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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.
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.
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
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?
a) Started out "free" -- reasoning the bank didn't have to pay so many human tellers.
b) Moved to a small fee for the operator of the ATM, which is understandable.
C) Fee doubled when your bank realized it could charge you in addition to the charges of the ATM operator.
D) Mext the fees nearly doubled to an average of $1.50 each side of the transaction (minus the "free" out of network uses you get per month).
E) Finally -- we end up with bank plans where you can be charged to talk to a human teller.
If we figure out where we went wrong with banks and ATMs it might help us not repeat the same mistake.
I don't come here for variety, I come here for redundancy.
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.
I don't come here for variety, I come here for redundancy.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Not simply a case of greed. Record labels don't *want* online distribution methods to work. Sure, it saves them money. Whereas packaging and shipping used to cut into the price of a CD, no money needs to be spent to produce more copies of an digital/medium-less album.
However, the fact that iTMS is working means that people aren't buying CDs, which is an indicator that the "music industry" is obsolete. The fact is, you can produce an album on your own and get it on iTMS, use internet/viral marketing for your promotion, and bypass major record labels altogether. We don't need them and there business model anymore, and they know it, but they don't want you to know it.
Their big hope is to convince everyone that p2p sharing is immoral and online music stores are too expensive-- it would cost more than a CD and you don't even get a lossless copy or the medium or liner notes or anything. As long as they can scare us into sticking with medium-based distribution models, they still have a business.
So what I'm suggesting is, this raising of prices is just sabotage.
Many in the music business also expressed concern over Apple's growing clout. This stems from the fact that Apple's music store and player are not compatible with any others. One fear is that Apple will become too powerful if consumers continue to choose its digital music platform. Apple declined to comment.
"One fear"? I'd say it's the main fear. The sticking point is not Apple's proprietary technology itself as much as how market share allows Apple to assert downward pressure on per-song pricing. The music biz wants to kneecap Apple. The goal is to force Apple to open the iPod/iTMS, distribute the platform's market share among any number of companies, and so get digital distribution fully under the music industry's thumb. Cartels like chattel, not coequals.
The big question is: if Jobs refuses, will the labels start to defect from iTMS? Apple will have planned for this scenario and their response is going to be very interesting--it will tell us pointedly where the power truly lies.