“Apple Computer Inc. must be singing the blues after discovering its Japanese iTunes Web site sold albums last week for just 50 yen each. The cost was a fraction of the intended 1,500-yen price, sources said,” Hiraku Toda reports for The Asahi Shimbun.
“While the company has declined to comment on the matter, the sources said the low price at the iTunes Music Store was likely a mistake,” Toda reports. “The bargain was available last Thursday from the early morning to late afternoon, when it was possible to download Toshiba EMI Ltd. albums at 50 yen each. Dozens of albums, including those by rock group RC Succession and singer Saori Yuki, sold at the price.”
Full article here.
Apple wants to avoid these pricing mistakes since, as stated in the full article, “a music download service never runs out of stock and potential losses… could expand without limit.” This one seems to be a one-time error that ran for a few hours one day last week and was quickly corrected. Great deal for those that got it!
Related articles:
Apple’s Japan iTunes Music Store sells one million songs in first four days – August 07, 2005
Apple’s iTunes Music Store offers Japan’s largest library; Napster plans April 2006 launch in Japan – August 04, 2005
Apple launches iTunes Music Store in Japan – August 03, 2005
sounds intentional to me. Everyone knows how Apple loves word of mouth exposure.
Maybe Apple switched the price from ‘Oscene’ to ‘Actual’ by mistake on one of their Xserves!
wow !……. what a bargain !
MDN MW = ill ….. (no kidding)
MW “bring” as in “Bring it on!”
Heads are gonna roll!
pricing errors are common in retail…
haven’t you ever had something ring up eithe rtoo low or too high at a grocery store or convenient store? Heck, even large appliance stores like BestBuy have been known to make pricing mistakes that discount one model TV hundreds while over pricing another model.
Interesting note about “never running out of stock” though. More interesting would be to know the safeguards that did/may have stopped this – is there some flag that goes off when a certain albums sales jump rapidly or perhaps an “average selling price” flag that was just too low?
MDN: age
Sony’s in the lead now for sure.
Sorry, somebody had to say it! Now back to reality…
Toshiba, eh? Isn’t Toshiba the hold-out on the HD DVD format compromise?
hmm. wonder if the # songs sold that day skyrocketed in the Japan stats…
sadly, for paul thurrott.. a pricing discount on iTMS songs.. if anything.. sells MORE iPods which means Apple makes more money..
this digital music thing is ingenious
Just the thing to start up a service. Imagine all them middle age sarari-men going frothy in the mouth and texting each other in a frenzy at the 50-yen album mispricing.
Naah….
Oops! Or maybe Ace was right. Whatever the screw up cost them was less than it would cost to advertise in all the newspapers this story will end up in.
On a completely unrelated note, does anyone else’s cursor sometimes disappear when going up to the back button, only on MDN? It’s been happening on and off to me for years on a variety of different computers. I hadn’t see it happen recently until just now. Do other people see this or is it just me?
ndelc,
Happens in Safari on the primary navigation buttons when browsing MDN. Curious, yet irritating.
On the other hand … you might want to listen to Sunrise Scat [Yo-ake no scat] if you’re having problems.
about the disappearing cursor thing… uh… safari sucks man… use firefox.
about the pricing mix-up. Apparently, the Cost field was posted instead of the Retail Price.
Justified– had that happen all the time in Panther. Now, in Tiger, never. Has to be some sort of conflict with another program, no?
I don’t know about a potential conflict. Only that it happens on MDN, but haven’t noticed it otherwise.
Oh here it is.
This is nothing, in Japan a couple of computer companies (was it Toshiba?) sold whole computer systems at like a 90 % discount mistakenly a while back. One of the companies honored the discounts and took a giant hit while the other said they could not.
Apple can make up the difference to Toshiba without even blinking an eye. As long as they guarantee the record companies will get their money, who cares? As long as Apple doesn’t pussyfoot around this could actually increase their reliability quotient with the labels.
Maybe the cursor disapearing is happening because of the new popup ads here
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> Those go through safari’s blocker.
Regarding this disappearing cursor:
I’m noticing that it happens ONLY when I’m using tabbed browsing. Can anyone corroborate?
Finally someone notices! My cursor occasionally turns into an ugly pointing hand cursor when in the Safari bar. It’s not the usual cute mickey mouse hand with the three vertical lines in it but an ugly ‘microsoftesqe’ hand with a very long finger. Who or what is to blame?
I’ve seen disappearing cursors too. I think it’s related to the flash ads on this website. Some time ago there was that incredibly annoying Crazy Frog ad with sound when you moused over it. Every time I went out of the MDN page through the top it started playing! (Even when the ad was hidden using the userContent.css from FireFox.)
I totally wish I lived in Japan. Though I’m perfectly happy with all the music I have…
it was definitely intentional, they were willing to bite the bullet on this one, gambling on the word of mouth and the influx of morons born every minute who will lock themselves in to a life of doom being stuck with a stupid ipod for the rest of their lives because they cannot play their music on any other digital music player.