digital music/video

10/10/2005, 11:15am, EDT

Monday, October 10th

Japanese labels lobby for "iPod tax"

Japanese record companies are lobbying for an iPod tax. The New York Times reports that "the industry has asked the Japanese government to charge a royalty, to be added to the retail price of portable digital music players like Apple's iPod, which has been explosively popular here. Money earned from the fee, likely to be 2 percent to 5 percent of the retail price, would go to recording companies, songwriters and artists as compensation for lost revenue from home copying." A similar MP3 player "tax" was overturned in Canada earlier this year. Some labels in Japan have been unable to come to terms with Apple, forcing some local artists to sign licensing deals directly with Apple to sell their songs on iTunes. In the US, labels are lobbying for a more flexible pricing structure in iTunes, which could be similar to the current two-tiered pricing structure in Japan.


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Poor old record companies
0
10/10, 12:09pm, EDT
I can feel the tears collecting in the corner of my eye...let's see now...we have the record companies who generate enormous profits from the sale of every overpriced CD and we have Apple who, whilst enjoying comfortable gross margins on iPod hardware, are running the iTunes Music Store at barely more than break-even although...and here's the kicker!...the record companies make even MORE money off a downloaded track or album than they do off physical sales. Please...pass the hankies!
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CD Prices in Japan
0
10/10, 12:10pm, EDT
Has anyone seen CD prices in Japan? They are outrageous. In fact it's so bad that many people just rent CD's then copy them and return them. I find this attempt at an iPod tax laughable. It's obviously just a grab for more cash.
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Re: CD Prices in Japan
0
10/10, 1:35pm, EDT
Sounds like perhaps they should have a CD rental tax. That would come much closer to placing the burden on the people more likely responsible for illegal copying. Why punish the iPod purchaser who is 100% legal? And just how much of such a tax do you think will actually end up in the artists pockets?

Next we'll have a special tax on ALL hard drives because before you can load music on an iPod you need to get it on your computer's drive (I would wager that there is FAR more illegal music on people's computers than there is on iPods). Follow that with a tax on all computer operating systems in order to reimburse software developers for profits lost to software pirates. Then we'll have a tax on cars in order to compensate the victims of bad drivers.

If you can't beat them and don't want to join them...tax them!!
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100% tax
0
10/10, 3:43pm, EDT
This would be fine is 100% of the tax went to the artist and zero for the label. The artist is getting screwed the most.

People don't buy music because of a label. They want the artist's music.

Again, the assumption is that the iPod is used to store stolen music, which isn't always the case. Many have 100% legit music on them.
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Tapes
0
10/10, 3:56pm, EDT
This used to exist on cassette tapes and the problem I had with it was that it would result in far more money going to Michael Jackson than smaller artists - the presumption being that popular artists suffered more piracy - wheras in my experience people often pirate what is hard to get hold of / what they wouldn't 'normally' buy.

(The same argument holds against those who propose a flat fee for music that then gets divided up amongst bands - it benefits those selling millions more than those selling thousands).

If such a scheme was proposed here in the UK, I'd be able to make a perfect test case as my 20G iPod was quickly filled with 1/3 of my existing CD collection.
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Apple should then in turn
0
10/10, 7:42pm, EDT
Apple should then in turn charge the japanise record companies a fee for loading there albums on the iTunes Music store. Do on to others as they do onto you. Charge Apple apple charges you back. Right now Apple provides the bandwith,uploads, and advertising on iTunes. So if they want to tax Apple then Apple should charge for all of the bandwith,uploads, and advertising of the songs on there store.
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