The French Apple Store updated the price of its iPods today so as to reflect significant drop of the piracy tax on digital audio devices. This tax, which is called te SORECOP tax, is paid to music majors so as to compensate piracy revenue loss. Other brands will also be able to reflect this tax drop on their pricing.
The tax for flash-based digital music devices was as much as 51â⬠for 4GB of storage making it really expensive. Now the 2GB one now sells for 222.99â⬠instead of 239â⬠while the 4GB one sees an even more significant drop to 277.01â⬠from 319ââ¬.
Apple also dropped the price of the iPod shuffle 512MB to 106.99â⬠from 109â⬠and the 1GB version is now priced 142â⬠instead of 149ââ¬. The 5G iPod saw a price drop as well. The 30GB version costs 325â⬠instead of 349â⬠and the 60GB version costs 446â⬠instead of 449ââ¬.
Now the iPod nano becomes really affordable in France too, especially for students which can buy for example an iPod nano 2Gb for 205.74ââ¬.
This week, it was also announced that Japan has rejected the tax for digital audio players as well.
UPDATE: Some MacBidouille readers report that Apple refunds the tax to recent iPod buyers! This has yet to be confirmed though.
Delicious
Reddit
Google
Yahoo
Technorati
MacScoop RSS