http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-25...costs-rise.html

 

Measure announced in Budget will force online retailers to pay VAT

Amazon and Apple's 99p singles would rise to £1.16

Tolerance for those who do not pay 'fair share' has gone says Osborne

 

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Pirate music sites will be rubbing their hands...

I think iTunes won't raise its price and will pay VAT off 0.99p, otherwise it will be losing its market share to Spotify etc. more quickly...

I think iTunes won't raise its price and will pay VAT off 0.99p, otherwise it will be losing its market share to Spotify etc. more quickly...

 

Do Spotify subs currently include VAT, I wonder?

I hope not! It will see download sales drop. I think most record companies and iTunes, Amazon, etc will do their best to keep the vast majority of the downloads at 99p.

I hope not! It will see download sales drop. I think most record companies and iTunes, Amazon, etc will do their best to keep the vast majority of the downloads at 99p.

 

Amazon's are usually less than 99p *now*...

Probably stay the same, but instead of getting 40% off Amazon, the artists will incur most of the VAT charge and go down to about 25% of profits.

I wonder what the profit margin is on a 99p download.

amazon are 79p quite often, I can't see many people paying £1.29 for a track, especially when you can get an album for £7.99, could see the instant grab thing becoming more popular when it comes to songs which have come out before their albums. Dance tracks will suffer the most because of this imo

The Beatles Taxman comes to mind here :nono:

The Beatles Taxman comes to mind here :nono:

Why? It's a perfectly legitimate move. If a UK-based consumer buys something from a UK website then it should be subject to UK tax, not Luxembourg tax.

This is old news, by the way: it was announced in the 2013 budget but doesn't come into force until January 2015, so Osborne announced it again this year to make it look like he was actually doing something.

The only real impact I could see this having on sale price would be reducing the number of songs reduced to 59p if profit margins got too thin at that price. I don't think the industry would be stupid enough to raise the current standard download price.

The only real impact I could see this having on sale price would be reducing the number of songs reduced to 59p if profit margins got too thin at that price. I don't think the industry would be stupid enough to raise the current standard download price.

It wasn't all that many years ago when the standard iTunes rate was 79p. Then it gradually reached 99p. However that happened at a time when the download market was rapidly growing and such an increase would have been seen as being able to be absorbed. Today however download sales can be described as 'stagnant' at the very best, many would say the decline due to streaming has already begun, so a price increase wouldn't really be an option.

I don't think iTunes will increase their prices, otherwise their sales will drop a lot and more people will turn to streaming.

Why? It's a perfectly legitimate move. If a UK-based consumer buys something from a UK website then it should be subject to UK tax, not Luxembourg tax.

 

hear hear.

 

Downloads cost p*ss-all. Sorry, but they do. In absolute-compared-to-inflation terms singles are cheaper than they have ever been by a huge margin. Cost of 2 bars of chocolate, pretty much, or 2 bags of crisps. Crisps were thruppence when I was a kid, singles were nearly ten shillings. They cost 4 times what it cost to go to the cinema (two and six). In decimal that's crisps 1p a packet, cinema 12p, singles 45p. Pocket money was 10p. Average Wages were £20-£30 a week for grown-ups. Work it out, 45 years later they still only cost double while Average weekly wage is now £480.

 

I make that a single used to cost about 2% of income, now it's about 0.2%, ten times cheaper. That was at a time when The Beatles sold millions of singles.

 

Give or take. It's hard to see how they could get much cheaper without killing off the music industry, the artists and the charts.... (and I'm a critic of the big companies....!)

 

 

I'm actually surprised to read that downloads don't have VAT at UK rates already applied. In fact I'm quite shocked to read that they don't. No wonder the likes of Apple are making a fortune if they are only paying 3% VAT.

Good news for the charts, no more random oldies making their resurgences all of a sudden based purely on a discounted price. Fair play!

hear hear.

 

Downloads cost p*ss-all. Sorry, but they do. In absolute-compared-to-inflation terms singles are cheaper than they have ever been by a huge margin. Cost of 2 bars of chocolate, pretty much, or 2 bags of crisps. Crisps were thruppence when I was a kid, singles were nearly ten shillings. They cost 4 times what it cost to go to the cinema (two and six). In decimal that's crisps 1p a packet, cinema 12p, singles 45p. Pocket money was 10p.

 

I'm slightly younger than you, but I still try to avoid saying things that'll make me sound like an 'old fogey'. :w00t:

 

Good news for the charts, no more random oldies making their resurgences all of a sudden based purely on a discounted price. Fair play!

 

This change won't stop discounting - any relatively cheap song will still get a significant boost compared to the rest of the market.

I'm slightly younger than you, but I still try to avoid saying things that'll make me sound like an 'old fogey'. :w00t:

 

Oh I refuse to hide my age and pretend I'm younger just cos I can remember thruppence tuppence hapenny half a groat guv lord luva duck corblimey Mary Poppin's :lol:

I love it when I'm chatting to teen kids and young adult kids of friends and relations who tell me that they're into, say, Disclosure and then go on to explain to me who they are cos I obviously wouldnt know. Funny! My nephews and nieces know better cos I've always brainwashed...errr steered them in the right direction when it comes to getting into current pop music and TV and films and comics, and I'm going to the same with their kids now that they're all "oh music's just not as good as it used to be". Happens to every generation at 30 years old... ^_^