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What about Sony's craptacular service or Napster's poo? Someone mentioned Wallyworld but what about the others, if it's just Apple's service being forced to raise prices then it's obviously a music industry conspiracy to which I saw Macheads need to steal MORE music from these fat, rich, white, clueless ****s!
 
if no one buys a $1.25 single they'll have to bring the prices back down...
 
Oh and before someone comes on the scene saying its ONLY .25 cents more. I download, typically, 25 tracks in any given day. That's 6.26 more a day. $43.75 more a week. $175 more a month. You can do the math from there. .25 cents more a track IS expensive.
 
SiliconAddict said:
If so I'm done with iTMS then. **** them if they think I'm paying any more then .99 for a song. This is called gutting the consumer. See just what level they can take and raise it a notch.

**shrugs** I can get any non .99 cent music off of shareaza in a matter of minutes at 192kb/s+. Smart move RIAA. Real smart. :mad: :mad:
I'm more pissed that this is going to hurt Apple in the long run. Watch music downloads drop because of this.

I agree. I'm not going to pay $1.25 per song. If anything the price should be going down, not going up.
 
soosy said:
if no one buys a $1.25 single they'll have to bring the prices back down...


Yah right. Just like the price of CD's has fallen because of the loss of sales. Never underestimate the greed of the RIAA.
 
The music companies are very smart. When the P2P boom was going on, the RIAA wasn't much involved, esp. when napster first took off. Now the RIAA has struck fear in the hearts of many P2P users, so the music companies are going to take advantage. You can either pay the extra .26 cents, or risk being sued. I tip my hat to the music compaines for being such evil genius.
 
Lord Bodak said:
Because Wal-Mart, in typical fashion, probably made threats to the labels. "If you don't let us sell songs for 88 cents, we won't stock your label's CDs in our stores."

Walmart actually sells music and movies at a loss. They found that it was a good way to get new demographics shopping at Walmart. I for example often go to pick up a dvd and leave with a dvd... some toilet paper and a gun... ok not a gun... but I could if I wanted to.

They are using the same strategy for their online music service... you go for the music, but stay for the floor mats.

This all comes from CNBC... I have no first hand knowledge of walmart's business.
 
Thought process for the casual, occasional music buyer like me:

$9.99 album = hey, less than ten bucks what the heck. Instant purchase.

$13.99 = gee, at that price, I might as well go to the store and buy the CD.

and then I don't ever find the time or inclination to make that trip to the store, so the record companies get nothing from me

jerks
 
If they do this, I, as well as millions of others will just go back to the way things were before. I can't believe the record companies are even considering this!!! They finally get people to start paying for online music and now are going to do their best to kill it.
 
Will this also hurt the ipod?

If this increase is for Apple only, it not only hurts itunes but the ipod as well.

I will not pay $1.25 for songs when I can go to Walmart.com and pay 88 cents.

I will strip out the DRAM and load back to itunes. I will deal with the hassle and extra lossy to save 37 cents per song.

Also, who will want the ipod when it only plays legal download songs from the most expensive store? I would be ok with it if the itunes songs were better than a Walmart, Napster, Real, etc. but they are not.
 
i really really hope this isn't gonna happen! if it does, good bye itms europe. the prices are now just at the point where I still would buy them. just a little bit over that (1.25) and I'll stop the game.
 
SiliconAddict said:
Not even that. The average person couldn't give a crap about lossy music. 128kb/s is good enough for the average listener. 192 would probably be better but 128 is good.
I'm hesitatnt to pay .99 for a 128 kbps song, but I'd actually buy a lot more online music at $1.25 per song if it were uncompressed. I also think Apple should allow unlimited conversions from Apple Lossless to any AAC (or other DRM) format, so you could use the lossless file as the archive and keep up with the latest codec advances. The trick would be in still limiting any copies made of the archive file to be treated as the same song, DRM-wise. So IOW you could still only have five machines registered to play any version of the original archived file at any time.

Until this is an option, I'm simply not going to empty my wallet into iTMS. When it is, I will. It still looks very very risky to me as a long-term investement. The technology is changing so fast that I'm afraid any "investment" in 128 kbps DRM files is too risky long-term. I don't want to be left out in the cold at some future date.
 
pennymonger said:
The 'Big 5' - Universal, Sony, BMG, EMI and Warner Music - cooking the goose before it gets a chance to lay its golden eggs.

Well, Sony has a reason to do it.

I can sort of understand why the record labels would do it. Not that I like it, but since you can hardly buy singles in stores any more, people either bought the album or nothing at all if only for a couple of songs. So obviously some songs are more valuable than others. Why shouldn't you pay a bit more for the songs everyone wants?

I do think they're shooting themselves in the foot. People will just stop buying again.
 
Anything that begins with "the New York Post claims" is for me, already marked as a probable fabrication- that paper sucks and I would take anything they "claim" with a grain of salt....

and btw I'm not paying more than 99¢ for a song. no how no way.
 
So, to give my knee-jerk reaction...

If they decide to raise prices to $1.25, then give me my skull and crossbones as I sail the seas of Limewire.

Ridiculous. I for one have bought around 40 songs off of iTunes. Songs that I could've pirated, but wanted to "do the right thing". If the thanks is jacking up the price for a lossy compression that limits where I can play the song, then I feel I should just repay in kind.

It almost seems that they are pushing for legal online distribution to fail.

Again, this is a knee-jerk reaction...
 
I think this is the beginning of the end of the i-Tunes music store.

Indeed, I believe that the "big 5" are really getting scared of Apple and their apparant succes in the store, and are especially afraid that Apple will be the dominant factor in establishing the pricing of their future products (forcing the store prices to go down in the future). I believe that Music Companies underestimated Apple and are trying to regain their lost revenues in the local stores.
 
This is just another example of the music industry's greed. If this keeps happening, they will tighten the noose on themselves and us, and they will have dug themselves into a hold that not even the combined efforts of them and Steve can market out.

However, this is just a rumour. I question weather or not it will come to fruition.

All my best,
JPGK
 
Maybe the labels are just trying hobble iTMS a little.

iTMS proved legal, paid music download services can be practical and profitable. The only problem for the RIAA is, Apple has in just one year built up a monopoly in that emerging market though a combination of best store/best music device, and by 'not playing nice' (no WMA on iPod, no AAC/Fairplay on other devices). And if any consumer has a large library of iTMS songs on my iPod - they're not switching to another store/device any time soon.

It's much better for the RIAA not to have one big dominant online store, which would let Apple virtually dictate terms to them. By charging Apple too much for the content, the RIAA can squeeze them as much or as little as they like.
 
That would suck...

This would be very disappointing. It would also show RIAA is nothing but greedy SOB's who are never happy and want to destory legal alternatives to P2P.

The really bad thing is it will probably blow up on Apple as many customers will blame Apple thinking they are just raising the prices because of it's popularity.
 
They can kiss my a**

Are they high. we're paying too much now. they should be lowering the prices. When will these a**holes figure out that if they lower the prices they will sell more, hence increasing their profit margin. I learned this crap in 11th grade Economics.

I will NOT buy 1 song for over 99cents. P2P, I'm coming home!

The way overcome feeling guilty for stealing music is by paying $10 a month on EasyNews!
 
Everybody's getting upset...

...when Steve explicitly stated that the prices would not be increasing. Sheesh!

What I thought was extremely interesting was this statement by SJ:

"...and we see in the future the prices of the albums coming down, not going up, because that's what it's going to take to sell more albums and it's in everybody's best interest to do so."

Maybe that's what it takes to sell more Macs too. Just a thought. ;)
 
Just tried allofmp3.com

What a great service! You can pick your compression and with a paypal transfer of $10.00, I am able to download about 15 to 20 albums. I now think $.99 is way to much for a single song. I am done with the Music Store.
 
Dasvidanya, comrade!

Like others before in this post, I jumped on the Russian bandwagon.

http://www.allofmp3.com
(Online Encoding codes albums in almost any format and bitrate for you, includes ID3 tags and such)

http://club.mp3search.ru
(no tags or online encoding, but a ton more bootleg, underground, and rare albums than AllOfmp3.com)

Every album I looked for, I found on one or both of those sites. Prices around 1 penny per MB. I got a Junkie XL double CD album, 30 songs, for $1. 192kbps AAC files, too! In fact, if I wanted to pay a little more I could've gotten the albums at CD-quality, thanks to AllOfMP3's Online Encoding feature. Using a $20 account with Club, I was able to download 12 albums, all above 192-bit (MP3s)... and I still have $13 left. w00t!

I suggest everyone give them a look. Take your business elsewhere - I sure as hell am not going to pay $1.25 for a single song if it comes to that!
 
This is as predictable as it is pathetic. $.99 is already too high.

Let's get real - how in the hell can anyone justify charging as much, if not more, for a download of lower quality, with none of the manufacturing, carriage and retail display costs, as a traditional CD? IT'S ALREADY ROBBERY.

People should boycott the ITMS and maybe, just maybe, they'll come to their senses. Otherwise this will set a precedent for music download shopping for years to come, at least until there is proper, healthy competition.
 
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