Don't go expecting any price-drop over there at iTunes, ladies and gentlemen, though if you're looking for someone to blame you're going to have to take it up with Mr Exchange Rate. Plans to cut the per-download rate on the Apple download service by a few pennies have been shelved because the pound is performing so poorly against the Euro just now.
As previously reported, consumer rights groups used to express concerns that iTunes downloads in the UK were more expensive than elsewhere in the Europe. The unit price at other European iTunes Music Stores is 99 euro-cents, while here in the UK, of course, it's 79 pence. Ever since the launch of iTunes Europe in 2004 that meant that British music fans were spending several pennies more per track than their counterparts in Mainland Europe.
The consumer rights groups' case was stronger because - as a result of copyright restrictions - UK consumers were not able to buy music from, say, the iTunes Music Stores in France and Germany. According to the principles of the European Economic Community if something is available cheaper in France, British consumers should be able to buy it there, should they wish to.
With that in mind the European Commission got involved. Apple blamed the record companies - obviously - claiming that it was their restrictive licences (which stopped music licenced in France or Germany being sold elsewhere in Europe) that caused the problem. Nevertheless, at the start of the year the computer firm agreed to bring the UK iTunes price inline with that in Mainland Europe. At the time that would have seen the cost per download fall to 74p.
Except that as the date for making the switch approaches, changes in the exchange rate mean that 99 euro-cents are now worth about, yes, you guessed it, 79p. So there'll be no change, and all that bothering about the whole thing was a bit of a waste of time.
An Apple spokesman told reporters yesterday: "The announcement was that we would match the UK price to that of other lower priced European countries. This is no longer necessary as exchange rates have effectively done it for us". The firm does though, in theory, remain committed to linking the sterling download price to the euro download price, so presumably the price could go down, or possibly up, at some point in the future.
It's a shame there's no body to force Apple to link their UK download prices to their US service, which also charges 99 cents per track. Given the US dollar's all round weakness just now, that would make each track about 49p.