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www.TUNECHECKER.com NEWS RELEASE
The £850 a year extra cost of using iTunes
The hidden cost of download loyalty - people overpaying £100s
Unique research into the pricing of every top 40 single and album download of 2009 by MP3 price comparison site www.TuneChecker.com has revealed the huge cost of loyalty for those who simply download music from one store.
Key Findings (see notes to editors 1)
- Sticking to one retailer can add £1,000 to year's download costs. Download all of 2009's top 40 albums from the cheapest retailer each time and it'd cost £1,980 (avg £4.85 per album). Yet stick to Amazon and it would've have cost £490 more, £601 more at Tesco, £864 more at iTunes and £1,031 more downloaded from HMV.
- People overpay 30p per single at iTunes. iTunes dominates the singles market (70% of it) but the average price of all 2009 top 40 singles there is 88p, whereas buying each from the cheapest supplier is just 58p. The gap is bigger when it comes to the year's number 1s with iTunes averaging 93p compared to 58p at the cheapest.
- iTunes can be over treble the price for massively popular tracks. The biggest differentials are common on very popular tracks, eg the current number 1 by Joe McElderry is 29p at the cheapest retailer and 99p at iTunes. Michael Bublè 's number 1 album is £5 at the cheapest and £7.99 at iTunes.
Total price of downloads (avg price in brackets) |
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| Retailer | All 2009 top 40 Singles - 387 in total | All 2009 top 40 albums - 408 | All 2009 No. 1 albums - 31 | All 2009 No 1. singles - 33 | This week’s top 40 albums | This week’s top 40 singles |
| TuneChecker.com's cheapest (A) | £226 (58p) |
£1,980 (£4.85) |
£133 (£4.29) |
£19 (58p) |
£201 (£5.02) |
£22 (55p) |
| Amazon | £308 (80p) |
£2,470 (£6.05) |
£174 (£5.60) |
£27 (83p) |
£235 (£5.88) |
£32 (80p) |
| HMV | £368 (95p) |
£3,011 (£7.38) |
£192 (£6.19) |
£31 (94p) |
£289 (£7.23) |
£37 (93p) |
| iTunes | £342 (88p) |
£2,844 (£6.97) |
£219 (£7.05) |
£30 (93p) |
£313 (£7.83) |
£37 (93p) |
| Play | £267 (69p) |
£3,235 (£8.22) |
£231 (£7.47) |
£22 (67p) |
£316 (£7.90) |
£26 (65p) |
| 7digital | £399 (£1.03) |
£3,109 (£7.62) |
£233 (£7.52) |
£32 (98p) |
£305 (£7.63) |
£35 (88p) |
| Tesco | £303 (78p) |
£2,581 (£6.32) |
£187 (£6.02) |
£25 (78p) |
£251 (£6.28) |
£32 (80p) |
| TuneTribe | £266 (69p) |
£3,188 (£7.81) |
£208 (£6.70) |
£23 (70p) |
£268 (£6.70) |
£28 (70p) |
| we7 | £374 (97p) |
£2,621 (£6.42) |
£197 (£6.36) |
£33 (99p) |
£262 (£6.55) |
£41 (£1.03) |
| Correct as at 29 Dec 09. Where prices were missing the retailer's average price for singles or albums was used. (A) Shows the result if you downloaded each single/album from the cheapest place as shown by Tunechecker.com. | ||||||
Martin Lewis, Money Saving Expert & founder of TuneChecker.com, says:
"The music industry needs to wake up and start embracing price competition, it's facing annihilation from people who illegally download tracks, yet there are still strong remnants of an attitude that price doesn’t make a difference. If it promoted cheaper legit music it'd mean fewer illegal downloads.
"Yet first it needs to start explaining to people how music downloads really work. Far too many people wrongly think if they've got an iPod or iPhone they need to download their music from iTunes. That's nonsense, there are no longer any barriers to buying from elsewhere. Just buy from the cheapest retailer and you can easily upload to your iTunes library.
"You need to admire Apple for how it's clung on to this perceived customer lock-in - the sheer genius comes from the fact its music store and upload software are the same thing; they'd be jumping for joy at it on Dragons' Den, getting customers to pay possibly £100s a year extra when they don't really need to.
"Yet times are changing. Since we launched the www.TuneChecker.com comparison site a month ago we've had 400,000 users, an indication there's a real appetite to download music at the lowest possible price."
NOTES TO EDITORS
1) About the comparison. As prices vary, to perform a fair comparison, we have used the prices being charged on 29 December 2009. As not every album and single is available for download at every store, where there are missing prices we assumed the average price for that retailer.
2.) About Tunechecker.com. Launched on 30 November 2009, Tunechecker.com is a free site that allows people to compare the prices of over 9 million singles and albums at nine of the major download sites (more due). Tunechecker Ltd is owned by Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis, and was developed and is maintained by the MoneySavingExpert.com team.