Posted December 2nd, 2004 @ 02:44pm by Erik J. Barzeski
The Canadian iTMS is open, and songs are only $0.99. In Canadian dollars. That's like, what, $0.75 in US dollars?
I guess that's Apple's way of saying "sorry it took us so long, eh?"
P.S. I just found out that the only songs available in the Canadian iTMS are those by Celine Dion. Bummer, eh? Ya hosers. 🙂
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Posted 02 Dec 2004 at 3:17pm #
Well, I'm glad it's finally here. I'm finding that clicking "buy song" is dangerously convenient. 🙂
Concerning the $0.99 price point, other Canadian online music stores which are already open are priced at that same point, with some even offering some songs at a lower price! I guess we're just lucky. I think CDs are sometimes cheaper here than in the US, but I really have nothing to back that observation up with.
It's actually about $0.83 USD; the Canadian dollar has gone up considerably in the last little while. (Or, rather, the US dollar has gone down.)
Posted 02 Dec 2004 at 3:34pm #
Apple hasn't seemed to care too much about exchange rates in the past. The entire product range offered in European Apple Online Stores does not reflect current exchange rates and uses a simple 1 EUR = 1 USD scheme.
1 EUR = 1.33 USD, and it already was well above 1.20 USD when the iTMS was launched in France and Germany. According to today's exchange rate, we pay 1.31 USD per song. The brits pay 79p which is the equivalent of 1.52 USD! Thus, I guess neither US citizens nor Canadians can complain about the prices 😉
Posted 02 Dec 2004 at 3:54pm #
Well, like the other comments say, thanks to the US dollar going down for that...
If only the iPods would be priced like that!
It's actually cheaper to buy an iPod (or any Mac, or almost anything actually!) through an online american store than here in canada...
A 20GB iPod costs 299$ USD (which is 357$ Can) costs 429$ Can from Apple...
I bought my 40GB from eCost.com and it cost me about 475$ Can instead of 559$!!!
Posted 03 Dec 2004 at 12:16am #
Yo, meng! I beat you to that observation in MacCentral's forum for the same topic. I never knew there were so many red-blooded Canadians out there in Canada-land.
Posted 03 Dec 2004 at 1:16pm #
Screenshot of the Candian iTMS store
Posted 11 Dec 2004 at 2:54pm #
Music in Canada has always been cheaper than music in the US of A. In fact, Canada boasts some of the cheapest music in the world.
If you have a spare few minutes, you can check out Amazon.com and Amazon.ca, you'll see that typically CDs are the same dollar amount in Canada as they are in the US, but the dollars are Canadian up here :p
If anything, the fact that the Canadian Dollar is rising in value vs. the US Dollar only makes our music more expensive (at least when compared to the US). When our dollar was worth 0.75$ US, a 15$ CD cost 11.25 USD, right now our dollar is worth about 0.82$ US, so a 15$ CD costs closer to 12.35 US.