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Music Labels May Seek Higher Download Prices
punxking writes "Some of the big music labels are now clamoring to raise prices for digital music downloads. From the article: 'Music industry executives said introductory wholesale prices for digital tracks had been set low to stimulate demand for online music sales but the success of Apple's music store had prompted concern that they may now be too low.'" Relatedly, the BBC is reporting that iTunes is under investigation in Britain for charging disparities between the UK and the European continent.
This is getting ridiculous. Next article, please.
Slashdot and OSDN are clamoring to raise subscription rates!
/dev/null... "How are we to justify raising subscription rates if the readers weren't getting the same old shit twice?"
In a move that the OSDN bean-counters believe will give Slashdot and OSDN more cash on hand, Slashdot.org is announcing that they are raising subscription rates to $5.25 for 1000 pages of ad-free* viewing.
More and more frequently Slashdot has been giving its readers the opportunity to read day old news AGAIN! The editors of the site claim that this is part of their overall marketing plan:
Rob Malda (aka CmdrTaco) was quoted in the NYT (vampire sucking required) as saying, "well we give you TWICE the news in two days so we thought it was only right that our subscribers pay a little bit extra!"
Zonk was quoted as saying, "well we give you TWICE the news in two days so we thought it was only right that our subscribers pay a little bit extra!"
While Slashdot does have an e-mail link on their site to allow Slashdot subscribers to report these duplicates to the "Editor on Duty" the editors have admitted in secret taped conversations (on IRC) that the email address is bunk and goes to
* - ad-free only refers to banner ads, not posts to the main page that are made to appear as "stories" when they are in all actuality advertisements (i.e. iPods)
I thought they were just talking about doing this a few days ago...Greedy bastards...sheesh!
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
All these popular artists's money bins are getting low. Any lower and they'll break their necks by diving in.
Good luck pushing Wal*Mart. They've never bowed to a supplier. If they want to sell digital music at 25-cents a track, the music industry can just take it in the rear.
dupe dupe dupe
they duped the URL (dupe dupe)
they duped the URL (dupe dupe)
they duped the URL...
As I walk though
Slashdot's world
Nothing can stop
These dupes of URLs...
etc. etc.
Do you want to submit this one tomorrow and make it 3 days in a row? Or should I do it?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
... Dupe? Perhaps they should start charging more so they can pay EDITORS to FILTER SUBMISSIONS..... oh wait....
Oh, wait, there's legitmate places to download music online from?!!!
Primitive peoples often think that you're stealing their soul when you photograph them.
I make no guarentee of this post's relevancy to anything.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Well they have to raise prices!
Because the cost of manufacturing has...
Er... Because they have to hire more employees to handle the purchasing load...
Er... Because the Britney Spears needs a new swimming pool for her poodle... yeah!
Isn't it time we just declare the RIAA a monopoly and start regulating it because, obviously, there is no competition.
(I'm reminded of that montage scene in Real Genius where more and more people don't show up to class and instead have tape recorders to record the lecture... eventually the professor stops coming to class and just has a tape to play to the tape recorders...)
One of the bennes is that he sees stories before they are actually published for the unwashed masses.
I'm not a subscriber and I saw this story before it was posted... : p
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
The music industry loses all credibility the moment it says "Apple may become too powerful."
Oh, so now Apple is trying to take over the world?
What next? The Salvation Army?
The music industry thinks that because iTunes is a success, the prices must be too low. That explains why CDs sales are down. Every time people start buying them, the music industry raises prices. The music industry seems afraid of success, every time it gets close, they squash it.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The bits are gold plated for high fidelity.
wonder if this push for a price increase is to put a dampner on the existing on-line players..
Dampner is not a word in the English language. Damper is a word, as is dampener. A damper reduces oscillation. A dampener makes something moist. Some router vendors have introduced a feature called route flap damping. Other router vendors have introduced the rather silly route flap dampening. I really wish large companies would hire a few editors to review their products. Just FYI.
this is what the music companies are doing with degraded MP3s at a higher cost per song than the original album.
If that were to happen, would we be able to slashdot slashdot?
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
I kind of like Walmart's discussions with the media industry a little better:
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
I don't come here for variety, I come here for redundancy.
I would point you to Slashdot Editor Training, where all Editors learn how to avoid dupes, perform thorough spell- and fact-checking, and (best of all) write well-crafted, bug-free code.
Yeah, right.
The real reason they want to charge more is that it will increase the market value of piracy, thus the marketing value of piracy, but not substantially increase what they really lose from piracy.
Example of their current arithmetic:
1,000,000 songs at $0.50 each = $500,000
but, if they charge more it suddnly becomes:
1,000,000 songs at $0.75 each = $750,000
Oh, no! Piracy has just gone up 50%!
Just a thought.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
THis is just more evidence that the MPAA and Micro$oft are just out to screw the consumer vis they want us to pay more and more for their so-called "music" which is all Bri[tt]ney $Pears rubbish which they play over and over again on their network of Clearchannel radio stations thanks to payola IE LEGALIZED BRIBERY forcing everyone to download the music from the Internet using services like Kazaa and Morpheus anyway, whereas if the music industry eg the MPAA would just give music away on DRM-less MP3s at 384kbps (the MINIMUM I will accept, 314kbps AAC is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE, you can really hear the difference on top-end Sony equipment) and if they'd make the music actually WORTH LISTENING TO then they would be "getting it" and working in the new economy not the old economy. This is why personally I download all my music from dodgymp3s.ru where you pay a penny a megabyte which is much fairer because the money goes to the artists according to the website, well the bit left over after taxes and expenses and protection racket fees, rather than to the money grabbing record industry execs who spend all their money on cocaine and DVDs.
Are you all with me? Yeah! Fight the fat cat record execs!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
saddino writes "Steven Levy at Newsweek is reporting that Slashdot seems to favor certain stories for dupes. Is Slashdot receiving kickbacks to promote certain companies? Slashdot denies it, of course, and Levy had the good sense to ask a mathematician and a cryptographer who explained it's probably just humans finding patterns where there are none."
I don't come here for variety, I come here for redundancy.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Think of the dupe as a remake of the original "classic" post.
Seems appropriate that it's from the "they're-never-going-to-get-it dept." The editor should get a +1 Unintentionally Funny for his so-sad-it's-funny quip.
I don't come here for variety, I come here for redundancy!
Ditto!
It's a shame that all these dupe posts are getting modded down. It's about time the Slashdot editors actually see what a mess Slashdot has become. They seem to post a dupe every day now.
Please, stop modding those posts down. This duplicate posting must stop.