Wow I was going to buy an album and realized its actually cheaper to get a hard copy delivered for free to my door lol. Is this Apple's greed or the record companies? How can they charge 8.99GPB for something that can be copied millions of times for free?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iTunes expensive!
- Thread starter XP Defector
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I dunno about England, but in Australia, CDs are usually between $20-$30, where as albums on iTunes are about $17. I reckon iTunes' pricing is generally very competitive
Greed? Nope.
Wanting to get paid for writing, recording, producing, marketing, hosting the files on the server, and all the other things that go into creating that CD for you is not greed.
Sometimes you can find them cheaper, sometimes you can't. Generally, here in the states, iTunes is much cheaper than buying the CD - plus there's the instant gratification of listening to it right away.
Wanting to get paid for writing, recording, producing, marketing, hosting the files on the server, and all the other things that go into creating that CD for you is not greed.
Sometimes you can find them cheaper, sometimes you can't. Generally, here in the states, iTunes is much cheaper than buying the CD - plus there's the instant gratification of listening to it right away.
In the UK I hardly ever use iTunes 'cause it's a rip off these days. Anything indie I can find on emusic which I have an awesome subscription with, anything new release and top 40 type artists I can usually find on Amazon for a couple of quid cheaper than iTunes and if I want the physical CD it's usually the same price or max about £2 more in the shops.
The flexible pricing structure just made it worse. A lot of popular singles that I get in my head and want without the album are on offer on Amazon for 29p, they're £1.19 on iTunes.
I used iTunes A LOT back in 2005, now I never touch it. There are too many outlets in the UK market that undercut them.
The flexible pricing structure just made it worse. A lot of popular singles that I get in my head and want without the album are on offer on Amazon for 29p, they're £1.19 on iTunes.
I used iTunes A LOT back in 2005, now I never touch it. There are too many outlets in the UK market that undercut them.
i think itunes can be really expensive for some things, but for me it is convenient and so sometimes i'm willing to pay that premium..... I do think that they could do some more special offers tho
Raising
Not to mention they raised costs on some singles to 1.29 from the 99 cent price point, what a scam
Not to mention they raised costs on some singles to 1.29 from the 99 cent price point, what a scam
Yes.
Very cheap now thanks to Logic/iMacs
My point exactly. If I could replicate by magic, say a brand new BMW, and replicate a million times with minimal amounts of energy. Could I justify charging 40,000GPB for it? No.
Good music doesn't need to be marketed.
Yes.
My main point was, that a company who are actually dealing in hard copies, i.e. dealing with production, labour, delivery, raw materials and so forth, can still afford to make a decent profit whilst another company are charging more money, on something, like the BMW, that can be magically replicated a million times.
First of all, music and cars are not the same. Digital music is not "magically replicated." Artists and record companies get their share. Plus there's the bandwidth and infrastructure costs, development costs of iTunes, salaries for staff, etc. Do you think software developers should charge for their products? After all, once they've come up with a piece of software they can just "magically replicate" it over and over.
As for good music not needing to be marketed, how do you expect to hear about a new band? Word-of-mouth is great, but it can only go so far.
Setting aside all the royalty and production costs--which are more complex than it appears you believe them to be--this is the single most wrong statement I've read in a long while. You think people automatically know when something of quality exists? There are only a few ways of introducing anyone to music:
1) Radio play. And if you don't think it costs record labels quite a lot of money to get their artists's songs pushed into heavy rotation, then you haven't been paying any attention to the industry at all. Even outside of the illegal payola operations--which have been rampant by most accounts--the labels have to make radio programmers aware of, and capable of, playing a song for it to even make to the airwaves.
2) Music videos. These are increasingly expensive, because each time out it seems that someone has upped the ante on what a music video can or should include. Long gone are the simple days of an artist lip-syncing with some choreographed back-up dancers. And even once you've spent the money to produce the video, how does anyone know it's out there to see it? Music video channels have all but abandoned playing music videos, and that only leaves the Internet. Exposure on artist and label websites costs money, and you better believe that Amazon, iTunes and other e-retailers collect a handsome fee to prominently feature anything on their sites.
3) Singles, either for airplay or sale (mostly digital these days), and they adhere to the same conditions as music videos.
If you think it's "cheap" to produce a song, much less an album, and then get it out to the public, then I have to believe you haven't done your homework. Even if you forgo studio time and record using computer software at home, you've got to record in a music-friendly environment and that means sound-proofing a room. Unless you're an acoustic-based folk singer, there are various instruments to be recorded, back-up singers, etc. to be added to the tracks. Those performers charge money, especially the really good ones who can come in and nail their parts without wasting a lot of expensive time.
Here's an easy experiment. Whatever genre you like, go to Billboard.com and look at the top chart for the week. You'll be familiar with the artists that keep getting regular play. Take a look at the record label for each of the top songs/albums. Most of the labels have one, maybe two, A-list artists that keep getting out there, then they sort of rotate through a handful of others who may or may not have something new to promote at any given time. For Big Machine Records, their A-lister is Taylor Swift, hands down. Nobody else on that label gets the airtime and exposure she gets, and it's not because she's so good she doesn't need marketing. Elvis needed marketing, too, and that's why he hired Col. Parker.
Don't assume that just because you have an image of every newcomer rolling in bathtubs of $100 bills with thirty strippers drenched in Dom Perignon that the music industry is some kind of get-rich-quick-and-get-richer operation. The truth is that most of the artists and songs that a record label takes a chance on wind up costing them more money than they take in.