iTunes Store Variable Pricing to Begin April 7th?

[Lesser Evets]

I just heard Apple will hike prices to $1.29 per song on April 7th...

It's surprising there's no news around here.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cotown-itunes26-2009mar26,0,5579880.story

[Sky Blue]

I just heard Apple will hike prices to $1.29 per song on April 7th...

It's surprising there's no news around here.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cotown-itunes26-2009mar26,0,5579880.story

Because Apple said this back in January?

[basesloaded190]

I just heard Apple will hike prices to $1.29 per song on April 7th...

It's surprising there's no news around here.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cotown-itunes26-2009mar26,0,5579880.story

thats because that is kind of old news. wasn't that announced at MacWorld?

[WPB2]

This is awesome. No I can buy from Amazon all the time, and everyone else will too.

Don't get me started on HD movies from iTunes not playing on every monitor hooked up through mini-DP on my UMB.

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/03/26/itunes-store-variable-pricing-to-begin-april-7th/)

The Los Angeles Times reports (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cotown-itunes26-2009mar26,0,5579880.story) that implementation of variable pricing in the iTunes Store will occur on April 7th.The world's largest music store, Apple's iTunes, plans to boost the price of many hit singles and selected classic tracks to $1.29 on April 7, breaking the psychological barrier of 99 cents in what could be the first big test of how much consumers are willing to pay to download individual songs.

Although the date for higher prices has not been publicly announced, Apple has been notifying record labels it will go into effect on that date, industry executives said.The LA Times also discusses how music labels will set pricing for individual songs, basing the decision primarily on artists' popularity.True to supply-and-demand economics, the price of music downloads will be geared to the artist's popularity. Releases from new artists would receive the lower pricing, while tracks from popular acts would get slapped with the higher rate. Even classics, such as Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA," could retail for the higher price. Most of the 10 million songs in the iTunes catalog are expected to remain at 99 cents.Apple announced (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/01/06/apple-announces-changes-to-itunes-store/) at Macworld 2009 that the iTunes Store would shift to variable pricing in April with price points at $0.69, $0.99, and $1.29. Despite increased prices for certain individual tracks, Apple has claimed that most album prices will remain at $9.99.

Article Link: iTunes Store Variable Pricing to Begin April 7th? (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/03/26/itunes-store-variable-pricing-to-begin-april-7th/)

[the vj]

Wow, I can see the first song at $16!!! and the most expensive song price competition.

[mrkramer]

I'd forgotten they were going to do that well if I'm wanting to buy any songs they raised the price on I guess its over to amazon or pirating it.

[electronboy]

I have long thought that the labels should be able to set their own prices. Don't we live in a free market, Steve? :rolleyes:

[osustudent]

If some tracks are going up $0.30, why not lower more tracks to $0.69? Oh yes, they are trying to make more money! I'm sure very few tracks will be at the $0.69 price point.

[ZacUSNYR]

I have a feeling we're going to see an increase in illegal music downloads.

[Eric S.]

Most of what I buy will probably be of the $0.69 variety. :o

[earthandtone]

Thats stupid, the reason songs have been cheaper on I-tunes is that its electronic there is no CD or case and artwork to come with it. This is stupid to pay CD pricing for electronic music. Money games.

[notjustjay]

They will be lowering some tracks to $0.69. At least, let's hope that the number of cheaper tracks is reasonable.

If album prices remain at $9.99, I can see more people buying the whole album instead of buying individual higher-priced tracks.

The problem I see is that variable pricing by popularity or new release suggests that prices attached to a particular song may change over time. I know I'd be tempted to wait instead of buying today, hoping that maybe in a few months the price will drop to 99 cents. I'd also be concerned that a surge in popularity on a 69-cent track might be cause for Apple to suddenly raise its price to 99 cents.

[Ted13]

Dear record labels,

I will not be buying any $1.29 songs.

Sincerely,
Used to be your best customer, having bought 1000+ CDs and 100s of LPs before that.

P.S. Good luck with the price increase. Right in time for the economy tanking, and people having way less discretionary income.

[techage14]

i would never pay more than .99 for a digital song. that's ridiculous. i think that .69 is the most reasonable. hell, .99 is a bit too much anyway but, i like that they added .69 tier to the catalog.

[Jayomat]

I know I'd be tempted to wait instead of buying today, hoping that maybe in a few months the price will drop to 99 cents.

if you hear a song you like you won't wait 6 month to get it, would you?

[hotzenplotz]

As long as the a la cart system stays in place, I don't see what the commotion is about.

[gkarris]

Hmmmmm...

It's alright, in today's economy, for AT&T to "rake in" money for the iPhone.

So, it's just the record companies doing the same with the iPod... :eek:

[starflyer]

Dear record labels,

I will not be buying any $1.29 songs.

Sincerely,
Used to be your best customer, having bought 1000+ CDs and 100s of LPs before that.

P.S. Good luck with the price increase. Right in time for the economy tanking, and people having way less discretionary income.

Im stealing this.

[Aldaris]

Back in the day this was discussed, basically apple only makes like $0.03 a song, stating that to keep the .99 model and pay artists/producers what "they" wanted apple would loose money on iTunes.

As far as the "supply and demand" theory. I don't think apple has a limited number of downloads per track, more of a file, copy-paste thing.

It'll be a sad sad sad day... (it was a lot easier to justify, .99 but 1.29, can really add up to be a difference, unless they make every fourth track a free download:rolleyes:)

[El Loco]

I agree with techage14. 99 cents is the most I really want to pay for a song. I'll stop buying from iTunes. There are plenty of other digital music retailers that will be selling the most popular songs cheaper.

Nobody likes to see price increases...

[overanalyzer]

If album prices remain at $9.99, I can see more people buying the whole album instead of buying individual higher-priced tracks.

I think this is really the point. Labels have been lamenting individual song sales online mostly because people aren't buying albums any more. I think if they keep album prices reasonable for the lack of packaging and album art etc. inherent in the cost of a physical product, while charging a surcharge on single tracks to encourage album sales it's a pretty reasonable and fair scenario for consumers, artists and labels.

[jpyc7]

. . .

The problem I see is that variable pricing by popularity or new release suggests that prices attached to a particular song may change over time. I know I'd be tempted to wait instead of buying today, hoping that maybe in a few months the price will drop to 99 cents. I'd also be concerned that a surge in popularity on a 69-cent track might be cause for Apple to suddenly raise its price to 99 cents.

Yeah, but it is already like that in the brick-and-mortar world. Except that it only applies to albums which usually take years for prices to go down. That's just my impression. You know the ones that say 'Super Saver' or have some sticker. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes for the price to drop. I think you're right that it'll be under a year.

Maybe some enterprising soul would be able to track a random sample of songs to see how the prices vary (if they even do).

[scooterbaga]

Thats stupid, the reason songs have been cheaper on I-tunes is that its electronic there is no CD or case and artwork to come with it. This is stupid to pay CD pricing for electronic music. Money games.


Ya... It'd be nice to hear the explanation for how Supply/Demand logic actually applies to 'infinite' supply of digital downloads.

[bigtriece]

Wow, the downfall of Apple is upon us.

Ominous signs that Apple are falling apart:

1. They are increasing the price of everything: mac mini, mac pro, now itunes songs when the competition is decreasing the price - eg. Dell Intel i7 Desktops for just over $1000 dollars.

2. Windows 7 - it is getting rave reviews and works on sub-standard Netbooks, whereas OSX is slow and needs at least a core 2 duo to run well.

3. There is a huge gap between Mac Pro and iMac; a mid-level desktop is seriously needed.

4. The Macbooks Pro are severely over-priced and underpowered. Dell have 15inch and 17 inch laptops for under $1000, that means the equivalent Apple laptops are 100% more expensive. And where are the quad core laptops?

5. The price of the 24 LED screen is unbelievable, considering you can buy superior LGs and Samsung for a third of that price.

6. Their Pro Apps are becoming a joke. Logic gets updated every 4 years, whereas the competition eg. Pro Tools get updated every 6 months.

[Avatar74]

The way I look at it is... Given the state of music today, this is an "idiot tax".

Those who don't support mediocre, mass-marketed music (I swear I was not attempting alliteration... oops, I did it again... I'm not trying to reference Britney Spears, either)... will be rewarded with lower prices as they always have been, by and large. Those who absolutely need to have the latest pop crap available will pay a premium. Or not, if they end up pirating them.

Either way, it suits me just fine. Most of the music I've been buying is either back catalog stuff or new unpopular music.

This is great news for independent distribution and the continued trend toward leveling the playing field for obscure artists who would not stand a chance in the old physical distribution paradigm. Their production, promotion and distribution costs are lower, and they can profit more than the artist locked into serfdom whereby they must repay the advance loan given by the record company before they see a dime of royalties.

This will only drive the nail even further into the coffin of overexposed, overproduced mass garbage... especially in current economic conditions where people have next to no disposable income.

[El Loco]

Ya... It'd be nice to hear the explanation for how Supply/Demand logic actually applies to 'infinite' supply of digital downloads.

Good point! :)

[Keebler]

maybe if it was lossless quality, but forget it.

i've actually gone back to buying CDs which may sound silly, but i'm buying less so in the end, they lose.

[knightlie]

2. Windows 7 - it is getting rave reviews and works on sub-standard Netbooks, whereas OSX is slow and needs at least a core 2 duo to run well.

Windows 7, as pre-release software, should be compared with Snow Leopard, not the current retail version of OSX. And these rave reviews of Windows 7 you speak of are by no means universal. Oh, and OSX runs fine on my Core Duo.



I think this variable pricing is going to be bad news, particularly if a 1980's album like Born in the USA will go up in price.

[johnmcboston]

If some tracks are going up $0.30, why not lower more tracks to $0.69? Oh yes, they are trying to make more money! I'm sure very few tracks will be at the $0.69 price point.

I'd also be curious to see how many tracks fall to .69 There's a lot of "old" music on the store that I'm sure gets minimal sales... Could this be the time to stock up on those hits of the 70's? :)

[Moe]

The record companies want to make as much money as possible, while at the same time, selling as few songs as possible. That way, they pay the artists less. Raising the price protects their profit while driving sales down.

[smooth]

In addition to more illegal downloads, I think sites like MP3 Fiesta will gain in popularity. Since I went digital with my music, iTunes has only been my backup. If I can't find it on any other site, I'll check iTunes.

[Stately]

i would never pay more than .99 for a digital song. that's ridiculous. i think that .69 is the most reasonable. hell, .99 is a bit too much anyway but, i like that they added .69 tier to the catalog.

Haha, I agree. It's all about these greedy record companies and the fact that they are upset that they are loosing out on money that they didn't earn in the first place. They are and have been pimping artists for ages and it's sad. The artists do all the work and lose out in more than one aspect. :cool:

[bedifferent]

Dear record labels,

I will not be buying any $1.29 songs.

Sincerely,
Used to be your best customer, having bought 1000+ CDs and 100s of LPs before that.

P.S. Good luck with the price increase. Right in time for the economy tanking, and people having way less discretionary income.

I wasn't going to respond until I saw someone else respond, but this is AWESOME. Kudos. :)

[phillipduran]

I have long thought that the labels should be able to set their own prices. Don't we live in a free market, Steve? :rolleyes:

They are FREE to sell their wares somewhere else at their prices. They WANT in the iTunes store and Steve is using this FREE market to sell at the prices he wants.

Working as intended. :)

[the vj]

I can imagine...

The first Britney Spears single $10, the album $16 and things like that.

[gnasher729]

i would never pay more than .99 for a digital song. that's ridiculous. i think that .69 is the most reasonable. hell, .99 is a bit too much anyway but, i like that they added .69 tier to the catalog.

What about Mike Oldfield's Amarök? Or Jethro Tull, "Thick as a brick"?

[notjustjay]

if you hear a song you like you won't wait 6 month to get it, would you?

Well, frankly if it's a song I really like then I probably really like the other stuff the artist does so I'd probably be buying the CD from Amazon anyway.

A lot of popular music is available on YouTube for streaming download anytime you want. Yeah the quality ain't great but it's at least as good as radio, and it's good enough for me for songs I'd like to hear now and again but don't really think I need to buy it to put on my iPod.

So that covers the top and bottom end, meaning I'd only be buying individual iTunes tracks for songs that I like more than "meh" but less than "Wow, I love this artist!" For me, raising the price 30% is enough for me to hold off.

[danielwsmithee]

I'd also be curious to see how many tracks fall to .69 There's a lot of "old" music on the store that I'm sure gets minimal sales... Could this be the time to stock up on those hits of the 70's? :)If the record companies are setting the prices we are going to see 0.1% of the store at $0.69, 20% at $0.99 and 79.9% of the store at $1.29.

[gnasher729]

I have long thought that the labels should be able to set their own prices. Don't we live in a free market, Steve? :rolleyes:

"Free market" allows Steve to hit the labels with a clue stick, if and when they need it. I guess everyone should avoid to buy any $1.29 songs, to give the labels another clue.

[Flipstar]

Wow, the downfall of Apple is upon us.

Ominous signs that Apple are falling apart:

1. They are increasing the price of everything: mac mini, mac pro, now itunes songs when the competition is decreasing the price - eg. Dell Intel i7 Desktops for just over $1000 dollars.

2. Windows 7 - it is getting rave reviews and works on sub-standard Netbooks, whereas OSX is slow and needs at least a core 2 duo to run well.

3. There is a huge gap between Mac Pro and iMac; a mid-level desktop is seriously needed.

4. The Macbooks Pro are severely over-priced and underpowered. Dell have 15inch and 17 inch laptops for under $1000, that means the equivalent Apple laptops are 100% more expensive. And where are the quad core laptops?

5. The price of the 24 LED screen is unbelievable, considering you can buy superior LGs and Samsung for a third of that price.

6. Their Pro Apps are becoming a joke. Logic gets updated every 4 years, whereas the competition eg. Pro Tools get updated every 6 months.

You must be new to Apple's business model. ;)

[bedifferent]

Those who don't support mediocre, mass-marketed music (I swear I was not attempting alliteration... oops, I did it again... I'm not trying to reference Britney Spears, either)... will be rewarded with lower prices as they always have been, by and large. Those who absolutely need to have the latest pop crap available will pay a premium. Or not, if they end up pirating them.

AMEN. I stopped looking at the iTunes top music list years ago, especially after artists such as Nims with "This is Why I'm Hot" were number 1 hits for weeks at a time. After Britney Spears' crazy ho a$$ made a "comeback", my opinion of mass tastes in music dived to new lows.

[cthielen]

Thats stupid, the reason songs have been cheaper on I-tunes is that its electronic there is no CD or case and artwork to come with it. This is stupid to pay CD pricing for electronic music. Money games.

Sadly I doubt that is the reason songs were cheaper on iTunes. I've had friends who put out 500 copies of their own work and even at such a low order number (500 vs. the 50,000+ record labels order), you can get each CD for about $2. Even if a CD was $5, they'd still have marked it up beyond 100%.

What you're really paying for is the copyright of the song ... and oddly enough, you're paying the middle man (the record companies) for that copyright mostly, not the artists who made something worth copyrighting. On the other side of the issue, record companies do _claim_ it's expensive to do what they do as most artists fail to break even, supposedly.

You should all use your consumer vote, your purchasing power: if you disapprove of something, don't buy it.

[coolfactor]

And to think, this is for the US. Will the new pricing be cross-border, or will us Canadians have songs priced at $0.79 and $1.49?

Thats stupid, the reason songs have been cheaper on I-tunes is that its electronic there is no CD or case and artwork to come with it. This is stupid to pay CD pricing for electronic music. Money games.

This is completely off left-field, but I need to know... why did you spell iTunes as "I-tunes". I see that enough to ask, mostly from non-Mac users. Is it a common-way words are spelled in certain parts of the world or something?

[color guy]

American corporations hate the fixed price model.
They are addicted to their tired bag of carnival tricks.

" buy two, get one free"
"was $1.99, now .99"
" free" ( read the fine print)
"low introductory rate"

I can go on and on and on.

They are also addicted to the sale.
Profit is less important than the sales figures themselves.
That is because every manager is subject to the almighty quarterly report.

[cthielen]

AMEN. I stopped looking at the iTunes top music list years ago, especially after artists such as Nims with "This is Why I'm Hot" were number 1 hits for weeks at a time. After Britney Spears' crazy ho a$$ made a "comeback", my opinion of mass tastes in music dived to new lows.

Yea, I know what you mean. I'm honestly not trying to be a snob here, but even the new iTunes "Indie Spotlight" section is mostly huge, mass marketed artists, eg Cat Power, The Decemberists, etc.

As a huge music lover, I'm a bit depressed over how little people understand the breadth of music out there: 99% of music put out you never hear of but companies that put out 1% of music (RIAA) have 99% of the perception of music; MTV, etc. act like its the only stuff out there, when lots of kids are making great songs and paying for a 300 copy pressing and selling it locally, etc. Sure there's lots of crap in that model too, but at least it's honest and lacks an RIAA-esque Big Brother.

That said, iTunes is actually fairly decent at letting the little guy sell his album. It'll never be spotlighted, but at least it's available in the same store.

[DELLsFan]

Oh, give us even more reasons to shop DRM-Free at Amazon.com? Ok ... you've got a deal, Apple!

:apple:

[carfac]

I have a feeling we're going to see an increase in illegal music downloads.

I have a feeling we're going to see an increase in Amazon.Com music downloads.

Better quality (debatable) and less expensive (not debatable)= better deal all around.

I have always been an advocate of CD's anyway- better quality and now cheaper, too. The only d/l's I have are the freebies from Pepsi promotions.

Apple has no one to blame but themselves when they fall to # 3 by the end of the year, behind Wal Mart and Amazon.

[Avatar74]

Originally Posted by scooterbaga
Ya... It'd be nice to hear the explanation for how Supply/Demand logic actually applies to 'infinite' supply of digital downloads.

Good point! :)

Actually, this argument is a bit flawed... but rather than negate it entirely let me try to steer it in the right direction:

The logic behind it goes something like... the product is the distributed item. IT is not. The product is the music which is itself intangible. The various media in which it is fixed are tangible, but they're simply the method of delivery. It would be like arguing that if Ferrari increases their output to 2 million cars a year (exponentially more than present) that somehow the Ferrari design is worth about the same as a Ford, and Ferrari engineering is worth about the same as a Ford. Neither of which are true.

These facts would not change either the production costs OR the intangible value and demand for a particular band's music. Even if a lot of craftsmanship went into building a certain house, that says nothing of what the market is willing to pay for that house ... which may be based on entirely unrelated factors like location, which has nothing to do with appraising the house on a "cost basis.". Consequently, as many homeowners are discovering, putting $40,000 of renovations in a house does not always translate into $40,000 or greater increase in market price.

So now you have Artist A and Artist B. Artist A is a big star, not very talented, but a ton of money was thrust into their production and marketing. On a cost basis, their music is worth more. On an availability basis, their music can be argued to be worthless (because they sound like everyone else). But... there are STILL more people out there wanting Britney's albums than there are Britneys. Many times over. The record label can demand a high price for this artist's material, and expect to be paid it. Even if the value is low

Artist B is not very popular, and their talent is such that it is rarely found. Their production costs were low, since they recorded it all on a four track reel-to-reel, in one take in the bass player's living room (based on a true story... jazz trio I did CD mastering for had done it just like that). They won't ever see high demand, but their talent is rare, their music is very original (and therefore also rare), and so their value is high... but their price doesn't have to be in order for them to make a reasonable profit.

The key factor here is that value and price are not the same thing. Price is not exclusively driven by value, it's partly driven by fixed costs, but also driven by demand relative to the competition for acts that are similarly desirable... just like housing market prices are not driven entirely by how your house compares to every other house available on earth.

When it comes to dime-a-dozen pop stars, also consider that just like Coke, Pepsi, Big K and a bunch of lesser brands are absolutely the same, how often do people choose Coke instead? Why? Brand perception. Lots of money is put behind marketing a Britney as a brand unto herself. Even though she's utterly replaceable, the cost of creating a perception that defies reality are high and too must be recouped.... but they pay off in that they are often successful in creating that perception and therefore falsely inflating demand to counteract the broad supply of music like hers.

It also doesn't matter how many copies of Britney's latest album are crapped out by iTunes... People who believe that Britney is different will want Britney, and not the Kroger generic brand version of Britney, of which there are thousands.

But if you still don't believe me, may I ask what brand of soda you drink and why?

[imwoblin]

The record companies want to make as much money as possible, while at the same time, selling as few songs as possible. That way, they pay the artists less. Raising the price protects their profit while driving sales down.

This seems to be a new business practice here in the states. I went to price a new Telecaster at my local mom & pop music store and Fender raised the price of all 2009 model year guitars almost 50%!! At first I thought the store was trying to pull a fast one on me, but since I have been a repeat customer the owner told me it was Fender's new pricing policy. Sell less and charge more. I went to a local mass market music store (Guitar Center) and they told me the same thing. I guess some business will try any angle to grab you're cash!
:eek:

[Le Big Mac]

If album prices remain at $9.99, I can see more people buying the whole album instead of buying individual higher-priced tracks.


I can see pricing so that the 2-3 "hit" songs on the album are more expensive and the rest are cheaper. Kind of how like it used to be when you bought an album for a few good songs and got the rest effectively for free.

[tom53092]

What about Mike Oldfield's Amarök? Or Jethro Tull, "Thick as a brick"?

It seems that longer songs haven't been available on itunes individually. Maybe with variable pricing, they will be willing to sell these longer songs. This could be one positive for the customer. Personally, I prefer the sound quality of CDs, but more choice for the customer is always good.

[Le Big Mac]

Ya... It'd be nice to hear the explanation for how Supply/Demand logic actually applies to 'infinite' supply of digital downloads.

The same way it applies to software sales right now. Pricing doesn't reflect only the marginal cost of making another copy of the song, which is basically zero, it includes the costs of development.

If demand is higher, the price can be higher and the artist will increase revenues. that's because songs aren't all in perfect competition for each other. If you want Jonas Brothers, U2 isn't going to be a substitute. Yes, at large you may have money to buy only $20 of songs, so higher prices mean less songs, but it's not like you're going to buy what you don't want because it's 30c less.

[Le Big Mac]

Wow, I can see the first song at $16!!! and the most expensive song price competition.

Who releases the "I am Rich" song for $999?

[slu]

The way I look at it is... Given the state of music today, this is an "idiot tax".

Those who don't support mediocre, mass-marketed music (I swear I was not attempting alliteration... oops, I did it again... I'm not trying to reference Britney Spears, either)... will be rewarded with lower prices as they always have been, by and large. Those who absolutely need to have the latest pop crap available will pay a premium. Or not, if they end up pirating them.

Either way, it suits me just fine. Most of the music I've been buying is either back catalog stuff or new unpopular music.

This is great news for independent distribution and the continued trend toward leveling the playing field for obscure artists who would not stand a chance in the old physical distribution paradigm. Their production, promotion and distribution costs are lower, and they can profit more than the artist locked into serfdom whereby they must repay the advance loan given by the record company before they see a dime of royalties.

This will only drive the nail even further into the coffin of overexposed, overproduced mass garbage... especially in current economic conditions where people have next to no disposable income.

As an independent artist who has a record on iTunes, I'd like to share a couple of things about how it works now.

You have to go through a company like Tunecore or CD Baby to even get a record on iTunes. Apple will not deal directly with you. You pay a small amount for this service, but you get to keep all royalties you get from Apple (with Tunecore). That is $7 per album sold and $.70 per song sold. Apple keeps the rest.

You have no control over the price. Apple sets the price however they want. But you get paid the same no matter what they charge for it. On Amazon, I had several choices. I wonder if this will now change. I'd love to be able to lower the price of our record on iTunes.

Currently I tell everyone that our album is cheaper on Amazon and they should buy it there.

So unless Apple changes their policy and allows independent artists to set their own price point, I see nothing here that benefits or hurts independent artists.

And let's be honest here. This is a price increase. Anyone that thinks there is going to be as many $.69 tracks as $1.29 tracks is crazy. Popular stuff will be priced higher. Both new releases as well as popular catalog stuff. Does anyone think "Dark Side of the Moon" is not going to go up in price?

Now I generally buy the whole album and I only use iTunes when it is not on Amazon, so I don't care that much, but this is a price hike, plain and simple.

And let me be clear, it is their right to raise the price, especially if the market will continue to pay. That just means the price was too low to begin with. But if revenue drops because of the price hike, they will lower it. If you don't like it, vote with your dollars. Buy from Amazon! That is what I do.

[Le Big Mac]

If the record companies are setting the prices we are going to see 0.1% of the store at $0.69, 20% at $0.99 and 79.9% of the store at $1.29.

Probably at first, but given how much purchase data they'll be getting, if demand doesn't support those prices, you'll see prices drop.

I would guess it will settle out, and you'll see new singles for real cheap at first, but with the price increasing after a few weeks after it's become "#1 hit" and then eventually dropping back down after a while when it's no longer a hit.

[namenottaken]

Just so I understand, mp3s now age so well, they begin to go up in price as time goes by...?

:confused:

I'm a huge :apple: guy, but it's been a long time since I bought anything from the iTunes store - there are so many better alternatives. My choice is Amazon - they have everything, it cost less, the tracks are better quality, and there hasn't been any DRM for some time.

I think Apple needs to be very careful how they let the record companies shape their product offerings - they will start losing to more flexible competition.

[manu chao]

Phil Schiller has stated at MacWorld that there will far more songs at 0.69 than at 1.29, but naturally these will be all those songs that hardly anybody is buying anyway.

[Sabenth]

That said, iTunes is actually fairly decent at letting the little guy sell his album. It'll never be spotlighted, but at least it's available in the same store.


so true but brings up a point of dose this mean i have to contact my distrabuter and say i want my tracks increased or decreased. As i have an album on the itunes store and as a little guy id like to know were i stand (note iam not that small just in the eyes of record labels)

[BigAMc]

Amazon.com here I come...

[KilljoyPBN]

If Amazon keeps their prices I might go back with them. Or dare I say torrents.

[slu]

Ya... It'd be nice to hear the explanation for how Supply/Demand logic actually applies to 'infinite' supply of digital downloads.

It still applies because while you can download a song an infinite number of times, there is not an infinite number of songs available on the store. And the utility of each each song is not the same for each consumer.

In this example, the supply is the music on the store. What the record companies are doing is assuming (probably correctly) that demand is greater for some artists on the store over others. If that is true, then they should be able to charge more for these songs because people are not likely to pick a similar song by a different artist because it is cheaper. They want that song.

This is really no different then it is now with CDs. They can essentially print an infinite number of CDs. As someone pointed out, the costs are essentially the same anyway. My band printed 250 CDs of our record and it cost about $2.30 per disc. I can only imagine how cheap it is to print 100,000. All the cost is in recording and producing the music, and this has not really changed much. Although it is much cheaper now than it was ten years ago.

[iTattoo]

Phil Schiller has stated at MacWorld that there will far more songs at 0.69 than at 1.29, but naturally these will be all those songs that hardly anybody is buying anyway.

Like a lot of things in life, the 80/20 rule will apply here, or in this case even more likely it will be closer to 90/10. 10% of the 1,000,000 plus songs in iTunes are responsible for 90% of the revenue, and likely the bottom 60 or 70% are just there to boost the numbers and have a complete library, and help make iTunes a 1-stop shopping experience, and they are rarely sold. I'll wager that Apple could lower the slowest selling 50% of the iTunes library to 69 cents, and increase revenue on that segment, and raise only the top 5 or 10% of the best sellers to $1.29 and again increase revenue in this segment as well. Sales may slow in the $1.29 segment, but as long as revenue is up, Apple wins.

Just my 2 cents.

[Wingsy]

Hey, you can't get away with your drive-by troll attempt without someone correcting your FUD. I see you're new here (joined just this month!) so you'll get off easy this time.

1. Mac Mini price did NOT go up. It stayed the same while the specs went up. Now, in Australia and maybe elsewhere it might have, but it had to due to the dollar exchange rates. In US dollars it's the same.

2. OSX is slow? Where on earth did you get THAT from? OSX runs fine on ancient hardware, and on every release it just gets faster & faster (OK, except ONE, and I forget the exact version). And OSX runs just dandy on an ARM processor.... you know, the portable chip in the iPhone. Try THAT with Windows.Anything.

3. I happen to agree with you on that one.

4. So Dell has a 15 and 17" laptop for under $1k, is THAT the ONLY spec you use to compare? If you price out an EQUIVALENT laptop from Dell & HP vs the MacBook, they are within spitting distance of each other. Google for price comparisons and you'll see. But you must have done that already, right? If not, try this one chosen at random:
http://technologizer.com/2008/10/19/is-the-new-macbook-expensive/

5. Don't know about this. Do you? Give us some links.

6. You said Pro Apps, plural, but you only mention Logic. As for the other pro apps I see updates for them at a fairly regular rate. Is it just Logic that you have a complaint about? And what exactly is your complaint? Is Logic lacking is some specific feature update that you're wanting, or you just want to see generic updates at a faster rate? And Apple's Pro apps are anything but a joke. Ask channel 12 in my home town. They couldn't live without em.


Yes, ominous signs indeed. If you want to see signs of a giant corporation starting to fall apart, I suggest you look at Microsoft.

Wow, the downfall of Apple is upon us.

Ominous signs that Apple are falling apart:

1. They are increasing the price of everything: mac mini, mac pro, now itunes songs when the competition is decreasing the price - eg. Dell Intel i7 Desktops for just over $1000 dollars.

2. Windows 7 - it is getting rave reviews and works on sub-standard Netbooks, whereas OSX is slow and needs at least a core 2 duo to run well.

3. There is a huge gap between Mac Pro and iMac; a mid-level desktop is seriously needed.

4. The Macbooks Pro are severely over-priced and underpowered. Dell have 15inch and 17 inch laptops for under $1000, that means the equivalent Apple laptops are 100% more expensive. And where are the quad core laptops?

5. The price of the 24 LED screen is unbelievable, considering you can buy superior LGs and Samsung for a third of that price.

6. Their Pro Apps are becoming a joke. Logic gets updated every 4 years, whereas the competition eg. Pro Tools get updated every 6 months.

[gmcalpin]

2. Windows 7 - it is getting rave reviews and works on sub-standard Netbooks, whereas OSX is slow and needs at least a core 2 duo to run well.

What, are you kidding? I run 10.5.6 on a 2GHz G5, and it runs beautifully.

And OSX runs just dandy on an ARM processor.... you know, the portable chip in the iPhone.
That's iPhone OS, not OSX.

[MacDaddy901]

Oh yeah, thats right, people still pay for their music. Forgot there for a second.

[Mackilroy]

That's iPhone OS, not OSX.

It's still a version of OS X.

To the topic in general, I don't buy much music, and when I do, it's usually full albums (mostly classical music). I doubt this will affect me very much.

[Rychiar]

paying $1.29 for one COMPRESSED song, LAME!:p

[gmcalpin]

It's still a version of OS X.
If you want to argue that, then you have to count Windows Mobile as a version of Windows, too, so Wingsy's point that Windows can't run on an ARM is still invalid.

[peterwalsh]

I suspect that Spotify and similar services will kill itunes in a year or less.

I'm in the UK and have been using it for the last week. It's amazing. Streams almost instantly, quality as good as itunes. Track library isn't quite as broad as itunes but it's impressive. The advertising is very light - every fifteen minutes or so - and I might just pay ten quid a month to get rid of that.

My computer is hooked up to speakers around my home so the lack of a mobile platform isn't too much of a problem - though I'm hoping they'll bring it to the iphone soon.

I listen to albums on spotify that I already own on CD - less hassle just to call them up on the macbook and they play straight off.

It's really quite refreshing. Hard copy is so passé.

[megfilmworks]

$.99 is cheap for a single.
That's what a single cost in the 1960s.
What did gas and food cost back then?
Sure for the price you got a b side as well,
but the b side was usually a throwaway.
Also the vinyl record would sound best the first play and then
the quality would slowly degrade with each play due to scratches and pops.

Perspective!

[milo]

This is a tricky situation for the consumer. If you want something soon, do you buy now, expecting it might go up, or wait, expecting it might go down?

If some tracks are going up $0.30, why not lower more tracks to $0.69?

How do you know they won't?

Wow, the downfall of Apple is upon us.

Ominous signs that Apple are falling apart:

1. They are increasing the price of everything: mac mini, mac pro, now itunes songs when the competition is decreasing the price - eg. Dell Intel i7 Desktops for just over $1000 dollars. (rest of the post is way off topic, ignored)

I guess you missed the original announcement, but the price increase was insisted on by the record companies - Apple agreed to it in exchange for no more DRM and lower prices on some songs.

Personally, I think variable pricing is a good thing since it will show record companies whether consumers are willing to pay more for "hits" or not. I suspect the answer is not, and when the labels see that the cheaper tracks way outsell the more expensive ones, they can adjust their pricing accordingly.

I have a feeling we're going to see an increase in Amazon.Com music downloads.

Better quality (debatable) and less expensive (not debatable)= better deal all around.

Actually, with amazon at 256 mp3 and iTunes at 256 AAC, the iTunes version is arguably the better quality. And on any given song or album, we'll have to see how the pricing is on each - when iTunes has it for 69 cents, it may be cheaper.

[shanmugam]

Why still lots of songs not available in iTunes Plus, i thought apple suppose to complete the entire collection into iTunes Plus by April 1st? my iTunes library contains about 100 or so still in DRMed version.

[Merkuryy]

It still applies because while you can download a song an infinite number of times, there is not an infinite number of songs available on the store. And the utility of each each song is not the same for each consumer.

In this example, the supply is the music on the store. What the record companies are doing is assuming (probably correctly) that demand is greater for some artists on the store over others. If that is true, then they should be able to charge more for these songs because people are not likely to pick a similar song by a different artist because it is cheaper.

So you mean we gonna really see "Viva La Vida" for 12.99$,and <Viva La Vida>for 9.99$. If talking about the margin utility of the consumers, it has a huge chance to act like this since even some hardcore CP fans only know "Viva La Vida"

[El Loco]

Actually, this argument is a bit flawed... but rather than negate it entirely let me try to steer it in the right direction:

The logic behind it goes something like... the product is the distributed item. IT is not. The product is the music which is itself intangible. The various media in which it is fixed are tangible, but they're simply the method of delivery. It would be like arguing that if Ferrari increases their output to 2 million cars a year (exponentially more than present) that somehow the Ferrari design is worth about the same as a Ford, and Ferrari engineering is worth about the same as a Ford. Neither of which are true.

So now you have Artist A and Artist B. Artist A is a big star, not very talented, but a ton of money was thrust into their production and marketing. On a cost basis, their music is worth more. On an availability basis, their music can be argued to be worthless (because they sound like everyone else). But... there are STILL more people out there wanting Britney's albums than there are Britneys. Many times over. The record label can demand a high price for this artist's material, and expect to be paid it. Even if the value is low

Artist B is not very popular, and their talent is such that it is rarely found. Their production costs were low, since they recorded it all on a four track reel-to-reel, in one take in the bass player's living room (based on a true story... jazz trio I did CD mastering for had done it just like that). They won't ever see high demand, but their talent is rare, their music is very original (and therefore also rare), and so their value is high... but their price doesn't have to be in order for them to make a reasonable profit.

When it comes to dime-a-dozen pop stars, also consider that just like Coke, Pepsi, Big K and a bunch of lesser brands are absolutely the same, how often do people choose Coke instead? Why? Brand perception. Lots of money is put behind marketing a Britney as a brand unto herself. Even though she's utterly replaceable, the cost of creating a perception that defies reality are high and too must be recouped.... but they pay off in that they are often successful in creating that perception and therefore falsely inflating demand to counteract the broad supply of music like hers.

It also doesn't matter how many copies of Britney's latest album are crapped out by iTunes... People who believe that Britney is different will want Britney, and not the Kroger generic brand version of Britney, of which there are thousands.

But if you still don't believe me, may I ask what brand of soda you drink and why?

I understand well the concepts of marketing, branding, "supply and demand," etc. I majored in marketing. The trouble is that they are speaking in terms of "supply and demand" when supply is really not a factor in digital downloads. They should speak only in terms of demand. The supply in this case is not the cause of any price increase ... it is simply the demand for the particular song (regardless of marketing costs). Therefore, there really is no flaw in anyone's argument.

By the way, I drink Coke ... because it IS different and I like the taste better than the competition ...

[rjheys]

If some tracks are going up $0.30, why not lower more tracks to $0.69? Oh yes, they are trying to make more money! I'm sure very few tracks will be at the $0.69 price point.

In the keynote they said there will be more songs lowered to $0.69 than songs increased to $1.29.

[scooterbaga]

Actually, this argument is a bit flawed... but rather than negate it entirely let me try to steer it in the right direction:

The logic behind it goes something like... the product is the distributed item. IT is not. The product is the music which is itself intangible. The various media in which it is fixed are tangible, but they're simply the method of delivery. It would be like arguing that if Ferrari increases their output to 2 million cars a year (exponentially more than present) that somehow the Ferrari design is worth about the same as a Ford, and Ferrari engineering is worth about the same as a Ford. Neither of which are true.

These facts would not change either the production costs OR the intangible value and demand for a particular band's music. Even if a lot of craftsmanship went into building a certain house, that says nothing of what the market is willing to pay for that house ... which may be based on entirely unrelated factors like location, which has nothing to do with appraising the house on a "cost basis.". Consequently, as many homeowners are discovering, putting $40,000 of renovations in a house does not always translate into $40,000 or greater increase in market price.

So now you have Artist A and Artist B. Artist A is a big star, not very talented, but a ton of money was thrust into their production and marketing. On a cost basis, their music is worth more. On an availability basis, their music can be argued to be worthless (because they sound like everyone else). But... there are STILL more people out there wanting Britney's albums than there are Britneys. Many times over. The record label can demand a high price for this artist's material, and expect to be paid it. Even if the value is low

Artist B is not very popular, and their talent is such that it is rarely found. Their production costs were low, since they recorded it all on a four track reel-to-reel, in one take in the bass player's living room (based on a true story... jazz trio I did CD mastering for had done it just like that). They won't ever see high demand, but their talent is rare, their music is very original (and therefore also rare), and so their value is high... but their price doesn't have to be in order for them to make a reasonable profit.

The key factor here is that value and price are not the same thing. Price is not exclusively driven by value, it's partly driven by fixed costs, but also driven by demand relative to the competition for acts that are similarly desirable... just like housing market prices are not driven entirely by how your house compares to every other house available on earth.

When it comes to dime-a-dozen pop stars, also consider that just like Coke, Pepsi, Big K and a bunch of lesser brands are absolutely the same, how often do people choose Coke instead? Why? Brand perception. Lots of money is put behind marketing a Britney as a brand unto herself. Even though she's utterly replaceable, the cost of creating a perception that defies reality are high and too must be recouped.... but they pay off in that they are often successful in creating that perception and therefore falsely inflating demand to counteract the broad supply of music like hers.

It also doesn't matter how many copies of Britney's latest album are crapped out by iTunes... People who believe that Britney is different will want Britney, and not the Kroger generic brand version of Britney, of which there are thousands.

But if you still don't believe me, may I ask what brand of soda you drink and why?


Are you seriously telling me the coke and pepsi are the same? I understand that in general the product is the same, but the taste is very different. You may as well say all beers are the same.

BTW- infinite is in quotes for a reason...

[milo]

Why still lots of songs not available in iTunes Plus, i thought apple suppose to complete the entire collection into iTunes Plus by April 1st?

Because it's not April 1st yet?

And they did NOT say by April 1st, they said the change was coming in April.

[Avatar74]

I can only imagine how cheap it is to print 100,000.

Less than 25 cents a disc. I'm sure it warms your heart to know that. :D

All the cost is in recording and producing the music, and this has not really changed much. Although it is much cheaper now than it was ten years ago.

Depending on the genre it can be a LOT cheaper. Acoustic instruments, as opposed to electronic, still need a good recording space but the advent of NLE systems has reduced the expenditure of building a studio from the millions to the thousands, and consequently even well-equipped studios have had to reduce rates to compete with home-built studios. Granted, albums today are not recorded with the care they were 20 or 30 years ago, but if you had to go to, say, Paisley Park, Studio A would run you $150 an hour versus $350 an hour in 1992.

[iOrlando]

The key question is what is "popular"

Say a song was selling 1,000 copies a day...is then mentioned on an MTV show and now is selling 8,000 copies a day...in the grand scheme of things..its still an unknown...but it is now more popular...so would the price simply jump because the demand is jumping? If so..that is messed up.

[slu]

I understand well the concepts of marketing, branding, "supply and demand," etc. I majored in marketing. The trouble is that they are speaking in terms of "supply and demand" when supply is really not a factor in digital downloads. They should speak only in terms of demand. The supply in this case is not the cause of any price increase ... it is simply the demand for the particular song (regardless of marketing costs). Therefore, there really is no flaw in anyone's argument.

By the way, I drink Coke ... because it IS different and I like the taste better than the competition ...

Again, supply is factor. The supply is not the downloaded file, but the music itself. And again, just because you can easily and cheaply duplicate something doesn't mean the original did not have a cost and it doesn't mean the duplicates do not have value to a consumer.

It has been working like this since the dawn of recorded music. As long as a piece of recorded music sells, the company that holds the rights will duplicate it endlessly.

In fact, supply is very limited in the case of recorded music. There is only one recording of that performance of a song by that artist. And there is no real replacement product for that song. Nobody has bought one song instead of another song because they are "close enough". Either you like the song enough to buy it at the price it is offered or you don't. Supply doesn't get more constrained than that.

[bankshot]

Amazon.com here I come...

Oh, give us even more reasons to shop DRM-Free at Amazon.com? Ok ... you've got a deal, Apple!

I wonder if this will be a big effect or not. I've already been shopping a lot more at Amazon lately because of their daily MP3 deal (http://www.amazon.com/MP3-Deals/b/ref=amb_link_83660851_12?ie=UTF8&node=678551011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=13V000X0JCNAEFKV57R6&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=469661071&pf_rd_i=163856011), which usually has a selected album on sale for just $1.99. It's usually something I have zero interest in (like today's selection), but there's enough stuff that I either really like (incredible deal) or just hits the threshold of what I'd be willing to pay at $2 that I check it every day. They also have 5 albums for $5 every Friday, and hundreds of free singles (most junk, but I've found a few gems). Over the past 3 months, I've gotten 8 great albums for a total of $21 this way. 160 songs and more than 21 hours of music (the best deal by far was the 99-piece Beethoven compilation for just $2; even at regular price of $8 it's a real steal!).

Err, I didn't mean to rave quite so much about Amazon. :o:rolleyes: But it will definitely be interesting to see if the pricing changes at iTunes will start to push any more customers towards Amazon's store.

If Amazon keeps their prices I might go back with them. Or dare I say torrents.

Please don't steal music. :( megfilmworks is absolutely right about perspective. Considering inflation, music as a product has never been cheaper:

$.99 is cheap for a single.
That's what a single cost in the 1960s.
What did gas and food cost back then?
Sure for the price you got a b side as well,
but the b side was usually a throwaway.
Also the vinyl record would sound best the first play and then
the quality would slowly degrade with each play due to scratches and pops.

Perspective!

----

If some tracks are going up $0.30, why not lower more tracks to $0.69? Oh yes, they are trying to make more money! I'm sure very few tracks will be at the $0.69 price point.

A lot of people are saying this. A lot of people have short memories. :rolleyes: Phil Schiller at MWSF said “And in April, based on what the music labels charge Apple, songs on iTunes will be available at one of three price points—69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29—with many more songs priced at 69 cents than $1.29. (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/06itunes.html)”

if you hear a song you like you won't wait 6 month to get it, would you?

I would. I have several hundred albums on my wishlist at Amazon. Many I consider very high priority because I know the music is excellent. But I also know that money doesn't grow on trees, so I either wait for deals (like Amazon's MP3 deals), or hope that other people buy them for me as gifts. So far it seems like the list grows faster than it shrinks due to purchases... :(:rolleyes:

[El Loco]

And let me be clear, it is their right to raise the price, especially if the market will continue to pay. That just means the price was too low to begin with. But if revenue drops because of the price hike, they will lower it. If you don't like it, vote with your dollars. Buy from Amazon! That is what I do.

I agree. Take your money elsewhere if you don't want to pay the higher price. Regardless of whether iTunes bumps prices, I'll be shopping elsewhere. There are already sites out there selling cheaper than $.99.

Don't get me wrong. I still love Apple products ... I'm just not supporting iTunes' pricing.

[kiang]

This is just a move from the record labels to break the dominance of iTunes: they demanded higher prices in the ITMS, but on amazon and other online stores, they still are happy to only charge 99cents...

[jlasoon]

If Amazon keeps their prices I might go back with them. Or dare I say torrents.

This is exatly why newsgroups and torrent site will keep flourishing. $20 for HD downloads? 15$ for barely DVD quality, and $1.29 for a 2 MB file lol.

Whose really stealing here?

[milo]

I agree. Take your money elsewhere if you don't want to pay the higher price. Regardless of whether iTunes bumps prices, I'll be shopping elsewhere. There are already sites out there selling cheaper than $.99.

Don't get me wrong. I still love Apple products ... I'm just not supporting iTunes' pricing.

Even if iTunes has the song you want for 69 cents? :confused:

[Avatar74]

As an independent artist who has a record on iTunes, I'd like to share a couple of things about how it works now.

You have to go through a company like Tunecore or CD Baby to even get a record on iTunes. Apple will not deal directly with you. You pay a small amount for this service, but you get to keep all royalties you get from Apple (with Tunecore). That is $7 per album sold and $.70 per song sold. Apple keeps the rest.

You have no control over the price. Apple sets the price however they want. But you get paid the same no matter what they charge for it. On Amazon, I had several choices. I wonder if this will now change. I'd love to be able to lower the price of our record on iTunes.

Currently I tell everyone that our album is cheaper on Amazon and they should buy it there.

So unless Apple changes their policy and allows independent artists to set their own price point, I see nothing here that benefits or hurts independent artists.

And let's be honest here. This is a price increase. Anyone that thinks there is going to be as many $.69 tracks as $1.29 tracks is crazy. Popular stuff will be priced higher. Both new releases as well as popular catalog stuff. Does anyone think "Dark Side of the Moon" is not going to go up in price?

Now I generally buy the whole album and I only use iTunes when it is not on Amazon, so I don't care that much, but this is a price hike, plain and simple.

And let me be clear, it is their right to raise the price, especially if the market will continue to pay. That just means the price was too low to begin with. But if revenue drops because of the price hike, they will lower it. If you don't like it, vote with your dollars. Buy from Amazon! That is what I do.

I understand fully what you're saying, and I think my point was not so much that you'll have absolute control over retail pricing.

However, I consider you're still getting a better deal. Why? Well, Apple is bearing most of the promotion and distribution costs of your album outside of tours... and tour support hasn't been paid by majors or indies in the conventional distro paradigm since the late 1970's, so you'd bear that cost either way.

The other part of this is... if you were smart and recorded your album on the cheap, you have only those costs and not, say, a $50,000 recording advance to recoup.

Well, let's compare that...

Under the old paradigm if your album retails for $7.99, packaging, distribution and the "free goods" factor (allowing for promotional copies to radio PD's etc.) is going to cost about $1.9975 per. Retail margin is $5.99, they take about 20% of that, about $1.1985 per. Leaving $4.794 as gross margin.

Gross margin is what royalty is computed off, and as an artist with an independent label with major distribution (UNI, WEA, etc.) to give you access to a market as large as iTunes, you'd probably collect about 7%. That's about 33.558 cents per album.

At that rate you would need to sell 148,995 copies to repay the $50,000 advance the record company gave you. Until you do, you don't get to keep a single dime of royalties. If you, like most artists, spent the entire advance, this means there's a good chance you'll be broke... because in that world 85% of the recording artists signed to major labels alone (nevermind indies) do not sell enough albums to break even on their recording advance.

Now, compare that to your situation. If you do sell 148,995 albums, you're going to take home $104,297 Even if you blew $50,000 on recording (which isn't at all what it would cost you today if you know how to budget), you'd still walk home $54,297 richer than the same artist signed to Warner Bros.

CORRECTION: I read your post incorrectly. You said 70 cents per song, not album. Per album, you said $7 is yours to keep... That's $1,042,965! (given my earlier example (http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=7350603&postcount=87) of selling 148,995 units just to break even on a $50,000 advance were you signed to a major or minor).

Even if you spend $43,000 recording that album, you're still a millionaire. Put it another way... If you wanted to spend $50,000 on an album to record for iTunes, you'd need only sell 7143 copies to break even, versus 148,995. That's not just a good deal. That's a stellar deal.

Note also that the old paradigm didn't let you set the pricing either. It's always finally determined by the retail chain because MSRP is only that. Excluding illegal activity of collusion (of which there certainly has been some), the record label cannot dictate by force what retail price must be as long as they receive gross margin plus packaging. Competition between the retail chains is what keeps pricing generally very close.

Still think you're getting a rotten deal? Unless you own the store, or have incredible revenue generating power, you won't be able to control price... So if you want total control over retail pricing, start your own website. You couldn't do that twenty years ago (mainly because the WWW didn't exist in any graphically browsable form yet).

I think it's not necessarily a fair deal, but how much more you want in "fairness" depends on equal benefit. I can tell you that if you're only selling 150,000 copies, in terms of the percentage of their bottom line versus the percentage of your bottom line, you're more dependent on them for income than the other way around. Another way of looking at that is... relative to your respective incomes, you're benefitting more from the arrangement than they are.

I don't think, though, that you're trying to argue that you ought to be able to dictate pricing to them. It's a tradeoff, because for you to start your own site means you will bear all the marketing costs, distribution costs (however small), promotion costs, etc. That may or may not work to your advantage, but being a financial analyst (not the kind that sells financial products; I analyze and forecast sales and revenue of my employer) I would certainly suggest running the numbers to determine which of these two is a better deal.

[Avatar74]

Again, supply is factor. The supply is not the downloaded file, but the music itself. And again, just because you can easily and cheaply duplicate something doesn't mean the original did not have a cost and it doesn't mean the duplicates do not have value to a consumer.

It has been working like this since the dawn of recorded music. As long as a piece of recorded music sells, the company that holds the rights will duplicate it endlessly.

In fact, supply is very limited in the case of recorded music. There is only one recording of that performance of a song by that artist. And there is no real replacement product for that song. Nobody has bought one song instead of another song because they are "close enough". Either you like the song enough to buy it at the price it is offered or you don't. Supply doesn't get more constrained than that.


Precisely. There may be a thousand different versions of "All Along the Watchtower", originally written by Bob Dylan (well, originally written by the powers that be if you watch Battlestar Galactica ;) ), but I bet you dollars to doughnuts anyone looking for the Jimi Hendrix version isn't going to settle for the Barney the Dinosaur version.

[Sehnsucht]

If some tracks are going up $0.30, why not lower more tracks to $0.69? Oh yes, they are trying to make more money! I'm sure very few tracks will be at the $0.69 price point.

If by "very few", you mean NONE, then yeah! :cool:

[WhySoSerious]

*scanning the room for the line to PirateBay*

Ahh....there it is...

*walks over and stands in line*

[Avatar74]

Are you seriously telling me the coke and pepsi are the same? I understand that in general the product is the same, but the taste is very different. You may as well say all beers are the same.

BTW- infinite is in quotes for a reason...

Ok, perhaps a slightly bad choice of words... Replace "absolutely" with "reasonably" or "generally". My point was that despite this, there is a brand perception that plays into it. Sure, some of it owes to the fact that some people don't like the taste of one versus the other.

But there are generics too that are reasonably close enough to one or the other... but they don't have nearly the sales because they haven't created the brand perception.

In that regard, do you think that either Coke or Pepsi have stopped advertising? Hell no. They put HUGE money into beefing up their brand perception. This plays so much of a part that one of the biggest mistakes ever made in corporate marketing revolved around taste versus perception.

In the 1980s, Coke reacted to market data that showed Pepsi's sales increasing and introduced New Coke to compete with Pepsi's edge against the red giant. This proved to be an utter failure. Coca-Cola's mistake? It wasn't the taste of Pepsi that people preferred. Pepsi simply had increased their advertising and marketing budgets threefold, launched the Pepsi challenge (which was largely rigged... whichever one you said tasted better, the attendant would pull out a pepsi bottle and say that was it). So in this case, a HUGELY popular brand imploded itself by assuming that actual taste was a bigger factor than perception created by marketing and advertising.

They then relied again on marketing and advertising to reinvigorate the brand by reintroducing the old formula as "Coke Classic." Not one shred of difference between the original Coca-Cola and Coke Classic, but sales surged as a result of this marketing campaign and Coca-Cola was once again on top without having done a thing to actually improve their product.

You can also look at examples like the Plymouth Laser, Mitsubishi Eclipse and Eagle Talon. Three cars? No. One car, three badges. But the Mitsubishi Eclipse commanded the highest price of the three because of the brand perception of Mitsubishi at a time when foreign brands were gaining in popularity due to customer perceptions about quality and reliability. The cars in fact rolled off the same assembly line with the same parts.

[milo]

If by "very few", you mean NONE, then yeah! :cool:

That remains to be seen. If that were the case, I'm not sure why Phil Schiller would promise that there would be more tracks at 69 than 1.29 and end up looking like a fool.

I'm really curious how many there will be at each price. I'm also curious once this happens, if there really are far more at 69 and 99 than 1.29, how many of the cynics will actually come back here and admit they were wrong.

[El Loco]

Again, supply is factor. The supply is not the downloaded file, but the music itself. And again, just because you can easily and cheaply duplicate something doesn't mean the original did not have a cost and it doesn't mean the duplicates do not have value to a consumer.

It has been working like this since the dawn of recorded music. As long as a piece of recorded music sells, the company that holds the rights will duplicate it endlessly.

In fact, supply is very limited in the case of recorded music. There is only one recording of that performance of a song by that artist. And there is no real replacement product for that song. Nobody has bought one song instead of another song because they are "close enough". Either you like the song enough to buy it at the price it is offered or you don't. Supply doesn't get more constrained than that.

You're still talking about demand ... not supply. No one is saying that the original had no cost or that duplicates have no value to a consumer. I believe that an artist should be paid for every copy distributed. In this case, however, supply IS the distribution of a digital file and it is not a price-changing factor. Supply affects a price if it changes. When supply increases, the price decreases. When supply decreases, the price increases, ceteris paribus. Since iTunes can just as easily distribute one song from the next, there is no differentiation in price based off of supply. iTunes is basing their pricing of of the demand (or popularity) of a particular song (greater demand = higher price). Therefore supply is not a factor.

The flip side to this is that price also affects demand. If iTunes increases their prices, wise consumers will go elsewhere to buy at a lower price. If consumers are not willing to buy at a higher price level, iTunes will be forced to sell at a lower price.

[milo]

But there are generics too that are reasonably close enough to one or the other...

So which generic tastes just like Coke or Pepsi?

And you have a source on the taste test being rigged?

[AidenShaw]

eg. Dell Intel i7 Desktops for just over $1000 dollars.

under $800 for the Dell Core i7....

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/desktop-studioxps-435mt?c=us&cs=19&l=en&ref=dthp&s=dhs

[Sehnsucht]

This is awesome. Now I can buy from Amazon all the time, and everyone else will too.

Don't get me started on HD movies from iTunes not playing on every monitor hooked up through mini-DP on my UMB.

Unless you're like me and you listen to obscure underground bands that only iTunes has. Yeah, I guess if you want the trendy crap like Lady Gaga or M.I.A., then sure, Amazon...but Amazon doesn't have ****** as far as my music is concerned. :p

[Eric S.]

Precisely. There may be a thousand different versions of "All Along the Watchtower", originally written by Bob Dylan (well, originally written by the powers that be if you watch Battlestar Galactica ;) ), but I bet you dollars to doughnuts anyone looking for the Jimi Hendrix version isn't going to settle for the Barney the Dinosaur version.

Which recalls my definition of hell - infinite repetitions of "Light My Fire" by Jose Feliciano (and knowing what you're missing).

[SFStateStudent]

So everything Bee Gee's and Michael Jackson will be free???:D:p:D:p:D:p:D:p:D:p

[MacAerfen]

I really love how people don't seem to understand how this works. It is not Apple deciding to raise the prices. Apple most likely won't see any increase in revenue because of this, if anything they will see a loss. This is the record companies again trying to break Apple's hold on the market. The record companies detest that Apple has become the largest retailer for music and has the gall to tell record companies how much they can charge for songs. Every single person who has ran to Amazon to buy their music is directly responsible for this increase.

The record companies have forced this by offering DRM free music to Apple's competitors while withholding it from Apple, or when they did provide DRM free music to Apple require a surcharge for it. Do people honestly think Amazon had enough pull to force the music companies to give them DRM free content that they could sell at 30 cents less than Apple? in the world of retail the retailer that sells the most gets the best price, hence why things are cheaper in Walmart is because they can buy it cheaper as they buy so much more volume than others they get it at a much cheaper price. So every one that ran to Amazon when Amazon started offering DRM free content at 99 cents put pressure on Apple. Apple knows if they can only offer DRM ridden content that they will loose, no customer likes DRM. So faced with that the Music companies offer Apple DRM but only if Apple agrees to a pricing change to allow the record companies the control they wanted. So if people had of stuck with Apple instead of running off to Amazon, the music companies would have never been able to force this on Apple.

And all those people that think Amazon will get to continue selling at the 99 cents price if they de-thrown Apple as top reseller is living in a dream world because the music industry will do the same thing to Amazon who likely will not stand up for the customer and try and protect the pricing, and we will find digital prices going even higher when the music industry has real control over the pricing. And if Amazon did try and stand up for the customer and say no to price increases, the music industry would do the same thing, offer content at lower prices to the competitors and bring down Amazon.

The music industry is full of old greedy people who have lost touch with the reality of how technology works and what the economy is like these days. They have no interest in offering products at reasonable prices. They prefer to try and pull their weights in the courts to stop pirating of music, with bills that will force ISPs to keep records so its easy to see who is pirating what, and keep cranking the price up on content. Do any of you really for an instant think that if music piracy stopped that the music industry would honestly lower prices?

So yes run off to Amazon where the prices are cheaper now, and then in a few years when you are paying 1.99 a song and 2.99 a song for popular artists try not to be surprised. Peoples willingness to be blinded by what is really going on is amazing. I for one will say props to Apple and Steve Jobs for keeping the price what it was for so long and knowing that the 1.29 price is still probably less than what the music industry wanted.

And to the "independent" artist you really are not getting the picture at all. You get 70% of the revenue of what you sell. Apple pays Tunecore/CD Baby or whatever company you go through their percent as well, and if you think any of those companies like Tunecore are doing it for just the fee you pay them you are really not in touch with reality. Apple pays the bandwidth and server space that hosting your content incurs. They pay for the advertising in the sense that people check iTunes for music, their reputation and marketing has gotten you a venue to sell your product. They pay for support for when a customer has problems using that song. They pay the development costs of putting together a program to distribute your content. They pay this out of the 30% they make on selling your product. Do you think they are rolling in the cash because of your sales? Ask any major artists who are signed under a label like Warner or something how much of the revenue from their music they get, I seriously doubt it is anywhere near 70%.

[shanmugam]

Because it's not April 1st yet?

And they did NOT say by April 1st, they said the change was coming in April.

easy pal, by end of march it says... :cool:

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/06itunes.html

my concern is i have several other language songs/albums in DRMed format; worried it never get converted into iTunes Plus

nice PR library here dating way back to 2003! :)
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/

[WPB2]

I have long thought that the labels should be able to set their own prices. Don't we live in a free market, Steve? :rolleyes:

We used to live in a free market, until Obama.

Really though the free market solution is that the record labels don't have to sell their music to iTunes, if they don't want. The record labels must have seen that they would rather make $.99 per song than make $.00 not selling music on iTunes.

Seems "free market" to me:D

[.Andy]

We used to live in a free market, until Obama.
I heard Obama hates music and wants it to be more expensive.

[milo]

by end of march it says...

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/06itunes.html

And again, is March over?

I heard Obama hates music and wants it to be more expensive.

I'm trying to figure out the Obama comment...

[.Andy]

I'm trying to figure out the Obama comment...
Don't try too hard I was just being facetious. On the other hand WPB2 was serious.....

[milo]

Don't try too hard I was just being facetious. On the other hand WPB2 was serious.....

I was talking about his comment (and agreeing with you), it was obvious you were kidding. Sorry I wasn't clear.

[Goona]

American corporations hate the fixed price model.
They are addicted to their tired bag of carnival tricks.

" buy two, get one free"
"was $1.99, now .99"
" free" ( read the fine print)
"low introductory rate"

I can go on and on and on.

They are also addicted to the sale.
Profit is less important than the sales figures themselves.
That is because every manager is subject to the almighty quarterly report.

Well said, you can even see it in the expectations for companies, they care less about profit than sale which is why a lot of people don't like Apple's model. They would rather them chase market share at the expense of profits.

Oh, give us even more reasons to shop DRM-Free at Amazon.com? Ok ... you've got a deal, Apple!

:apple:

Yeah I'm sure there will be a mass exodus to Amazon because of this just like there was a mass exodus when Amazon had drm free tracks.

I have a feeling we're going to see an increase in Amazon.Com music downloads.

Better quality (debatable) and less expensive (not debatable)= better deal all around.

I have always been an advocate of CD's anyway- better quality and now cheaper, too. The only d/l's I have are the freebies from Pepsi promotions.

Apple has no one to blame but themselves when they fall to # 3 by the end of the year, behind Wal Mart and Amazon.

Yes just like there was an increase when Amazon had drm free tracks before Apple, itunes fell to number 3, let me go and check.

[northy124]

I have a feeling we're going to see an increase in illegal music downloads.
Yhup I can see that happening, unless it is an Artist I like then I'll buy the CD :D (Emin3m :D )

[Goona]

Hey, you can't get away with your drive-by troll attempt without someone correcting your FUD. I see you're new here (joined just this month!) so you'll get off easy this time.

1. Mac Mini price did NOT go up. It stayed the same while the specs went up. Now, in Australia and maybe elsewhere it might have, but it had to due to the dollar exchange rates. In US dollars it's the same.

2. OSX is slow? Where on earth did you get THAT from? OSX runs fine on ancient hardware, and on every release it just gets faster & faster (OK, except ONE, and I forget the exact version). And OSX runs just dandy on an ARM processor.... you know, the portable chip in the iPhone. Try THAT with Windows.Anything.

3. I happen to agree with you on that one.

4. So Dell has a 15 and 17" laptop for under $1k, is THAT the ONLY spec you use to compare? If you price out an EQUIVALENT laptop from Dell & HP vs the MacBook, they are within spitting distance of each other. Google for price comparisons and you'll see. But you must have done that already, right? If not, try this one chosen at random:
http://technologizer.com/2008/10/19/is-the-new-macbook-expensive/

5. Don't know about this. Do you? Give us some links.

6. You said Pro Apps, plural, but you only mention Logic. As for the other pro apps I see updates for them at a fairly regular rate. Is it just Logic that you have a complaint about? And what exactly is your complaint? Is Logic lacking is some specific feature update that you're wanting, or you just want to see generic updates at a faster rate? And Apple's Pro apps are anything but a joke. Ask channel 12 in my home town. They couldn't live without em.


Yes, ominous signs indeed. If you want to see signs of a giant corporation starting to fall apart, I suggest you look at Microsoft.

Why do you waste your time?

[Goona]

I suspect that Spotify and similar services will kill itunes in a year or less.

I'm in the UK and have been using it for the last week. It's amazing. Streams almost instantly, quality as good as itunes. Track library isn't quite as broad as itunes but it's impressive. The advertising is very light - every fifteen minutes or so - and I might just pay ten quid a month to get rid of that.

My computer is hooked up to speakers around my home so the lack of a mobile platform isn't too much of a problem - though I'm hoping they'll bring it to the iphone soon.

I listen to albums on spotify that I already own on CD - less hassle just to call them up on the macbook and they play straight off.

It's really quite refreshing. Hard copy is so passé.

Pass some of whatever you're smoking.

[Goona]

I really love how people don't seem to understand how this works. It is not Apple deciding to raise the prices. Apple most likely won't see any increase in revenue because of this, if anything they will see a loss. This is the record companies again trying to break Apple's hold on the market. The record companies detest that Apple has become the largest retailer for music and has the gall to tell record companies how much they can charge for songs. Every single person who has ran to Amazon to buy their music is directly responsible for this increase.

The record companies have forced this by offering DRM free music to Apple's competitors while withholding it from Apple, or when they did provide DRM free music to Apple require a surcharge for it. Do people honestly think Amazon had enough pull to force the music companies to give them DRM free content that they could sell at 30 cents less than Apple? in the world of retail the retailer that sells the most gets the best price, hence why things are cheaper in Walmart is because they can buy it cheaper as they buy so much more volume than others they get it at a much cheaper price. So every one that ran to Amazon when Amazon started offering DRM free content at 99 cents put pressure on Apple. Apple knows if they can only offer DRM ridden content that they will loose, no customer likes DRM. So faced with that the Music companies offer Apple DRM but only if Apple agrees to a pricing change to allow the record companies the control they wanted. So if people had of stuck with Apple instead of running off to Amazon, the music companies would have never been able to force this on Apple.

And all those people that think Amazon will get to continue selling at the 99 cents price if they de-thrown Apple as top reseller is living in a dream world because the music industry will do the same thing to Amazon who likely will not stand up for the customer and try and protect the pricing, and we will find digital prices going even higher when the music industry has real control over the pricing. And if Amazon did try and stand up for the customer and say no to price increases, the music industry would do the same thing, offer content at lower prices to the competitors and bring down Amazon.

The music industry is full of old greedy people who have lost touch with the reality of how technology works and what the economy is like these days. They have no interest in offering products at reasonable prices. They prefer to try and pull their weights in the courts to stop pirating of music, with bills that will force ISPs to keep records so its easy to see who is pirating what, and keep cranking the price up on content. Do any of you really for an instant think that if music piracy stopped that the music industry would honestly lower prices?

So yes run off to Amazon where the prices are cheaper now, and then in a few years when you are paying 1.99 a song and 2.99 a song for popular artists try not to be surprised. Peoples willingness to be blinded by what is really going on is amazing. I for one will say props to Apple and Steve Jobs for keeping the price what it was for so long and knowing that the 1.29 price is still probably less than what the music industry wanted.

And to the "independent" artist you really are not getting the picture at all. You get 70% of the revenue of what you sell. Apple pays Tunecore/CD Baby or whatever company you go through their percent as well, and if you think any of those companies like Tunecore are doing it for just the fee you pay them you are really not in touch with reality. Apple pays the bandwidth and server space that hosting your content incurs. They pay for the advertising in the sense that people check iTunes for music, their reputation and marketing has gotten you a venue to sell your product. They pay for support for when a customer has problems using that song. They pay the development costs of putting together a program to distribute your content. They pay this out of the 30% they make on selling your product. Do you think they are rolling in the cash because of your sales? Ask any major artists who are signed under a label like Warner or something how much of the revenue from their music they get, I seriously doubt it is anywhere near 70%.

Couldn't have put it better.

[peterwalsh]

Pass some of whatever you're smoking.

I wish I could, Goona, but this is one of these times when America just aint getting the quality I'm getting in Blighty.

When you try it, you'll quickly realize that CDs and downloads are a thing of the past. I'm moving on, baby. I'm streaming baby and I don't need no CD, mp3 clutter.

It's all at my fingertips. And you're still putting things on shelves.

[milo]

When you try it, you'll quickly realize that CDs and downloads are a thing of the past. I'm moving on, baby. I'm streaming baby and I don't need no CD, mp3 clutter.

It's all at my fingertips. And you're still putting things on shelves.

First, how is mp3 "clutter" or "things on shelves"?

And second, streaming really isn't that appealing to anyone who does the vast majority of their listening on mobile devices. For music listening, the notion that everything will be in the cloud any time soon is a hard sell.

Right now streaming seems like a step back.

[slu]

And to the "independent" artist you really are not getting the picture at all. You get 70% of the revenue of what you sell. Apple pays Tunecore/CD Baby or whatever company you go through their percent as well, and if you think any of those companies like Tunecore are doing it for just the fee you pay them you are really not in touch with reality. Apple pays the bandwidth and server space that hosting your content incurs. They pay for the advertising in the sense that people check iTunes for music, their reputation and marketing has gotten you a venue to sell your product. They pay for support for when a customer has problems using that song. They pay the development costs of putting together a program to distribute your content. They pay this out of the 30% they make on selling your product. Do you think they are rolling in the cash because of your sales? Ask any major artists who are signed under a label like Warner or something how much of the revenue from their music they get, I seriously doubt it is anywhere near 70%.

I wasn't complaining about anything. I think we get a good deal from Tunecore/Apple. I don't know that Apple pays Tunecore anything though, and neither do you, so let's stop with the out of touch with reality stuff. I am sure Tunecore makes a nice living off the fees they charge, plus they also charge a recurring yearly fee for the albums/tracks you have on a music store (of which there are many choices other than iTunes). Also CD Baby (unlike Tunecore) takes a cut of the royalties that Apple or whoever pays you, but doesn't charge the same recurring yearly fees. Still so sure they get a cut from Apple even though you don't know how it works now?

I think Apple pays us nicely when we sell songs on iTunes. My original point was that I wish I could sell our record cheaper for the consumer. I currently do not have that choice. Maybe this variable pricing will give me that choice. That is all I wanted to say.

I am not making any real money off of it anyway, so it would be nice if it was cheaper and perhaps more people would buy it. I do not think I am getting a rotten deal at all. I just want to give consumers a better deal and I want more people to listen to (and possibly enjoy) our songs. That is it.

You are reading way to much into this. And why the quotes around "independent". Is that some kind of insult? My band made a record. We have no record deal. We are independent. We are not trying to get rich or famous, we just do it for fun. What is your point?

EDIT: Is this a summary of the first part of your post?

"It is not Apple that raised the prices here, it is the record companies, who are trying to make as much money as possible."

Welcome to America.

[peterwalsh]

First, how is mp3 "clutter" or "things on shelves"?

Because it's all part of that outdated concept of owning things - 3D physical or shiftable data on a device. Just let go of owning something.

Right now streaming seems like a step back.

Mobile streaming is the future daddyo, the only limit being local broadband constraints and those are improving rapidly.

Piracy is unstoppable and unpreventable - even the music companies have accepted that - scrapping DRM eg. Streaming is the future of digital rights management.

[slu]

You're still talking about demand ... not supply. No one is saying that the original had no cost or that duplicates have no value to a consumer. I believe that an artist should be paid for every copy distributed. In this case, however, supply IS the distribution of a digital file and it is not a price-changing factor. Supply affects a price if it changes. When supply increases, the price decreases. When supply decreases, the price increases, ceteris paribus. Since iTunes can just as easily distribute one song from the next, there is no differentiation in price based off of supply. iTunes is basing their pricing of of the demand (or popularity) of a particular song (greater demand = higher price). Therefore supply is not a factor.

The flip side to this is that price also affects demand. If iTunes increases their prices, wise consumers will go elsewhere to buy at a lower price. If consumers are not willing to buy at a higher price level, iTunes will be forced to sell at a lower price.

You need to let go of the concept that supply = physical, tangible object or computer file. The supply is not number of copies one can make of the song, the supply is the song itself, which is abstract and not replaceable (to most consumers) by a substitute product.

[milo]

Because it's all part of that outdated concept of owning things - 3D physical or shiftable data on a device. Just let go of owning something.

I'll be more than happy to give that up...when it's possible to do so without having to give up the ability to hear the music I want when I want. Today that's not possible.

Mobile streaming is the future daddyo, the only limit being local broadband constraints and those are improving rapidly.

I don't disagree that it's the future. Meaning it doesn't meet the needs of most people right now ( and you didn't really dispute what I said).

We'll all move on when the technology makes it possible to use and actually be an improvement from what we currently have. And apple will too, they are smart and there's plenty of time before that day comes.

In the meantime, files aren't going anywhere for at least a few years. At least.

You originally said "kill itunes in a year or less".

That is preposterous. Period.

[Avatar74]

As an independent artist who has a record on iTunes, I'd like to share a couple of things about how it works now.

You have to go through a company like Tunecore or CD Baby to even get a record on iTunes. Apple will not deal directly with you. You pay a small amount for this service, but you get to keep all royalties you get from Apple (with Tunecore). That is $7 per album sold and $.70 per song sold. Apple keeps the rest.

I want to make a correction to my earlier response to this...

I read your post incorrectly. You said 70 cents per song, not album. Per album, you said $7 is yours to keep... That's $1,042,965! (given my earlier example (http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=7350603&postcount=87) of selling 148,995 units just to break even on a $50,000 advance were you signed to a major or minor).

Even if you spend $43,000 recording that album, you're still a millionaire. Put it another way... If you wanted to spend $50,000 on an album to record for iTunes, you'd need only sell 7143 copies to break even, versus 148,995. That's not just a good deal. That's a stellar deal.

If you're smart, you'll figure out based on your existing album sales what your market is, and budget accordingly to what kind of results you can expect at whatever price point Apple wants to put you at. You cannot possibly lose that way relative to your alternatives... including promoting and distributing the album entirely by yourself just to collect the remaining 39 cents per track or $3.99 per album... which will get eaten up by the marginal expenditure of completely self-powered marketing, promotion, distribution and advertising. Sure, you may have to do some anyway with iTunes, but the costs will be significantly less, with access to a much larger market than yourobscurebandnamehere.com is likely to generate.

[peterwalsh]

You originally said "kill itunes in a year or less".

That is preposterous. Period.[/QUOTE]

It'll happen as soon as the major labels decide it's the most realistic - and future proof - method to get money for their recorded music.

Kids pirate music. Kids own mobile phones. But kids will listen to music on their phones and put up with the ads/small subscription rates.

Have you noticed that sound quality has largely dropped out of the equation?

Same will be true of files.

And have a gander at the below:

http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/02/23/the-day-itunes-died-spotify-is-working-on-a-killer-iphone-app/

[OddyOh]

LOL...that reminds me what a wise comedian (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvhsJyecpLc) once said...

American corporations hate the fixed price model.
They are addicted to their tired bag of carnival tricks.

" buy two, get one free"
"was $1.99, now .99"
" free" ( read the fine print)
"low introductory rate"

I can go on and on and on.



Seriously though, this is a stupid move by stupid people. Record labels will see less sales with certain songs at $1.29...4x less, so it won't even be worth it, not to mention the bad blood consumers already have with them.

[slu]

I want to make a correction to my earlier response to this...

I read your post incorrectly. You said 70 cents per song, not album. Per album, you said $7 is yours to keep... That's $1,042,965! (given my earlier example (http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=7350603&postcount=87) of selling 148,995 units just to break even on a $50,000 advance were you signed to a major or minor).

Even if you spend $43,000 recording that album, you're still a millionaire. Put it another way... If you wanted to spend $50,000 on an album to record for iTunes, you'd need only sell 7143 copies to break even, versus 148,995. That's not just a good deal. That's a stellar deal.

If you're smart, you'll figure out based on your existing album sales what your market is, and budget accordingly to what kind of results you can expect at whatever price point Apple wants to put you at. You cannot possibly lose that way relative to your alternatives... including promoting and distributing the album entirely by yourself just to collect the remaining 39 cents per track or $3.99 per album... which will get eaten up by the marginal expenditure of completely self-powered marketing, promotion, distribution and advertising. Sure, you may have to do some anyway with iTunes, but the costs will be significantly less, with access to a much larger market than yourobscurebandnamehere.com is likely to generate.

I agree. It is an excellent deal. And I can assure we spent nowhere near $50K recording. But if you are a serious musician and you want to actaully make a living from it, you might be better off not signing with a label and hiring a PR firm or something similar instead.

[milo]

It'll happen as soon as the major labels decide it's the most realistic - and future proof - method to get money for their recorded music.

And as soon as the people who bought the 170 million iPods and other players update to new ones that have wireless capability.

And as soon as those people are willing to spring for paying the monthly iPhone data charges, or are able to be in wifi range pretty much all the time.

And as soon as those people are willing to pay a monthly spotify fee or listen to ads.

And as soon as people are willing to accept much shorter battery life.

And as soon as people are willing to accept that after paying all those monthly fees, once they decide they want to stop paying, they are left with nothing to keep.

Starting to see the reality of it yet?


This is basically just the next iteration of music subscription services. And so far, all of those have failed dismally. Going to "streaming" isn't going to change the mind of anyone averse to the whole concept of "renting" music.

[Avatar74]

I agree. It is an excellent deal. And I can assure we spent nowhere near $50K recording. But if you are a serious musician and you want to actaully make a living from it, you might be better off not signing with a label and hiring a PR firm or something similar instead.

And I totally advocate that. In 1996, I wrote a research paper on this very subject... particularly internet distribution of music, which was in its infancy then—mostly mediocre live streaming, etc.

What I found was that CD sales were reaching maturity, technology on the desktop had caught up with multimillion dollar recording operations, bandwidth was available but the content simply wasn't yet there.... and to top it off the artist was getting royally (pun intended) screwed. All that was needed was a demonstrable business model that could make the artist and the distributor money.

iTunes did that, and even wiped out DRM after much humming and hawing by the industry which was paranoid not of piracy, but they are deathly paranoid that the record company as we know it is becoming obsolete.

As a group, artists have the upper hand here... they can leave in droves and completely redefine the way the industry operates at every level. There will always be a Britney or two who needs the massive promotion machinery, but like you said... if they need it that badly, they can hire a PR firm.

Oh, and that's another thing... When you're with a major label getting your pithy 7%, not only do you have to pay your session musicians, producer, business agent, PR firm, attorneys, etc. out of that, but in many cases, expense reports filed by the company for promotional activities (e.g. wining and dining radio station program directors, etc.) can, and often do, get tacked on, on TOP of your advance.

[jzuena]

But if you still don't believe me, may I ask what brand of soda you drink and why?

Market Basket (local discount grocery chain) cola because it is the cheapest that still has a "brand name"-ish taste. It is the house brand at the store with the lowest price on the big name brands anyway. If Coke, Pepsi or RC goes on sale to match, I'll buy them instead. I have no brand loyalty. Marketers probably hate me.

I'll also switch to Amazon (mostly have anyway) if iTunes songs I like were repriced to $1.29. I have no digital brand loyalty, either. Of course, now that Apple has caved, you can bet Amazon will be strong-armed to move the exact same set of songs to $1.29 that Apple does.

[napabar]

The amount of misinformation and lack of logic in these forums never ceases to amaze me.

The music labels are raising the price, not Apple. They have been on Apple for YEARS to do variable pricing. In order to get DRM-free music, Apple finally agreed. iTunes pricing had become much more complicated than when it first debuted in 2003. You have movie purchases and rentals, applications, music videos, and TV shows, all at various prices. Their customers have become more sophisticated, so the one size fits all model of .99 cents has become moot.

Why does everyone think Amazon is the greatest thing since sliced bread? Selling songs in early Clinton-era codecs at 320K does NOT make them sound better than 256K AAC files from this Century. Oh, and if you think Amazon is going to keep their prices, think again. The Labels got Apple to go along with this pricing structure. You can bet your A$$ that when Amazon's contract's are up, they will be forced into a similar price structure. They have no bargaining chip anymore.

[peterwalsh]

Starting to see the reality of it yet?

There are limitations, of course. But I'd say giving SO MUCH MONEY - and even more money - to itunes for my music is quite a major limitation, wouldn't you?

Monthly subscription is only equivalent to about two albums a month. That doesn't seem like much.

Wi-fi and battery life are improving rapidly. Should also be able to cache albums on playlists for when outside wi-fi reach.

And all those people with ipods, well don't they have phones? Don't they upgrade them every few years. Will they say no to streaming music?

And true, when you stop subscribing you'll have no music. But when are you going to stop buying music? When you're an old fart. There is no end. You'll keep buying stuff year in year out and that's what the majors have been relying on since the fifties.

But you're right, it all comes down to personal circumstances and what works for your lifestyle.

The kids will lap it up.

[yossim]

whatever happened to penny candy?

[Blue Velvet]

True to supply-and-demand economics, the price of music downloads will be geared to the artist's popularity. Releases from new artists would receive the lower pricing, while tracks from popular acts would get slapped with the higher rate.


This statement is idiotic as linked in the MacRumors post. It has nothing to do with supply and demand.

a) There is a theoretical infinite supply of a given track
b) In situations of supply and demand, it is increased supply that drives down prices, not raises them

Instead, what this demonstrates is cartel-like behaviour. There aren't multiple releases on different labels of Born In The USA, for instance. As a frequent buyer of CDs with many being big-selling back releases where they're substantially cheaper than more contemporary releases, I find this reversal of policy interesting and possibly indicative of buying from the iTunes store being a impulse purchase. It's nothing but gouging.

[manu chao]

It has nothing to do with supply and demand.
a) There is a theoretical infinite supply of a given track
b) In situations of supply and demand, it is increased supply that drives down prices, not raises them
One can interpret these things differently. One way to argue is that the supply of good artists/track is limited. For example, if there where 100 tracks on the iTMS and 10 really good one among these. Now assume people buying 20 tracks each, since there only 10 good tracks they cannot but buy these ten. The other 10 purchases will be spread around, with preferences going to the lower-priced ones.
But I admit arguing the supply side is harder as the demand side.

[MacFly123]

I have long thought that the labels should be able to set their own prices. Don't we live in a free market, Steve? :rolleyes:

Are you a record studio executive??? Why would you say something so stupid? CDs have been overpriced for years and years and now they are trying to do the same thing in the digital realm when they would make more money if they would just ease up a bit.

[Chip NoVaMac]

Just went through of some of the posts here so far. At $1.29 for "hot" tracks - I will not be buying. At 69 cents, I might fill-in on my personal catalog.

[Galley]

Catalog CD titles are selling for $5.00-8.00 on Amazon, so I expect there to be plenty of $0.69 tracks.

[yossim]

maybe it's a trade off and I'll end up spending the same amount anyway. It really depends on what they deem "popular."

[darijoe]

Ummm, I'm pretty sure it was announced at Macworld in January that it was going to be April 1, 2009!!! I'm surprised no-one noticed that! :eek:

Look at 2:06 here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thOBRe8-_W4

[darijoe]

Deleted

[Mr. Giver '94]

Sounds backwards to me....I'm gonna be so mad when all of the songs I've been buying cost 1/3 less. I buy more new stuff than the classics because my parents usually have a CD or record (old LOL) of that stuff. :(

[marksman]

I don't think I have ever paid 99 cents for a song, so I am pretty sure $1.29 is not going to happen for me.

[yossim]

I thought 99 cents was cheaper than buying cd's.

maybe that just has to do with the kind of music I listen to.

[MagnusVonMagnum]

I don't think I've ever seen more ignorance and sky is falling bologna in a single thead on here ever...all over a 30 cent increase on SOME songs with a drop in price of 30 cents on other songs with most staying the same, which gave us the VERY VERY VERY worthwhile change of DRM free music at DOUBLE the bit-rate (256kbps AAC is indistinguishable from the original source material whereas 128kbps is in the land of questionable lossy differences.

I personally would NEVER EVER buy a music track with DRM on it (I do like to play my music on USB flash drives in my car which has a JVC stereo with a USB port and AAC/MP3/WMA support in it. I also would never buy a song at 128kbps EVER. 30 cents extra for a song to get a high quality DRM free track is a small price to pay considering I wouldn't buy a SINGLE TRACK at 99 Cents if it had DRM and 128kbps on it. CLEARLY, others on here feel VERY differently and seem to LOVE (or at least prefer) DRM and 128kbps. Screw that.

I would consider buying tracks from Amazon for 99 cents (clearly the music industry is not treating Apple the same), but OTOH, Amazon is using MP3 and the MP3 is INFERIOR to AAC at the same bit rates. To me, the POSSIBILITY of paying an extra 29 cents for a single track (albums appear to remain the same) is worth getting a higher quality product in 256kbps AAC. 256kbps MP3 is absolutely and demonstratably inferior to 256 AAC.

The lack of DRM will also finally mean that more products like car stereos and other media players will finally offer AAC support. My car stereo and cell phone has it already, but many players still only support MP3 and WMA and that's a shame since AAC is a much better quality format in general and should be the defacto music standard, not WMA or MP3.


Wow, the downfall of Apple is upon us.

Ominous signs that Apple are falling apart:

1. They are increasing the price of everything: mac mini, mac pro, now itunes songs when the competition is decreasing the price - eg. Dell Intel i7 Desktops for just over $1000 dollars.


I agree Apple is shooting themselves in the foot with overpriced hardware. I can only hope Psystar clobbers them in court so that the clone floodgates will open and Apple will FINALLY have to compete on MERIT and PRICE instead of a virtual MONOPOLY on its products. This sort of anti-competition business practice has been allowed to go on for far too long with Apple. They are no longer a second class citizen in the computing and gadget worlds, but a major player in both markets in terms of sales and gaining popularity. They do not deserve special protection or the right to overcharge for the same hardware, IMO. Operating Systems and hardware are two separate markets. They should not be allowed to use one to hold the other hostage. I can only hope the judge that oversees the case can plainly see that. The ever increasing hardware prices for clone level products is making it ever more obvious, though. If you want OS X, you HAVE to buy Apple hardware and that should never have been allowed in the first place. Software and Hardware are two separate markets and there is NOTHING embedded about OS X to make a case in that direction. Raise the cost of the OS (within reason) if necessary but stop trying to block my ability to get a decent priced mid-range tower that can run OS X.


2. Windows 7 - it is getting rave reviews and works on sub-standard Netbooks, whereas OSX is slow and needs at least a core 2 duo to run well.


This is simply not true. OS X Leopard runs perfectly fine on my 2001 PowerMac with a 1.8GHz single core PPC G4 and a GPU with Core Image support (ATI 9800 Pro in this case). I'm typing this messagte on it right now and it's very "snappy". It runs one HECK of a lot better than Vista (and quite possibly XP as well) would run on the equivalent era hardware.) And while I've heard some reports of how great Windows7 is, I've also read plenty of conflicting reports that indicate it is STILL based on the Vista core and therefore is still plenty slow and resource intensive, despite some improvements and optimizations. Frankly, until I see a final revision review tested on several different hardware configurations, I'll reserve judgment.


3. There is a huge gap between Mac Pro and iMac; a mid-level desktop is seriously needed.

I agree here as well. Frankly, Apple has proven they have no interest in providing competitive hardware or prices. Clearly, more hardware competition is needed in this market area.

Even so, the areas I agree on have NOTHING to do with the price increase on iTunes. That is driven completely by the music industry which wants the ability to have some variable pricing options and has been holding out on DRM free to get that option from Apple. To have very popular tracks at the same price as older unpopular music IS a little absurd. If the music companies want to sell me a song for 69 cents instead, I say GREAT. If a song is really great, I'm willing to pay an extra 30 cents for it if it means I get higher quality DRM free music in the best format. Although frankly, I wish they would offer a lossless format as an alternative to AAC even. Why shouldn't we be able to buy CD or even SACD equivalent archive quality tracks in 2009? THAT would definitely be worth an extra 30 cents to me.

[Jelite]

This is exactly the same as how the Amazon store works so im not sure what the fuss is about.

Popular songs will be cheaper, obscure more expensive.

[gtyper]

This isn't supply and demand. Period. There has to be a limited supply for this equation. Since only the demand is variable, with the supply approaching infinite, then the price should actually drop, if you want to play in that arena.

I'm not upset at Apple. I'm upset at the greedy record labels that have been stuck in the same paradigm since the inception of recorded music and refuse to change despite evidence that shows they should. They've been screwing musicians and customers alike.

Instead of testing the waters for HIGHER THAN CD pricing, they ought to be testing the waters for carte blanche LOWER THAN CD pricing for quality (whether it's perceived or real) that is less than CD. Try to make this the primary market for music and in turn reduce shipping costs, manufacturing costs (losing a bit of economies of scale, I'm sure), stocking costs, etc. Meanwhile, increase the quality to lossless.

Right now they are being beaten up by pirating because the pricing scheme is out of whack with the perceived value. I think that most people download "illegally" due to the price/value inequality rather than our innate desire to "steal". I, for one, admit to filching more than buying due to this exact thing. Now, if the price dropped to $5-7 for a CD worth of music ... I'd be a buying fool.

The problem is that the recording industry wants to make the same return on music as they always have. They can't see that their strategy is what is killing them and that they are losing customers. They truly need to explore lower pricing all around in order to become a impulse purchase and $13-17 is not impulse.

[Darrin Bell]

I was all set to say "I guess I won't be buying music from iTunes." Then I remembered that just yesterday, I paid Apple $10 for one song ("A Love Bizarre" by Sheila E. is "album only.").

I probably won't buy as many songs that I'm on the fence about. Maybe I won't buy any that I'm on the fence about. But if I really want a song, I'm not going to check to see whether it's cheaper at Amazon; I'll want it at higher quality than Amazon's MP3's and I'll pay Apple the extra 30 cents.

Like the poster above, I'd feel better about it if it were lossless.

[rockout]

Boy, what a GREAT idea.... make the people who AREN'T pirating music pay MORE! It's so stupid, it just might work!

Or, in the world I like to call reality, here's what happens.... right now, it's marginally more difficult to pirate music for free than it is to download it from the ITMS. Every single person that either downloads or pays has SOME price point at which they're willing to pay for the music, and will go no higher... for some, that might be 10 cents, for others, 99 cents, or $1.29, or $10 per song -

Point is, when you raise the price, there's going to be some people that say "you know what? you just made it worthwhile to start getting this crap for free." And once someone heads down that road, it just gets easier and easier to download the stuff you want not only for free, but in higher quality as well (once you find invites to sites like what.cd and waffles).

A bonehead move by the labels to finally force this on Apple. Overall paid downloads will decrease. Piracy will increase. Film at 11.

[gtyper]

Or, in the world I like to call reality, here's what happens.... right now, it's marginally more difficult to pirate music for free than it is to download it from the ITMS. Every single person that either downloads or pays has SOME price point at which they're willing to pay for the music, and will go no higher... for some, that might be 10 cents, for others, 99 cents, or $1.29, or $10 per song

Thank you for this post.

It says exactly what I was after - only more succinctly.

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Right now they are being beaten up by pirating because the pricing scheme is out of whack with the perceived value. I think that most people download "illegally" due to the price/value inequality rather than our innate desire to "steal". I, for one, admit to filching more than buying due to this exact thing. Now, if the price dropped to $5-7 for a CD worth of music ... I'd be a buying fool.

The problem is that the recording industry wants to make the same return on music as they always have. They can't see that their strategy is what is killing them and that they are losing customers. They truly need to explore lower pricing all around in order to become a impulse purchase and $13-17 is not impulse.

The thing is that music USED TO BE $5-7 for an album. When the CD came out, they justified the $12-15 prices for manufacturing reasons, but even when the prices for that came WAY WAY down, they jacked the price WAY UP instead, saying that all the failure albums had to be paid for somehow and that meant by the good albums. The point is it's all BS. Albums SHOULD be $5-7 for a CD, let alone online albums.

The worst part is that the artists don't make SQUAT from album sales no matter what the price of the album is because the record companies force bad contracts on new artists that can last for 5 albums or more. They can only really make money by touring. The whole system is in favor of the record companies. THAT is what really needs to change. iTunes should be supporting independent artists on their store. THAT would change everything for the artists, but I'm sure you can imagine how the record companies would feel about that. I say too bad. They're all just greedy music pimps, for lack of a better word. The problem is also that the radio stations are all in it with the record companies too. It's a bit like organized crime, IMO. And the consumer loses because it becomes about making hit artists instead of good music. When is the last time you saw an unattractive pop star? What's the odds of getting good looks and talent in the same package? How many artists write their own music? How many record companies would let them if they wanted to?

[SactoGuy18]

Wow, the downfall of Apple is upon us.

(rest of quote snipped)


I'm surprised you haven't been run off this forum yet. ;)

But seriously, Apple better take the competition from the Amazon MP3 Download store SERIOUSLY. They have to for the following reasons:

1) Amazon will frequently cut the price of a full album download SUBSTANTIALLY as a loss leader to drive up business on the MP3 Download store. They frequently run US$1.99 per album download specials, and Amazon scored a HUGE coup when they offered U2's latest album No Line On The Horizon at a limited time for a full album download at only US$3.99! :eek: (Nice album, by the way.)

2) Amazon offers a download program that automatically puts downloaded music into the basic Playlist in iTunes. That means it's easy to sync the downloaded music from Amazon into any iPod.

3) Amazon wisely chose to use 256 kbps variable bit rate (VBR) MP3 encoding for music compression. That means not only excellent sound quality, but almost every portable music player in the world that can play MP3 files can play back the music downloaded from the Amazon MP3 Download store--essentially Amazon now covers just about 100% of the portable music player market. While iTunes Plus' 256 kbps VBR AAC encoding does sound a little better, the difference is not noticeable unless you either use a seriously high-end in-ear monitor (IEM) headphone with your iPod or connect your iPod to a higher-end home stereo.

[armoguy94]

i would never pay more than .99 for a digital song. that's ridiculous. i think that .69 is the most reasonable. hell, .99 is a bit too much anyway but, i like that they added .69 tier to the catalog.Yea, I don't use iTunes, I go to http://www.beatport.com to buy my music and to buy a lossless wav there it's so expensive ($1 fee0, and the songs are already around $1.50-$2 to begin with. So per song you can be spending up to $3 or more if you want the lossless format. Personally though, I think it's worth it because I only buy songs that I really like, and I know I'll be getting lots of enjoyment out of it.

What I don't get is, why would people pay $10 for a crappy 256kb/s mp3 encoded album when you can go out and pay $10 at your local store for the same thing, but in CD with LOSSLESS files? I'd much rather have a CD than a digital file if I'm going to buy a whole album and I can rip all the songs to my computer in lossless, easily.

3) Amazon wisely chose to use 256 kbps variable bit rate (VBR) MP3 encoding for music compression. That means not only excellent sound quality, but almost every portable music player in the world that can play MP3 files can play back the music downloaded from the Amazon MP3 Download store--essentially Amazon now covers just about 100% of the portable music player market. While iTunes Plus' 256 kbps VBR AAC encoding does sound a little better, the difference is not noticeable unless you either use a seriously high-end in-ear monitor (IEM) headphone with your iPod or connect your iPod to a higher-end home stereo.
256kbps VBR mp3s are not excellent sound quality, what are you talking about. Maybe for the average consumer it is fine, but in no way is it excellent and it would sound like complete crap listening to it on a high end system. MP3s can not deliver "excellent" sound quality, even at 320kb/s, if you're going to be listening to it on anything high end.

[MagnusVonMagnum]

What I don't get is, why would people pay $10 for a crappy 256kb/s mp3 encoded album when you can go out and pay $10 at your local store for the same thing, but in CD with LOSSLESS files?


Other than new releases and specials and value priced items, where can you reliably get music for $10 on CDs anymore? Best Buy starts at $12 for sales and MOST albums are priced in the $18-20 range for a CD these days. $10 is half off. Yes, music clubs can get you albums much cheaper, but they often don't get new albums until a year after its release.

Yes, I'd much rather have a CD archive and make my own lossless and compressed files to put in iTunes (I have over 400 CDs and did exactly that for those albums), but like I said you cannot get $10 CDs normally and even $10 is a rip-off if the album only contains one or two good tracks on it. I'd rather pay 99 cents for a single good song than $10 for an album with one good song and a bunch of filler.

The record companies want to know why people don't buy albums any more? It's because they purposely made sure albums had a few good hit songs from their best song writers and spread all the good songs out among all their pop artists and then sold you CDs for $15-20 to get 1 or 2 good songs per album. Sure they want you to buy the whole album. They make more money with little effort and effectively get $7-15 a song instead of 99 cents because you will not listen to a bunch of crappy songs and only play the good one. I always buy the whole album from reliable artists that write their own material (e.g. Tori Amos, Sarah Mclachlan, Pink Floyd or its solo members, Billy Joel, etc.) but many of those artists (e.g. Pink Floyd and Billy Joel) don't even make albums any more.

The days of having quality artists that make quality MUSIC are disappearing. Everything is about "image" now. It's much easier to make quick money off a pop star with one 'hit single' and show him/her half naked in a music video or late night tv show appearance than actually make good music. Ironically, the days of MTV/VH-1 showing music videos are more or less over so music videos don't matter quite like they used to. But you still won't get music only artists in the spotlight because there are still media interviews, the Internet, etc. and people want to worship ATTRACTIVE people. Someone like Janis Joplin never would have gotten a record contract in today's world and the world would be a lot worse off. Sadly, music for music's sake just doesn't happen anymore unless you get away from the record labels and look directly to the artists and sites that promote them.

[iMaggot]

This is lame, torrents will be my best friends :cool:

[Bye Bye Baby]

Music is far too an important thing to be left to the record labels. They will eventually bugger iTunes and the movie studios will do the same thing.

Not happy to make a buck, a good buck at that, they must wring every cent out of it.

Down they go and up goes piracy.

[yossim]

...up goes piracy.

Apple, are you listening?

[Benguitar]

:mad: Please tell me they aren't still going through with this?! I swear I thought Apple decided against it because it was extremely disliked by the masses?

[neoREgen]

In addition to more illegal downloads, I think sites like MP3 Fiesta will gain in popularity. Since I went digital with my music, iTunes has only been my backup. If I can't find it on any other site, I'll check iTunes.
Wow. Thank you for that.
I hadn't visited MP3 Fiesta before. New favorite site assuming it works.
Goodbye, Rhapsody.

[SactoGuy18]

Yea, I don't use iTunes, I go to
256kbps VBR mp3s are not excellent sound quality, what are you talking about. Maybe for the average consumer it is fine, but in no way is it excellent and it would sound like complete crap listening to it on a high end system. MP3s can not deliver "excellent" sound quality, even at 320kb/s, if you're going to be listening to it on anything high end.

I have to disagree here! Unless you're using a serious quality (and very expensive!) in-ear headphone like a Shure SE420/SE530, Ultimate Ears Triple.fi 10 or Sennheiser IE 8 (all of which cost more than a NEW iPod classic 120 GB!) or plug in your iPod with an iPod data connector to dual RCA connector cable to a really good quality home stereo, you'll be hard-pressed to hear the difference between the original source and the 256 kbps VBR MP3 version, especially given the type of headphones most iPod owners use!

[Kirbdog]

I still think that tiered pricing was a concession to get the record companies to allow DRM free tracks on iTunes.

Apple tracks every stat possible about every thing in iTunes. When users do not purchase as many tracks at the new $1.29 price point I sure Steve Jobs will be at their door with a big I told you so.

[B2k1977]

Pissed about the price hike? Aww poor you. Big babies. It goes up 30 cents, wah wah wah. If you don't like it, take your butts to the local store, and pay for a whole CD, while I'll be downloading music on the fly, anytime I want, 30 cents more is a small price to pay for that flexibility. I hate whiners.

[ravenvii]

Wow... you people are acting like Apple is raising the price to $30 per song or something.

it's only 30 cents, and they're all now DRM-free.

Jeez, people.

[armoguy94]

Pissed about the price hike? Aww poor you. Big babies. It goes up 30 cents, wah wah wah. If you don't like it, take your butts to the local store, and pay for a whole CD, while I'll be downloading music on the fly, anytime I want, 30 cents more is a small price to pay for that flexibility. I hate whiners.Many people can't afford music to begin with and are still gracious enough to buy it when they can EASILY pirate them, probably at higher quality too. Especially in this economy, 30 cents increase IS a lot if you buy a lot of music. If you can afford it easily, then kudos to you - but don't be such a b*** about it and try to think about other people! sorry for my language, but what kind of way is that to talk? i'm sorry but i couldn't find another word, if mods see this post and are unhappy (idk if it's against the rules) then feel free to edit that word out

In the meanwhile, I'll be downloading off of Amazon for cheaper, and "on the fly" as well..:rolleyes:

I'm fine with the prices with iTunes, it's up to you if you want to buy the music from there or not, there are plenty of other places that you can find it cheaper for, but why have such an attitude?


Wow... you people are acting like Apple is raising the price to $30 per song or something.

it's only 30 cents, and they're all now DRM-free.

Jeez, people.Good.. they removed something that shouldn't have been there in the first place - now people are left to pay for it?:rolleyes:

[milo]

There are limitations, of course. But I'd say giving SO MUCH MONEY - and even more money - to itunes for my music is quite a major limitation, wouldn't you?

Who's putting a gun to your head and making you give them "SO MUCH MONEY"? Buy a little or buy a lot, nobody is forcing anything.

And with a monthly subscription, how much music do you have to listen to when you stop paying? Sure looks like zero to me. Any music I buy I have available for the rest of my life assuming I still want it.

The fact is that the subscription model has been tried for years, and for years iTunes has cleaned its clock.

Wi-fi and battery life are improving rapidly.

Enough that a player that is connected constantly will be able to compete with the 15-25 hours of current iPods within ONE YEAR? Do you seriously think that is likely considering how "rapidly" batteries have improved?

And all those people with ipods, well don't they have phones? Don't they upgrade them every few years. Will they say no to streaming music?

Yep, every few years. Your math is off if you think people upgrading phones every few years is enough to dethrone iTunes in ONE year. And whether they say no to streaming music depends on all the factors I listed.

And true, when you stop subscribing you'll have no music. But when are you going to stop buying music?

The amount I spend on music is less than a monthly subscription. So no, a subscription doesn't interest me, and yes, it seems like way too much cost for way too little. The fact that no music subscription model has done particularly well is evidence that many people feel that way.

Popular songs will be cheaper, obscure more expensive.

In fact the announcement said the exact opposite.


Wow... you people are acting like Apple is raising the price to $30 per song or something.

it's only 30 cents, and they're all now DRM-free.

Jeez, people.

And you forgot that people keep ignoring that on some tracks the price is going DOWN.


Many people can't afford music to begin with and are still gracious enough to buy it when they can EASILY pirate them, probably at higher quality too. Especially in this economy, 30 cents increase IS a lot if you buy a lot of music. If you can afford it easily, then kudos to you - but don't be such a b*** about it and try to think about other people! sorry for my language, but what kind of way is that to talk? i'm sorry but i couldn't find another word, if mods see this post and are unhappy (idk if it's against the rules) then feel free to edit that word out

In the meanwhile, I'll be downloading off of Amazon for cheaper, and "on the fly" as well..:rolleyes:

I'm fine with the prices with iTunes, it's up to you if you want to buy the music from there or not, there are plenty of other places that you can find it cheaper for, but why have such an attitude?


Good.. they removed something that shouldn't have been there in the first place - now people are left to pay for it?:rolleyes:

Perfect example. Did you miss the part where they said some prices are staying the same and some are going DOWN?

I wonder if the whiners will come crawling back to iTunes when the track they want is 69 cents and cheaper than amazon (which still has tons of stuff at 99)?

[B2k1977]

Many people can't afford music to begin with and are still gracious enough to buy it when they can EASILY pirate them, probably at higher quality too. Especially in this economy, 30 cents increase IS a lot if you buy a lot of music. If you can afford it easily, then kudos to you - but don't be such a b*** about it and try to think about other people! sorry for my language, but what kind of way is that to talk? i'm sorry but i couldn't find another word, if mods see this post and are unhappy (idk if it's against the rules) then feel free to edit that word out

In the meanwhile, I'll be downloading off of Amazon for cheaper, and "on the fly" as well..:rolleyes:

I'm fine with the prices with iTunes, it's up to you if you want to buy the music from there or not, there are plenty of other places that you can find it cheaper for, but why have such an attitude?


Good.. they removed something that shouldn't have been there in the first place - now people are left to pay for it?:rolleyes:

This economy? Pirating music doesn't help the economy. I always buy music, I grew up and stopped pirating years ago. If you can't afford it then don't buy it, but that doesn't mean steal it.

[Galley]

Other than new releases and specials and value priced items, where can you reliably get music for $10 on CDs anymore? Best Buy starts at $12 for sales and MOST albums are priced in the $18-20 range for a CD these days. $10 is half off. Yes, music clubs can get you albums much cheaper, but they often don't get new albums until a year after its release.

YourMusic.com (http://www.yourmusic.com/) often has albums in as little as three months after they hit stores. They have 15,000 titles to choose from. All are $6.99 each with FREE shipping, no limit, and no commitment.

[yossim]

Pissed about the price hike? Aww poor you. Big babies. It goes up 30 cents, wah wah wah. If you don't like it, take your butts to the local store, and pay for a whole CD, while I'll be downloading music on the fly, anytime I want, 30 cents more is a small price to pay for that flexibility. I hate whiners.

Hey, you can get your point across WITHOUT using such rude terminology.:mad:

[shanmugam]

any update on this?

i still have plenty of track DRMed and lots of music videos...

still four more days to go. :rolleyes:

[shanmugam]

3 more days to Tuesday, any one saw price changes? at least in the album price changes?

arn, any news on this?

[kurosov]

If apple want to convince me to buy more music then they should be looking at breaking the per country store barrier. I listen to a lot of 'world music' from Spanish to japanese artists and would be happy to pay more if i could easily access them via my iTunes account. There are a few artists such as monoral i can access via the UK store, but the selection s miniscule compared to the japanese store.

As it stands now, you need to either have a credit card from a bank in the country of the store or buy an itunes money card and trick the system into letting you create an account with it.

If this was done then the itunes store would be a very useful repository for promoting music around the world.

[Gonzo3333]

I have a feeling that most of the $1.29 songs will be newer releases from artists that are sub-par in my opinion (ie lil wayne, britney spears, miley cyrus, lady goo-goo and other so-called artists) or new music (I only listen to Classic Rock). Hopefully all the music that I listen to will go down in price benefiting my wallet. I guess what I am saying is I think most people have bad taste in what is called music today. I think it is funny that the artists on Billboard is mainly geared towards music that will not stand the test of time. A lot of "popular" music today will only play for a few months on the radio and will be soon forgotten by the next round of crap spoon-fed to the masses by record labels. Sorry if I offended anybody's musical taste but I felt that needed to be addressed. Remember that is my opinion and I think I am free to feel any way I want about this issue. I even apologized for it.

[WPB2]

iTunes can do whatever they want, it doesn't bother me. I will just get the music from amazon, or other pay service. On all the other music services out there you don't have to pay state tax. I don't knownwhy apple makes you pay it. I could see if you live in California, but come on.

eBay should do something like iTunes, but call it e-tunes, or something.

[Goona]

If apple want to convince me to buy more music then they should be looking at breaking the per country store barrier. I listen to a lot of 'world music' from Spanish to japanese artists and would be happy to pay more if i could easily access them via my iTunes account. There are a few artists such as monoral i can access via the UK store, but the selection s miniscule compared to the japanese store.

As it stands now, you need to either have a credit card from a bank in the country of the store or buy an itunes money card and trick the system into letting you create an account with it.

If this was done then the itunes store would be a very useful repository for promoting music around the world.

You know how hard it would be for them, I don't even think Apple has that much power.

[kurosov]

You know how hard it would be for them, I don't even think Apple has that much power.

I am aware. It would just be much easier than importing iTunes cards from other countries.

[Razeus]

I no longer pay for music anyways. The price hike means nothing to me.

[shanmugam]

iTunes 8.1.1 and the price change, anything related?