/itunes/

we in india dont, this is wrong!!!
:ninja: :radioacti

the_New_guy said:

we in india dont, this is wrong!!!
:ninja: :radioacti

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Its all about demand & supply :miner:

iTunes music store in canada=awesome.

sorry i have to go person from india, i have many things to do on my itunes music store....like download things....and stuff.


........awesome

Right on. I still wont pay for music online though

wow how come you guys have to pay $2000 for the imac i got for £1000 ??????
eveything is double in price than that in the uk

http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore
check prices here

Danster said:

wow how come you guys have to pay $2000 for the imac i got for £1000 ??????
eveything is double in price than that in the uk

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Well the fact is that there is little thing called the exchange rate.
.84CAN/1.00US

The UK didn't join the "Euro Zone" with the Continent, so...you guys get screwed.

Canada gets songs at CN$0.99...which is cheaper than the US (US$.99) or anywhere else, for that matter. I wonder how (and why) Apple managed to arrange that with the record companies.

Danster said:

wow how come you guys have to pay $2000 for the imac i got for £1000 ??????
eveything is double in price than that in the uk

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My iMac from the UK store says about 1138 lbs (not sure what the VAT adds on) which is 2380 in USD which is 400 more than I paid in the US so you aren't getting a discount at all

Taxes

I do not know what your taxes are. In Canada tax is around 13-16% per purchase. The only place in the country that does not have sales tax is Alberta, but that is only because of the oil.

Gamer said:

Finally after all the rumors we finally have it! Our very own iTunes Music Store. Wow, what a great day to be Canadian.

See for yourself:
http://www.apple.com/ca/itunes/

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And just what day is it that is not a good day to be Canadian?...

technologist said:

The UK didn't join the "Euro Zone" with the Continent, so...you guys get screwed.

Canada gets songs at CN$0.99...which is cheaper than the US (US$.99) or anywhere else, for that matter. I wonder how (and why) Apple managed to arrange that with the record companies.

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Simple. They just figure out the highest price people are willing to pay, that will also maximize their profits. If a CD costs $20 here, it will cost $20 in the U.S as well. Of course, if your currency is worth a lot, you get screwed into paying more. It's not like with computers that only charge one price, and then charge about half that in the UK. The record companies would have wanted to charge more, but if they did, everyone in Canada would be like, "No way!"
because:
1) We have alternatives like Puretracks, Napster and Rhapsody that only charge about a dollar, maybe a little more, even though they're PC only
2) We don't have insane copyright laws, and we respect our citizens' privacy, which makes downloading music safe and legal

However, as we all know, the marketing department of the music industry is full of morons. They ignored the most important rule of marketing: If your sales are down, you don't raise your prices, you lower them. Do they seriously think that because they're threatening and bullying their consumers with scare tactics and guilt-trip propaganda, and warping the minds of young kids, they can charge whatever they want? We're not as dumb as they think.

shaun89 said:

Right on. I still wont pay for music online though

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Awesome!

Gamer said:

Finally after all the rumors we finally have it! Our very own iTunes Music Store. Wow, what a great day to be Canadian.

See for yourself:
http://www.apple.com/ca/itunes/

Click to expand...

It is not! The iTunes Music Store Sucks! I mean sure, you're able to pick and choose the songs you want instead of buying the whole album, and even if you do buy the whole album on iTunes, it's cheaper than the CD. However, it's a major ripoff because:
1)There is no CD with a case and illustrations. Sure, you can print out the album art to make a cover, but it's not the same as opening the CD case, seeing tons of photos, reading the lyrics, band bios, etc. And at least with CD's, tapes or vinyl, you have a physical object of value which you can proudly display in your home. If all you have are a bunch of CD-R's with flimsy paper covers, and a handmade label or a title scrawled on the top, it's going to look pretty pathetic compared to an actual CD collection.

2)The songs available on the iTunes Music Store are not of a very good sound quality. And contrary to what they may have told you, they actually sound WORSE than MP3's obtained through P2P filesharing programs. Apple claims that the songs offered through iTunes are AAC files, all encoded at 128 kbps, which, thanks to more efficient compression, are equal in sound quality to MP3 files encoded at 192 kbps. What they didn't tell you, however, is that the bit rate is only one factor in determining the quality of the song. You also need a good sample rate, equalizer setting, and finally, it all depends on the software you're using. In either case, some of the MP3's on my computer are of high bit rates (160, 192, some even more than 200), but most of them are encoded at 128 kbps, and surprize surprize, they actually sound better than the songs on the iTunes Music Store. Apple also claims that the 30-second previews you can listen to before purchasing a song are of the same fidelity as the actual songs themselves. The previews sound like crap, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is. The truth is, any kind of encoding can sound good, but if you don't know what you're doing, it doesn't matter if you import it as MP3 or WAV. It's going to suck. MP3 may be an inferior compressor, but if you have a knack for equalizer settings and digital audio editing and a little bit of patience and good ears, it can sound better than anything the iTunes Music Store has to offer. In fact, someone I met on another forum claims that he imported his CD's to his computer in MP3 format, remixed them, and burned them to a CD, and his new CD made from MP3 versions of lossless audio tracks actually sounded better than the original album.

3)All the songs are encrypted with DRM, which is an infringement of consumer freedoms and fair use. It's really nothing to worry about, because it can be removed using HYMN, just like how Copy Control on CD's can be cracked. So basically it doesn't work unless you're computer illiterate. The point is, unless you have the tools and the knowhow, you can't convert Apple's AAC files to MP3. So if you want to burn an MP3 disk, or if you have an MP3 player that can't play anything but MP3 files, you're completely screwed. If you buy a CD that doesn't have Copy Control (which is starting to die off because of complaints that protected CD's don't work in many CD players), it's no problem ripping it to your computer in any format you like, transferring it to your MP3 player, and even sharing it over a P2P program if you choose.

4)The selection is pathetic. As you may have noticed, there are no Metallica tracks available, apparently because Lar$ and the boys are completely paranoid of their music being available on the internet, even if they get paid for it (although I can't see what the big deal is, they only get about 10 cents a song anyway). This is just stupid. First of all, if people want to download their music, they will, and because of Alcohollica's arrogance, they'll just download it for free instead. And secondly, if people buy downloads instead of CD's, it will actually be harder for them to share it over Kazaa or something than if they bought the CD's, because when you import a CD track, there is no DRM to prevent it from being copied to another computer. But enough about them, I don't really like Metallica. The selection is bad enough in the US and other countries. The least they could do is give us the same catalogue. Instead, we are only given access to 700 thousand of the one million tracks offered on the US store. This doesn't make sense to me; do they have to use separate servers for each national store? Anyway, I can't even find any Iron Maiden tracks on the Canadian store, but the US store is full of them (except for some reason, they don't have the full Powerslave album). If they don't have the music I like, they've lost me as a customer. Whether you buy music from stores, online CD stores, or download it for free, it is very easy to find what you're looking for.

5)You're not guaranteed any kind of secure investment. At least when you buy an album, new or used, you have the disk or cassette in your hand. Everything you paid for is stored safely on a tangible medium, which you can easily back up to your computer, another disk or cassette, if you choose. The odds of ruining your cassettes or scratching your CD's are very slim, as long as you're careful with them, because CD's and cassettes are very versatile and durable. Mac OS X is also very durable, so we don't have to worry about crashes, viruses, etc. But since the iTunes Music Store is also available on Windows, it's easy for them to buy a bunch of songs, and then suddenly their CD burner stops working, or they get a virus and lose everything before they have a chance to make a backup. At least with free filesharing, if you lose all your music to a virus attack, it's no big deal since you never paid a cent for it, and you can easily start your collection over. But who cares about Windows users, right?

Anyway, these are all reasons why I continue to reject the iTunes Music Store and its competitors, and I encourage others to do the same. If you don't live in Canada, and you want good music legitimately without supporting the RIAA, buy used CD's. They're easier to find, they're cheaper, they come with illustrations, they will always sound better than a burned iTunes album, and you can always use iTunes to rip it to your computer in any encoding you like, make a backup copy, transfer it to your iPod, or edit it to achieve better sound quality. And you don't have to deal with any restrictions on how you use it.

James said:

And just what day is it that is not a good day to be Canadian?...

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Hahaha, Totally agree, being Canadian is always a good thing!

^Preach it brother. There is a used place in town where you can get cd's 3 for $18, not too shabby. It is wat better to have the original work too, as stated above me. Yall can do whatever you want though...obviously.

...and here I thought Bush was the best reason to be a Canadian.

2 more black eyes for the music industry!

This is so sweet. I just got an iPod for Christmas. When my parents purchased it, they had to pay the $35 blank media levy. But recently, the courts stepped in and said the music industry can't legally charge that fee anymore. So, Futureshop issued a new offer to anyone who had recently purchased an iPod, that would allow them to return to the store and get their $35 back. It was such a sweet burn knowing the music industry ain't getting anymore of my money.

Also, in an attempt to compete with iTunes, Puretracks.com has recently lowered their price to 79 cents a song. This is a step in the right direction, but it could be better (49 cents a song, no DRM, with most of the money going directly to artists, or better yet, unlimited downloads for $9.99 a month).

Now lets just examine the pros and cons of Puretracks versus iTunes:

Pros: Wider selection, higher quality, is now less expensive
Cons: PC only, does not work with iPod or iTunes, less user friendly (you buy music from the website without the one-click download option, and then have to use something else to play, transfer, burn, etc., which is not as good or user-friendly as the iTunes software), DRM is harsher, no streaming with other computers.

Clearly, both have their own strengths and weaknesses. Neither of them charge monthly fees, and iTunes, though easier with more freedom and flexiblility across Mac OS X and Windows, is of lower quality and more expensive than Puretracks. Puretracks, on the other hand, made a huge mistake of selling songs exclusively in WMA format, and DRM-ing them so they couldn't be converted to a more versatile format. And since the iPod is the most popular MP3 player available, they just lost a huge market of potential customers, Mac or Windows.

However, the majority of iTunes Music Store users are most likely Windows users, the majority of whom probably don't own an iPod. Therefore, it probably doesn't matter to them.

Therefore, I forsee 2 possible outcomes:
1) In spite of all its efforts, Puretracks will be unable to compete with iTunes. It will reach a point where it cannot lower its price anymore, and will have to change its strategy (make it easier, make it Mac and iPod compatible, and ease up on the DRM), or go bankrupt. However, this will probably not be the case as Napster, which is even worse, has still managed to stay in business in Canada and the United States. But it's not as powerful as it could be, as Apple claims that the iTunes Music Store has a 70% market share of all music downloads, even when pitted against Napster, Puretracks, Rhapsody, and everything else combined.

2) Most ignorant and stupid internet users (no offense) will sacrifice reliability for savings, and favour Puretracks. To compete with this, iTunes, which already has markets across North America and Europe, will have to lower its price in Canada. The other countries won't like this. There is already some controversy regarding the fact that Canadians only have to pay 99 cents Canadian, whereas the British are being charged 79 p, which is more than what any other European nation must pay. Naturally, the first step would be to lower the price in America to 79 cents a song, and then 0.79 Euros throughout Europe. The music industry is not going to like this, as it would mean fewer profits for them. They are already receiving less profits than they'd like because of the fixed price per song agenda set up by iTunes, whereas they can charge whatever they want for CD's (as long as they don't get caught). So that's a definite no-no. iTunes may eventually have to withdraw their services from Canada.

Edit: Dang, I just found out the Puretracks discount is only on select songs for a limited time. Still, it's a good sign that they're struggling.

the_New_guy said:

we in india dont, this is wrong!!!
:ninja: :radioacti

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Yeah but you've got all the telephone tech support jobs!