Apple Shifts iTunes Pricing; $0.69 Tracks MIA 429
Hodejo1 writes "Steve Jobs vowed weeks ago that when iTunes shifted to a tiered price structure in April, older tracks priced at $0.69 would outnumber the contemporary hits that are rising to $1.29. Today, several weeks later, iTunes made the transition. While the $1.29 tracks are immediately visible, locating cheaper tracks is proving to be an exercise in futility. With the exception of 48 songs that Apple has placed on the iTunes main page, $0.69 downloads are a scarce commodity. MP3 Newswire tried to methodically drill down to unearth more of them only to find: 1) A download like Heart's 34-year-old song Barracuda went up to $1.29, not down. 2) Obscure '90s Brit pop and '50s rockabilly artists — those most likely to benefit from a price drop — remained at $0.99. 3) Collected tracks from a cross-section of 1920s, '30s, and '40s artists all remained at $0.99. Finally, MP3 Newswire called up tracks in the public domain from an artist named Ada Jones who first recorded in 1893 on Edison cylinder technology. The price on all of the century-old, public-domain tracks remained at $0.99. (The same tracks are available for free on archive.org.) The scarcity of lower-priced tracks may reflect the fact that the labels themselves decide which price tier they want to pursue for a given artist; and they are mostly ignoring the lower tier. Meanwhile, Amazon's UK site has decided to counter-promote their service by dropping prices on select tracks to 29 pence ($0.42)."
Variable Pricing Not the Feature to Have Evidently (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, Amazon's UK site has decided to counter-promote their service by dropping prices on select tracks to 29 pence ($0.42).
At the risk of sounding like an Amazon shill, Engadget helps those of you looking to get this week's disposable music [engadget.com] that's shoved down your gullet on the radio.
They are not without flaw though, even their Barracude by Heart [amazon.com] is a confusing $1.29 (must have been an expensive song to produce) and I also rarely find their $0.79 tracks. I think albums on both sites are a standard $10 though, correct? So it's not that big of a difference for people like me that are interested in the artist and the album as a whole when the other 11 tracks aren't phoned in. Sometimes I find shorter albums a few bucks cheaper on Amazon. Haven't cared to check iTunes for that.
Hope the Amazon US site follows suit with that 29 pence action.
When the drugs wear off.... (Score:2)
...Barracude by Heart is a confusing $1.29 (must have been an expensive song to produce)...
Ann Wilson went off of her diet.
(yes, that was mean, but: before [heartlinker.eu], and after [geocities.com]...just saying)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Variable Pricing Not the Feature to Have Eviden (Score:5, Interesting)
emusic.com is another viable alternative to Itunes.
-No DRM
-MP3 Format
-Large Selection(Though it is true they tend to have better alternative selections and fewer name-brands)
->$1 per track. (I pay $0.21 per)
There is life in music beyond what is shoveled through the pop radio and TV ads.
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Oh one last thing I forgot to mention above.
-Linux Support!
Yes indeed they released their download manager(which is purely optional but useful) for Windows, Mac AND Linux officially.
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Re:Variable Pricing Not the Feature to Have Eviden (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Variable Pricing Not the Feature to Have Eviden (Score:5, Interesting)
"The amount being paid to the music industry, even though [these] games are entirely dependent on the content we own and control, is far too small," Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman told analysts last summer.
Guitar Hero drives much more sales than your ad agencies and your lawsuits, assholes. The funny thing is that the recording industry are beginning to attack their own kin, MTV Games!
Re:Variable Pricing Not the Feature to Have Eviden (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with economic "laws" is that unlike scientific laws they don't change even when a perponderance of evidence is put forth against them.
The "Law" of Supply and Demand is still used as a foundation of many economic theories even though great evidence can be put forth that it is inadequate and poorly suited for explaining most economic climates.
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Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Informative)
There is no competition between different labels to sell the same product (song)
TFS mentions tracks in the public domain. Anyone can sell those tracks - how do you explain the pricing there? That can't be the Label's bullying poor defenceless Apple.
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you are running a business, ASCAP will bill you for ANY performance, whether or not you are playing free music.
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
They might, but they are not supposed to [woodpecker.com].
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Informative)
As I'm currently researching a tangential issue for a journal article right now, I have found numerous cases and pronouncements from Congress that if the song file is transferred (as distinguished from streamed), it is a public distribution, not a public performance.
Thus, ASCAP should not be implicated when you're selling tracks (as distinguished from streaming radio).
Yes, I know from a technical standpoint there isn't much difference between streaming and transferring a 4MB MP3 file with speeds the way they are now over the net.
However, it basically breaks down to: a streamed MP3 is "performed" and the "performance" is sent over the net. However, a merely transferred MP3 is sent as a piece of data that is meant for later performance.
Think of it as the difference between sending a VHS recording of a play you produced and transmitting a live show over the airwaves.
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OK, I need to start being careful here I think. I'm not a lawyer (just a third-year law student). I'm not your lawyer. I'm not anyone's lawyer on Slashdot. This is not legal advice. This is merely my uninformed view based on research for an academic article. Anything I say would drastically change if I were representing you (which I can't anyway since I'm not a licensed lawyer).
That being said, it seems like judges are more concerned with what the intent is rather than the underlying technical structure. Co
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That can't be the Label's bullying poor defenceless Apple.
Actually, it can be. Just the same way that Microsoft charges more for Windows to OEMs which sell Linux-based products.
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Well my first question would be, who put them on iTunes? Did Apple set the price, or did someone else?
Now I don't know who would put up public domain songs, or who would collect the profits. Does Apple get the full $0.99? It seems like they should be able to do that, but somehow I doubt that they have. Anyone have real information on that? I tried looking it up on the store to see who it had listed as the record label, but with the only thing that was a full album of Ada Jones that I could see, it sai
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, they're also competing against themselves. Take my story from just today:
I had heard a song and decided I wanted it. I poked around a little bit but couldn't find the song; I didn't see it in iTunes, not on Amazon mP3, not on Walmart's MP3 service. I could get the whole CD from Amazon, but apparently it was only released on a Canadian label in Canada, and I wasn't inclined to pay $25 to buy an import--particularly when I had never heard the other songs on the CD and only wanted that one.
Eventually I went to the artist's website. "Ah HA!" I said to myself. There was a "buy this on iTunes" link. I had no idea how I missed it on iTunes the first time, but no matter. Click the link, iTunes pops up dutifully. And--what's this? "This item is not available in the US version of iTunes. Click here to switch stores." Okay, no problem. Except that apparently it is a problem, since as a US customer I'm not special enough to buy anything from the iTunes Canadian store.
So I pirated the damn song.
I literally tried to give these people my money. I went out of my way to do so, I registered with iTunes and was about to buy the first song I've ever bought from them (I don't care for it or Apple very much) just to give them my money--and they refused it. There's certainly no TECHNICAL reason they couldn't have given me the song; in fact, they had to go out of their way to impose the technical limitation that I couldn't get it. But for whatever reason, that was the choice they made. So I walked away.
I say all that just to get to this: They still don't understand the Internet. They want to have their cake and eat it too*; to have their exclusivity and licensing deals, to continue selling music at frankly inflated prices and only pay lip service to the way the Internet has and WILL change their industry. Well, so be it. They're the copyright owners. But so long as they go out of their way to gouge us on prices (it seriously costs as much to buy the CD online as get it from the store now?!), prevent "undesirables" from buying their music and otherwise make the legal route the most unreasonable, largest pain in the ass way of getting music... they'll never stand any chance against piracy. I don't feel the slightest bit bad about what I did today. I would have paid the $1.29 even though I think it's too expensive. I would have paid the $0.99 feeling the same way. I couldn't. Until this sort of nonsense changes, they have little chance of actually getting any number of fence-sitters to their side. So long as piracy remains both the cheapest and the easiest way of acquiring things, it will remain the biggest.
This is my annoyance as a US customer, and in reality I have access to the majority of things I might want. Imagine how many would-be customers they're shutting out even from US operations by no doubt excluding the rest of the world as I was excluded from the Canadian offering. Think they'll learn?
* Stupidest expression ever? I think so.
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Informative)
It seems senseless until you realise that it's back to front in today's common usage. The expression means "they want to eat their cake and still have it afterwards".
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As someone who has lived outside the US for many years, I've seen this soooooooo often.
I tried to buy Ken Burns' "The Civil War" a few years ago on DVD. They would not ship to my (at the time) German address. I wrote to PBS about it and they answered "licensing deals... blah... blah". So I bought it in Wal Mart the next time I was in the US and brought it back to play on my hacked player.
My daughter is a big Avatar fan. They would not sell me the Season 3 DVDs as it was not yet released in Europe. My s
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's rather unusual these days for an album (or anything for that matter) to be released in Canada, but not the US.
Most indie Canadian bands probably don't have a distribution deal that includes the USA.
Anyways, the problem described is one commonly encountered by non-US residents trying to partake in certain services, including networks who put episodes of various TV shows online, Pandora, etc.
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is competition, just not exact competition. If you have $5 to spend on music and enjoy 15 different songs about the same amount, you will maximize your enjoyment if you buy the cheapest songs. That's incredibly contrived, but I don't think it is completely ridiculous.
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably depends on the consumer. I personally always want more music than I'm willing to spend money on, so I will move around things in the purchase queue (I prefer physical media, though) based on price--- a CD selling for more than my usual price range (say, $20+) might get deferred or never purchased, while some band selling $10 CDs directly out of their van will probably get a purchase right away.
Some people have more directed music shopping, though: they want a specific album or song, and are looking to go buy it. They might be less price sensitive, at least within reasonable ranges.
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It doesn't surprise anyone but you'd think they could have learned a lesson from Gabe Newell:
http://venturebeat.com/2009/02/18/valves-gabe-newell-kicks-off-dice-summit-with-digital-downloading-talk/ [venturebeat.com]
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Funny)
What, that 1 Euro is the same as 1 Dollar?
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because:
a) You don't have to buy the song. You can keep the money and spend it on something better.
b) You can buy other music with that same money. There's no reason why you can't get similar satisfaction from a different song.
When I go to bakery that bakes their own breads, I know going into it that I'm not going to be able to find that exact same bread anywhere else. Yet, for some reason, they don't charge $100 per loaf. Strange.
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's time for Apple to start signing artists directly; bypassing the record companies for new recordings.
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Forty-Two? Forty-Two?? (Score:3, Funny)
It looks like that really is the answer.
No rhyme or reason... (Score:5, Interesting)
The funny thing behind the "lowered" prices is that various albums used to be offered for $10 with no hullaballoo at all. I bought Throwing Copper (a 90's alt-rock masterpiece) in 2005 for $6, and I bought Blues Travelers' Four just last year for $6.41, both from ITMS. The price of each of those albums now: $10. Admittedly, I didn't get DRM-free versions for the lower prices, but it still seems fishy.
Makes one wonder how many albums like this have actually seen stealth price increases.
Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
We have Amazon. The only thing keeping iTunes relevant is the fact that Apple won't let anything else talk to the iPhone, and they refuse all other music players for the device.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
You can buy your music from amazon and just import it into itunes. iTunes is a database for you to organize your collection. iTunes music store is the store.
captcha: monogamy
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iTunes is a bloated, poorly designed turd for you to organize your collection
Corrected that for you, Captain Obvious.
Next you're going to shout at the top of your lungs how fantastic that POS Amarok software is and it will trump iTunes.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
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So? Dell sells three times as many computers as Apple, and nobody cares what Dell does. Those who don't know any better will continue use iTunes, and the sophisticated will use Amazon.
Of course, the smart people buy CDs. They're cheaper than ever, and they come with art, lyrics, and backup media.
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No way in hell will Amazon overshadow Apple's solution.
Yet.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
And more to the point, Amazon only gets special favors as long as the labels need them to be doing something to counteract Apple. Now that they have Apple buckling on variable pricing, there's no need for them to allow Amazon to maintain fixed pricing or otherwise grant Amazon favors. The next time Amazon's contract is up for renegotiation, they'll be forced to moved to move to variable pricing.
Apple was the lynch pin, no one else is currently strong enough to stand up to the labels and block variable pricing. You can go to Amazon today and get tracks at $.99, but tomorrow anything you* would want will be at price parity with the iTunes Music Store.
*You = the average person
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Media is overpriced, pay-per-unit model is dying (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a bad move in my opinion and will only encourage piracy. If you do the math, you'll realize that for someone to legally acquire say, 20GB worth of music (3MB avg.) at $1.00 per song, it would cost nearly $7,000. The thing is that as time goes on, hard drives are only going to be getting bigger and cheaper. Additionally as fast broadband becomes even more widespread it will mean that illegal downloading will become easier and the price factor with eventually decrease to nothing.
How much do you think some TV show is worth to a typical viewer? How about a song? Even though it might be $1.00-$1.29 today, as people get more media with the same investment in space and time the value is only going to decline. Your iPod can hold more, so you want more media to fill it up. NOBODY is going to spend $6,000 on their music collection. Well I suppose SOME people might, but certainly nobody that I know would ever even think about paying that much for something they can get for free (and at the same, or near-same quality). Only a dollar per song sounds pretty reasonable, but if you have a 160GB iPod, filling it up will cost $48,000! $48,000?! Just think of what that kind of money can mean to somebody. Pay off the credit card debt. Get a new car. Remodeling. Any number of major things.
I'd say we are QUITE past the point of something "worth paying for". As soon as a person downloads a song "illegally" they cross an invisible line and are now "pirates". And of course once you do it once, it's so easy to do again. That makes it sound like a drug but it's true. If you can get something easily for free, what's the point in paying for it? The best reason I can think of is if you get a significant amount of value added by actually paying for it. When this happens people become significantly more selective about what they DO actually pay for verses what they download for free. And of course, the media itself is practically free.
Basically I think that if companies what to directly sell their media to consumers, it will have to cost fractions of a cent, and they're going to have to come up with some clever ideas on how to provide it to make it easier than simply downloading it for free. It'll probably have to offer other value as well.
For example with TV shows companies should experiment with broadcasts which actually "upgraded" for the web. The idea is that you put your show online with ads for people to see for free. In terms of music, I think bands should get "distributors" which distribute all their music in very large inexpensive packages. Then the band can offer their music for free download on their website for their casual fans, but while simultaneously selling media and merchandise to their more loyal fans (who don't mind spending a little bit to support the band) with added value. I think there are still many ways to make good money off of media, but the truth is that the pay per unit or copy model is dying and won't be around much longer.
Re:Media is overpriced, pay-per-unit model is dyin (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get the correlation between the size of one's hard drive and the price of music. Why does owning more storage space entitle a person to fill it up for the same price as last year's smaller drive?
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Well let's say you have a 50GB MP3 collection, would you spend $12,000-$13,000 on it? Ten years ago, would you have even IMAGINED that you'd have a 50GB MP3 collection?! I mean, I remember when 4GB-8GB drives were "freakin' massive!" and that was well into the "Napster era".
Granted, people buy larger storage devices because they don't have much of a choice (I can't count the number of times I only *needed* a small drive but ended up getting something way overkill because it was the smallest drive I could fi
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Instead of focusing on quantity, why not focus on quality ? If hard drives and broadband connections can handle it, why not offer songs in .wav or flac format ? That will fill a hard drive pretty quick, even by modern standards. It would also give a much needed competitive edge to legitimate sources of music.
Of course this is assuming the pieces of shit running the major record companies have any amount of sense or intelligence.
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It doesn't entitle them to anything, it just makes it more attractive. "Hey, I could spend $1,000 putting music on my iPod, or I could just take it. Hmmmmmm."
Re:Media is overpriced, pay-per-unit model is dyin (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think about it like a radio station it makes more sense. E-radio stations are charged per song they play. That price is based on number of listeners. So with an infinite number of songs available (like a radio station) paying to broadcast to an audience of 1 (me). It would probably cost me something like 2$ a month if i listened 5hrs/day (I'd pay 5~10x that). With INFINITE music available. Explain why this isn't available. I mean I suppose I could try to actually set up an e-radio with 1 listener and negotiate deals with record companies but that seems needlessly difficult.
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Mod parent up.
To think that filesize and price are correlated is absurd. It's the production cost and value of those bits that determines price.
Replace "MP3" with "software" and this becomes obvious. A bargain-bin game might cost you $5/GB, whereas a specialized 10 MB medical/industrial program could cost $10,000 per seat.
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This is a bad move in my opinion and will only encourage piracy. If you do the math, you'll realize that for someone to legally acquire say, 20GB worth of music (3MB avg.) at $1.00 per song, it would cost nearly $7,000. The thing is that as time goes on, hard drives are only going to be getting bigger and cheaper. Additionally as fast broadband becomes even more widespread it will mean that illegal downloading will become easier and the price factor with eventually decrease to nothing.
How much do you think some TV show is worth to a typical viewer? How about a song? Even though it might be $1.00-$1.29 today, as people get more media with the same investment in space and time the value is only going to decline. Your iPod can hold more, so you want more media to fill it up. NOBODY is going to spend $6,000 on their music collection. Well I suppose SOME people might, but certainly nobody that I know would ever even think about paying that much for something they can get for free (and at the same, or near-same quality). Only a dollar per song sounds pretty reasonable, but if you have a 160GB iPod, filling it up will cost $48,000! $48,000?! Just think of what that kind of money can mean to somebody. Pay off the credit card debt. Get a new car. Remodeling. Any number of major things.
I'd say we are QUITE past the point of something "worth paying for". As soon as a person downloads a song "illegally" they cross an invisible line and are now "pirates". And of course once you do it once, it's so easy to do again. That makes it sound like a drug but it's true. If you can get something easily for free, what's the point in paying for it? The best reason I can think of is if you get a significant amount of value added by actually paying for it. When this happens people become significantly more selective about what they DO actually pay for verses what they download for free. And of course, the media itself is practically free.
Basically I think that if companies what to directly sell their media to consumers, it will have to cost fractions of a cent, and they're going to have to come up with some clever ideas on how to provide it to make it easier than simply downloading it for free. It'll probably have to offer other value as well.
For example with TV shows companies should experiment with broadcasts which actually "upgraded" for the web. The idea is that you put your show online with ads for people to see for free. In terms of music, I think bands should get "distributors" which distribute all their music in very large inexpensive packages. Then the band can offer their music for free download on their website for their casual fans, but while simultaneously selling media and merchandise to their more loyal fans (who don't mind spending a little bit to support the band) with added value. I think there are still many ways to make good money off of media, but the truth is that the pay per unit or copy model is dying and won't be around much longer.
Perhaps for the POP music lovin' hordes you find the thought of buying an artist's entire disc unconscionable but most of us who have bands we love, buying the entire disc for
Somehow, roughly 10 discs will cover your 7GB theory.
Apple's not going to complain too much. They got me to buy their player and I bought the artist's work in some other means.
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A) I can't stand this stupid idea that people pander around about how much it would cost to fill an iPod. Yes you idiot it would cost that much to fill it with just songs! No, no one I know actually fills their iPod past 20% to 50% with about 10% to 15% being iTunes music.
B) ZOMG!!!111!1!1! You pirate! No, actually about 40% of my iPod is pictures (remember it can do that?!), 15% is music (for me about 5% is iTunes, 10% is stuff from my CDs), 10% is contact information and calendars, 15% is podcast (I
Re:Media is overpriced, pay-per-unit model is dyin (Score:4, Insightful)
NOBODY is going to spend $6,000 on their music collection. Well I suppose SOME people might, but certainly nobody that I know would ever even think about paying that much for something they can get for free (and at the same, or near-same quality).
Actually, you can easily find entire albums on bittorrent at lossless quality (.flac) and of course DRM and watermark free ... only thing is if you're looking for something a bit obscure you'll have a tough time finding it.
As I see it, the convenience factor is really all there is.
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NOBODY is going to spend $6,000 on their music collection.
Some idiots spend that much on a cable!
Who cares (Score:2, Interesting)
Support you favorite artist by buying his/hers CD.
Rip it to your favorite format. I prefer ogg.
Copy it to your favorite personal player, I prefer the Cowon iAudio 7
Simple
Last I checked, (I could be wrong) iTunes and iTunes products are locked in DRM hell, preventing you the freedom to copy your bought merchandise from laptop to portable player and vise versa.
$1.29 per track? WTF, are they made of gold?
What prevents anyone from just copying a favorite tune from the airwaves and slapping it to silicon, for fr
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Re:Who cares (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who cares (Score:4, Insightful)
If "your favorite artist" is signed to a major label, or to an imprint of a major label, then he/she/they is/are in permanent debt slavery. Neither album sales nor concert ticket sales nor t-shirt sales nor anything else will remedy that; the outlay for concert tours comes from the label just like the outlay for recording, album production, distribution, etc.
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iTunes is now completely DRM-free, at least, for the music section.
By the way, can anyone tell me why this guy is a troll? Is being humbly ignorant of the latest trends sufficient to make you a troll these days?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Being arrogantly ignorant makes you wrong.
Being humbly ignorant makes you tentatively wrong.
Being ignorant deliberately to incite strong reactions makes you a troll.
Guitar Hero (Score:2)
Re:Guitar Hero (Score:5, Informative)
Except that the whole "sell the crap for cheap" part is missing.
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Will be interesting to see what happens to sales (Score:5, Interesting)
It will be very interesting to see what happens to sales on this.
There is a price where profit is maximized. Go too high and the sales drop eats more then the added profit per unit provides.
Old saying: "Fast nickels are better than slow dimes." Let's see if Apple has switched from the former to the latter.
Re:Will be interesting to see what happens to sale (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a price where profit is maximized. Go too high and the sales drop eats more then the added profit per unit provides.
You think that's what this is about? First of all, I doubt the people at the record labels are really paying that much attention. The record companies have been complaining for years that Apple wouldn't allow them to set their own prices, and forced them to sell at $0.99. When customers said in return, "Good, we don't want you to drive up prices," the record companies came back and said, "No, we want to lower prices, too!" And no big surprise, they get their chance, and no prices have been lowered.
Part
Label marketing philosophy (Score:5, Insightful)
In the Label's mind:
1.) In demand tunes should be higher-priced due to supply and demand.
2.) Older obscure tunes should be higher priced to recoup production costs over the smaller sales volume.
Historically, big labels would have lower prices on new releases by B-list or unknown artist that they were pushing to break big, or leftover stock that didn't sell and was never going to sell. Digital downloads mean no leftover stock or inventory costs. There may be some "teaser tracks" out at $0.69, from major labels, but not many. I could see an artist on their own label or a small independent selling that low if it would bring a much wider audience to their work.
Let the market price them (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Let the market price them (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? The supply and demand model is based on the idea of scarcity of a resource. The product they are selling, a digital copy of a piece of music, has no scarcity. You can make as many copies as you want for virtually no cost.
Re:Let the market price them (Score:4, Insightful)
I realize it makes too much sense for the RIAA to ever agree to it, but the prices should be based on demand. If a song gets downloaded a lot at $.99, then bump it to $1.29.
Why? The supply and demand model is based on the idea of scarcity of a resource.
Well, money isn't infinite... The "scarcity of resource" isn't the product, but rather the money used to purchase it.
It may not be traditional economics, but there is an optimal price for every song that will make the most money. I don't have a formula to figure out what that might be, but using a system similar to what was suggested might get them closer to capitalizing more on music tracks than just flat fees based on guesses of what's going to be hot.
Re:Let the market price them (Score:4, Interesting)
It may not be traditional economics, but there is an optimal price for every song that will make the most money. I don't have a formula to figure out what that might be[...[
It is traditional economics, and it is called the "single price monopoly pricing problem". Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] has the formula and background info. Of course if they really want to properly gouge their consumers for all their worth, they'd also introduce some price discrimination [wikipedia.org]...
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Itunes DRM (Score:2)
pathetic situation (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing to see that people are being forced to pay anything at all for music recorded in the 1920's, 30's and 40's. With the huge majority of these recordings, none of the artists are still alive, nor the producers or other personnel who worked on the recordings.
To say that somehow somebody today still effectively "owns" those recordings and deserves control over them as "properties", and ought to be able to force other people to pay for them, is just a completely absurd situation. These "owners" had no involvement at all in producing the recordings. And the recordings themselves likely made all their investment back plus profits several decades ago.
So why is it that people today are still willing to pay money to get the recordings of these long dead artists? Because they fear legal prosecution for pirating them, of course. The "owners" of this ancient music are nothing other than manipulators of a team of lawyers that will threaten anyone who attempts to access the recordings without payment. Are there some who really feel ethical compulsion to pay for such recordings? Do they really feel they're stealing from somebody by not paying? It's pure absurdity.
This is certainly not what the copyright system is for but it's no surprise that there are people out there abusing the legal system in pathetic attempts to leech "money for nothing" from people who just want to hear the great music produced in those time periods.
payment for service (Score:5, Insightful)
I would happily pay for music from the early 20th century. It's hard to find, especially in high quality restoration. So if somebody goes to the trouble of collecting it, restoring it, digitizing it, and making it convenient to find and download then they deserve to make a profit.
I agree that century-long copyright is immoral, but not because it makes old music commercially valuable. It's immoral because it denies the value of old music to society. I have some old 78 RPM Victrola records that I digitized and restored. I wanted to host them on an ad-supported site for others to download and thought I was in the clear since they have no copyright notice and seemed to predate the oldest active copyrights. But then I learned that their legal status is unclear and the still-existing record companies might have grounds enough to come after me. So now they're just gathering dust on my hard drive.
reciprocate the record companies behaviour (Score:4, Insightful)
The scarcity of lower-priced tracks may reflect the fact that the labels themselves decide which price tier they want to pursue for a given artist; and they are mostly ignoring the lower tier.
that's ok, I'm just gonna "mostly ignore" the legal alternatives to bittorrent
Intentionally killing itms? (Score:2, Interesting)
Might have been mentioned but... (Score:2)
Say you (not me honest!!!!) bought that 'Selena Gomez' album when stoned out of your mind on mushrooms! If you want to get that Sweet "Sympathy for the devil" track you bought last year DRM free, you would also need to get that Gomez album as well as all the other DRM enabled stuff at the same time!!! No way to choose individual tracks
convenience fee (Score:4, Interesting)
Another reason is that the tracks are not available elsewhere. One can pick a single anecdotal example and say, look, they are selling music that is free elsewhere. My anecdotal example is that I have bought tracks there that I needed in a hurry that I have found no where else. A dollar to solve a problem was a bargain. Some people hate paying a penny more than they have to, likening it to theft, but I am willing to pay for service.
That said I find myself buying from Amazon, both physical media and downloads. This will only increase as ITMS is now 1.29. I wonder if this is a ploy by labels to forestall the monopoly that the iTMS might become, or a ploy by Apple to sacrifice quantity and make it up in higher per sale profits. Honestly it is not every user that is sophisticated enough to do anything outside of the program they use. Look at how many people are afraid of OO.org. Look at how may people said how horrible VLC was in a recent thread here on /., even though we can assume many that those people probably have little experience with the program. Now assume they are also afraid of many other things outside of their comfort zone, like ripping a CD or importing music from Amazon.
In any case music has been in a deflationary spiral for years. The last time we saw music keep up with inflation was the introduction of the CD. Now tracks have been stagnant at 99 cents for 5 years, and even if we believe that they were massively overpriced to begin with, we must assume that an adjustment would happen, at least for premium tracks at a premium store. So instead of all tracks inflation adjusted to $1.15, most tracks stay cut rate, while some rise above inflation. And there are still discount places like Amazon, which, as i said, is where I prefer to shop.
Re: (Score:2)
Heart had a hit song when? (Score:5, Funny)
"A download like Heart's 34-year-old song Barracuda...."
I bought this song when it was released. Thanks for making me feel old.
Of course they didn't drop the price (Score:3, Insightful)
You didn't think the tiered-pricing scam was actually going to save you money, did you? No company ever does stuff like this unless they think they can squeeze more money out of their customers.
How does $1.29 make sense? (Score:2)
$1.29 x 14 = $18.06.... How can $1.29/song be justified?
This is completely ass backwards. The music industry HAS to price its products lower or it risks looking completely unattractive to consumers. They can't compete with higher prices against its easily avai
They're Free (Score:2)
I don't know why we bother to whine about MP3 prices. If we don't like the prices, they're all available free for download somewhere else. Conversely, Apple and the labels shouldn't whine about people downloading them free, when so many people are volunteering to pay these ridiculously high and profitable prices to download them from iTunes.
gift cards (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why gift cards are a bad idea. They instantly made my $75 of gift cards worth about $50.
Love my iPod - Hate iTunes. (Score:5, Informative)
I reluctantly purchased an ipod a few years ago. I didn't know just how much Id grow to love this thing. I love being able to take tunes with me where-ever I go. Then my laptop crashed, I was able to get all my tunes off the HD but wasnt able to get them all loaded back onto the iPod from the fresh XP installation on the same LT.
ALL of the songs I purchased without DRM I am unable to get back onto my iPod as well as a few others as I changed my password from time to time and cant remember which PW I used when I purchased certain tracks.
So, iTunes sucks major ass. You can't tell me that Apple doesn't have a record of the songs I purchased over the years. I can't download again one's I've already purchased. It's BS.
Now, I purchase all my tracks on CD, rip them using cdparanoia and copy to my iPod. iTunes manages the mp3s I create for my own personal use and my podcasts/vidcasts.
Keep your money as well as your sanity - rip CDs for personal use and dont buy from Apple.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, you can email iTunes support and request to have all of your bought tracks queued up for you to download again. They usually only will do it once a life time since their officially policy is that you are suppose back up your purchases, but it has saved quite a few people.
I will say again, back up your stuff. It may take a few DVDs at worst.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Press coverage: Apple raises prices (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple didn't fool the press. This is being reported as "Apple raises prices 30%". [informationweek.com]
Anyone taking bets? (Score:3, Interesting)
What's the over/under on the length of time before the labels switch back to 99 cent pricing? I'm going to guess about 3 weeks.
Roughly the amount of time it took to pull Tropicana out of its nosedive [pitch.com]. Yes, music industry; 99 cents per song is (was) your brand.
Re:No, I'm not surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is Apple we're talking about, so what would anyone expect? I mean, they add money for adding a white apple to a laptop, so clearly, a few cents here and there on each and every song wouldn't warrant a change.
Actually this is not Apple we're talking about. From what I understand, the labels are the ones behind the price increases. Apple had to basically agree or the labels wouldn't allow Apple to have them on ITMS.
Brand fanboy, brand hater; Opposite sides of the same coin.
Re:No, I'm not surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No, I'm not surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really believe any label with an iota of intelligence would pull all of their work from a distribution network like iTunes?
No, but how many labels actually do have an iota of intelligence?
Re:No, I'm not surprised. (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you really believe any label with an iota of intelligence would pull all of their work from a distribution network like iTunes?
Yes. They already act together in lawsuits and pricing, why not act together in leaving iTunes for a company willing to give them the price they want? iTunes cannot survive without the labels, but the opposite isn't true (in the short term, anyway).
Re:No, I'm not surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
It could be Apple charging more, or it could be the labels acting together to weaken Apple by setting lower prices on other retail outlets. The goal being to ensure that the power to control pricing remains with the labels, not with Apple.
Based on past performance, I'm inclined to believe the labels are making a power play rather than Apple making a cheap profit.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
They couldn't even manage to put the logo right side up either.
Played for sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
My wife used a subscription service, I bought actual tracks. When I got laid off a couple of years ago, we cut our spending, she turned off her subscription service, I quit buying tracks... but I still had all my music. And Apple's raised the price on some tracks, eh? Doesn't have any effect on the ones I've already bought.
And, of course, remember "Plays for Sure"?
Err.. that would be "Played for Sure"...