iTunes - i not happy

I am a customer of iTunes which of course I have no problems with well up until I found some certain “things” out such as each store has different music content which indeed I found an issue. Another issue being the prices on the movies that just got released on the UK iTunes store so here we go I’m now going to dive into these issues.

Country Music Selection: One of the first things I did when I got registered with iTunes is search for one of my favourite bands (Metallica) and when the results came back there were literally three songs from them and they were from like a school benefit concert that they did. I was really really disappointed in this so after that I thought hey I’ll look on the US iTunes store to see what they have and when I got those results well there is a full band page of Metallica on there, every album, every song… everything basically. I found this to be in some ways unfair that the UK (who most of us happen to like Metallica) are not able to purchase a song of theirs, we want to give apple our money for a few albums and say thanks for the service but no it’s not going to work like that, if you don’t like in the US then you can’t browse the US iTunes store and get what you want (legally anyway).

Prices: I was happy to pay £0.79p (Great British Pounds is my currency) for a single song I mean it downloads fast, the quality is great and even the album art is there, for that small price you got everything you needed. I thought that until iTunes introduced the movies, now I’m not completely up to date on currency situations but as far as I’m aware the british pound is half of what a United States Dollar is so when you go onto the US iTunes store and see a song that is $0.99 and the go to the UK store and see a song for £0.79 well I don’t think it takes a genius to work out that 79 is not half 99. In a way the UK is kind of paying more than the US for songs which is unfair in a few ways, next pricing issue is on the movies. I looked at the first movie that was on the menu for iTunes movie store and it was batman begins which to buy cost £6.99, I was thinking that this movie is kind of old now so we could easily go down to our local dvd shop and buy it for something like £4.99.

So what would you rather do? Pay £6.99 for just the movie or would you pay £4.99 for the movie, special features and various settings like viewing preferences because I know what I’d go for. I was also surprised that you can’t get any of the films in HD unless you had apple tv, if you ask me I think the £6.99 that they’re charging should be for the HD quality and not for the basic movie. As much as I love Apple and everything they offer they have to think about the pricing they have on what they’re selling, I also think they charge quite a lot for the hardware and software that they sell on apple.com but I won’t go into that.

I’ve said everything I can think of on this subject.

E-mail:  ss3luke at googlemail.com