Watchdog questions iTunes pricing

The Consumers' Association (CA) has called for an investigation into whether Apple's iTunes music download service is "ripping off" UK music fans.

It has asked the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to look into what it believes is anti-competitive and discriminatory behaviour by iTunes against UK consumers.

In the UK it costs 79p (around 120 euro cents) to download one track from iTunes, yet in both France and Germany it costs just 99 euro cents.

According to the CA, iTunes prevents UK consumers from taking advantage of the cheaper download service offered to the French and Germans as UK consumers need to have a registered address and payment mechanisms in France or Germany to access the service or pay the higher price charged in the UK.

The CA said it is concerned that "the practice of residency based price discrimination frustrates consumer benefits possible under the single market and that the iTunes system allows market abuse, going against the principles of the single market".

A spokesman for the CA told Web User: "We've written a letter of complaint to the OFT urging them to investigate this. We can't understand why it costs 20 euro cents more for UK consumers to download the same tracks. On the face of it, it sounds a rip-off."

Apple said it is "declining to comment at present" on the claims, but when the CA asked Apple to justify the price differential, the company said: "The underlying economic model in each country has an impact on how we price our track downloads. That's not unusual, look at the price of CDs in the US versus the UK. We believe the real comparison to be made is with the price of other track downloads in the UK."