Pricing – Page 5 – Digital-Lifestyles

Napster Canada Launches

Racing out music stores globally to get in ahead of iTunes, Napster have launched their Canadian service. It’s exactly the same as the others – with the small exception that it’s much cheaper than the UK store. Yet again.

Tracks start at CAN$1.19 (€0.72) and the subscription is CAN$9.95 (€5.98), compared to the UK costs of UK£1.09 (€1.64) per track and UK£9.95 (€14.90) for a subscription.

Confident pricing, eh? Yes, they have sales tax in Canada, it runs at about 14%, dependent on where you live – so VAT is not to blame.

Since we can be fairly certain that Napster UK realise that their customers have access to the internet and can check prices and do conversions, I wonder what their thinking is with making the UK store twice as expensive as all the others?

If anyone at Napster would care to email with an explanation, I’d be delighted to give them a voice here.

Napster.ca

Google Names 31 Underwriters For IPO

Google has named another 29 underwriters for its forthcoming IPO – these are in addition to the two lead underwriters Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston. Amongst the new crop are JP Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers and Deutsche Bank.

The sale is expected to raise US$2.7 billion (€2.26 billion) later this year, the biggest new technology stock sale since the wheels fell off the new economy in 2000.

Google’s sale will be unusual in that they are going to use a open auction process – investors will be able to bid for shares at a price they are willing to pay, a method that Google believes will be fairer to small investors. Since whoever pays the most still wins, that remains to be seen.

The Unofficial Google IPO Site

First – DSL Sells Faster than Cable Modems in the US

The US has always been a stronghold for cable modems and up until last year it outsold DSL two-to-one. This makes it all the more surprising to hear from Reuters that DSL has, for the first time, sold more high-speed Internet connections than cable providers.

Feeling threatened by the rise of VoIP (Voice over IP), that could enable cable-customers to discard their phone lines while keeping phone services, the telephone companies are undergoing a big push to try to ensure that their phone customers stay with them. “The bundle with DSL is incredibly sticky, more so than even long distance,” Verizon Chief Financial Officer Doreen Toben told Reuters. “If you can get DSL into the bundle, the customer will not leave you.”

SBC, one of the four ‘Baby Bells’, is finding price a big determinant in converting and keeping customers on high-speed access. “When you’re selling this at $45, a customer buys it and gets his first bill and panics and cancels,” their Chief Operating Officer Randall Stephenson told analysts last week. “When you’re selling it at $30, you have much less of that.” All of this is good for the US consumer, in the short term at least.

Reuters story

Pay More For Music, or Pay More For the Player?

There is some disagreement in Europe at the moment on how artists will be paid for all that music you’ve downloaded to your iPod. There are two competing models: DRM-based and taxation.

Levies in EU countries bring in a lot of money – and only Britain, Ireland and Luxembourg don’t have the system. The International Herald Tribune estimates that Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands alone will see revenues from their private copying taxation rise from €309.39 million (US$) to an impressive €1.465 billion (US$) by 2006. You can understand why they’re so keen on it now.

There seems to be a clear ideological split in effect here – if you’re a software provider or a store owner, you prefer Digital Rights Management. If you’re a European collection agency, then taxation is the only way to go.

National royalties collection agencies in 12 European states are proposing a tax on digital music players – the Society of Music Creators in France has levied €20 (US$24) on every iPod sold in the country, as it is classed as a “copying device”… and Apple has refused to play it, preferring to go to court.

Apple prefer the other model of artist renumeration – DRM.

Enter the European Commission – who will be adopting a policy paper next week with the intention of bringing EU collection agencies into the 21st century. A mere 3.5 years late.

The policy paper suggests a pan-European licensing system for protected content and examines ways in which DRM may finally replace blanket taxes in the EU states. Apple and lobby groups representing some 10,000 companies across Europe are keen on the policy recommendations as it will allow them to get on with their business models whilst paying artists, yet avoid negotiating with 15 different collection agencies.

We much prefer a sensible implementation of DRM – artists are renumerated directly, it’s fairer on the consumer and promotes more innovation. Taxing “copying devices” demonstrates a lack of understanding of the entire field, is inaccurate and does not reward artists fairly. Also, making all consumers pay a piracy tax is in entirely unfair.

Whatever happens, it’s up to us to make sure we don’t end up paying the labels TWICE.

The International Herald Tribune

MovieLink Offer Re-rental

MovieLink, the on-demand film service that delivers films via broadband Internet connections, is experimenting with different pricing models. They have launched an offer that permits their viewers to re-watch films that they have downloaded, paid for and watched. They call it MultiPlay.

If a viewer has the urge to watch a film again within 30 days of the original rental, they can pay a normally reduced price to have another 24 hours access to it and have the advantage that the film does not have to be downloaded again. Not all films that MovieLink carry are included, presumably because of licensing restrictions, and the cost of re-renting varies but start at 99c.

MovieLink