Prices UK vs USA

[Shadowcaster]

Can someone tell me why if I buy an MP3 download Album (in this case Gandalf's Frame by Frame) it costs 99p per track or £7.99 for whole album from Amazon UK. The self same album from Amazon USA costs 99cents per track and $7.99 for the whole album.

[ozzy72]

'Cos Amazon need to build up funds to pay the massive EU fine they're about to get for tax dodging?

[ViperPilot]

Hard to say why purchasing Music online is different region to region... exchange rate, perhaps?

Lately, Amazon seems to be refunding money to me, mainly due to Kindle negotiations with Publishers.

Literally, the One Stop Shop; where else can one purchase such diverse items as... Arbuckle's Ariosa Blend coffee, Shimano EF-65 Shifters/Brake Levers for a bicycle, or Sir Isaac Newton's Opticks, all under one roof?

Alan

[Apex]

The price of musical instruments in the UK, guitars are a good example, so I've noticed all along, is also quite phenomenal compared to US prices, I believe due to shipping US to UK charges and also the UK VAT. Here we have sales tax, but that depends on who and where you buy from.

However, I do not know if someone in the UK buying online might get a better deal than in a local UK stores or wherever, any info on that would be interesting. Before online buying the price differential was pretty steep for instruments made in the US. The Internet may have changed that, but of course, there's still shipping to UK charges that have to be figured in.

I do know from personal experience that royalties to the artists are very low. If you put up your music CD on CDBaby, CDBaby will then farm it out to many other music sites, but the artist still only receives a fraction of a cent for any given music track sold. So for ex, the royalty on a track that sells for .99c could be as low as .001 cent to the artist.

Basically, with relatively unknown artists, your .99c as good as doesn't go to the artist. There's a lot of hands in the music sales pie. If you purchase something from a well known artist, I would then think they get a fair share of the royalty.

My advice to anyone trying to or thinking they can make it big in the music business these days, go for it, but you'd better have a back up plan. Been there, done that, it's dark out there.

[Shadowcaster]

The price of musical instruments in the UK, guitars are a good example

You are right there, it breaks my heart to see how much guitarists in the USA pay for kit compared to GB, Australia and New Zealand.
Anyone fancy a bit of guitar smuggling or wrecking as we used to do in Cornwall

[pete]

Tax. Profiteering. Etc

Look at fuel prices.
http://www.eia.gov/beta/international/p ... ithtax.cfm

[Tug002]

Just by glancing at the pricing I would say someone at Amazon does not know that the Pound Note is worth more than the US Dollar

Keep smiling
Tug

[Steve M]

It's not only music. When I ordered FSX Gold from somewhere in the USA it listed under 25 Canada Loonies. Shipping was about 19 loonies through FedEx. And then two weeks later I got a bill from FedEx for 20 loonies for duty and some other gobblety gook along with an HST tax. Costing me well over 70 lovely Loonies. Amazon doesn't have those surcharges but I can only order things from Amazon.CA. It is all very head scratching.

[OldAirmail]

This is not a political statement, but I thought that the reason petrol, other commodities, and taxes were higher over "there" was that your governments give you more services, such as healthcare, etc.

So where most of us in the US (living outside cities) pay for such things as water usage, or trash removal, people outside of the US have such things provided as a service by their governments.

Am I wrong

[Hagar]

We call it Rip-off Britain. This is a bit out of date but you get the gist of it --> http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/434168

This is not a political statement, but I thought that the reason petrol, other commodities, and taxes were higher over "there" was that your governments give you more services, such as healthcare, etc.

So where most of us in the US (living outside cities) pay for such things as water usage, or trash removal, people outside of the US have such things provided as a service by their governments.

Am I wrong

This has nothing to do with taxation. In the UK I pay for the water I use* & refuse collection is financed from my council tax contributions along with other services like the police & education. Health care is a separate tax which is taken from my salary. I don't know about other countries. *Most UK households are fitted with a water meter.

[expat]

Simple answer is America enjoys cheaper prices because the rest of the world has to pay a little extra. Also its potential market share on a country to country basis is far greater. Other factors, it it is expensive in the US it will not sell, where are in Europe, we shrug and buy it anyway.

Matt

[OldAirmail]

VERY interesting, Hagar. I read it all the way through.


My (mis)conception was that, particularly in Europe, taxes were added to everything before you buy it, therefor the prices appeared to be higher.

Using made up numbers;
In the US item X = 100 + sales tax = 105
In the UK item X = 105 .(the VAT already having been added)

So an American would look at item X, and say that it was cheaper here than overseas because we only see the 100 price (we tend to ignore the tax part as long as we can).

What that article seemed to be saying was this;
In the UK item X = 105 (VAT included) + 55 (from a concerted effort by manufacturers to gouge people in the UK) = 160


I'd think that this type of a unified gouging could only come a government, or other organized crime syndicate.

However, I could see that once this gouging was an accepted fact of life, other manufacturers/retailers outside of the UK would be quite happy to go along with it.

The only fly in the ointment would be that the government, or other organized crime syndicates, would want their cut too.

Perhaps they do get it, in that the VAT is now added to a much higher price tag for item X.

[Shadowcaster]

A crime syndicate does aptly describe governments in the UK, but organized is not a word I would associate with em