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by Staff
Bloomberg.com
Dec 2, 2004
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Apple Computer Inc., whose iTunes Web sites
make up world's largest online music store, opened a version of the
service for Canadian customers.
Apple, which also makes Macintosh computers and iPod portable music
players, will charge 99 Canadian cents (84 U.S. cents) to download a
song, the company said. The U.S. iTunes site charges 99 U.S. cents a
song.
Since opening iTunes in the U.S. in April 2003 and in Europe in June,
Apple has sold more than 150 million songs. Canadians may be more reluctant
to pay for music online than Americans because a greater percentage
of them have high-speed connections, which make illegal downloading
easier, said Kaan Yigit, president of Solutions Research Group Consultants
Inc.
``Canadians are somewhat less willing to pay for it because they're
less used to it,'' Yigit said. ``Canadians have been getting free music
for a longer time, so it's a bigger conversion challenge.''
A study published by Yigit in June found 51 percent of Canadian respondents
aged 12 to 19 said they had downloaded music files without paying, compared
with 40 percent in the U.S. According to the study, 8 percent of Canadians
visited a pay music site, and most didn't buy anything.
In June, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled unanimously that Internet-service
providers are not responsible for any copyright infringement when digital
recordings are illegally downloaded. Companies such as BCE Inc. and
Rogers Communications Inc. can't be forced to pay royalties when customers
use their services to swap music, the court said.
The Canadian Recording Industry Association has asked the federal government
to amend Canada's copyright laws to better protect intellectual property.
Retail sales of music on compact discs and cassettes dropped 30 percent,
or $425 million, from 1999 to 2003, primarily because of downloading,
the association said on its Web site.
Apple's Canadian site will carry more than 700,000 songs, each of which
can be downloaded to as many as five personal computers, played on an
unlimited number of iPods and burned onto compact discs. Customers in
Canada previously couldn't download from iTunes without a credit card
billed to an address in a country where the service already was running.
In October, Apple opened a European Union version of iTunes, selling
songs for 99 euro cents ($1.32) apiece.
Apple shares fell $2.58, or 3.8 percent, to $65.21 by 4 p.m. on Nasdaq.
They have more than tripled this year.
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