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iTunes Might Lose Labels
Dreamwalkerofyore writes "According to the New York Times, the iTunes music store might have to change its 99 cents per song policy or risk losing a huge amount of songs due to recent disputes with record companies, who demand an increase in the cost. From the article: 'If [Mr. Jobs] loses, the one-price model that iTunes has adopted 99 cents to download any song could be replaced with a more complex structure that prices songs by popularity. A hot new single, for example, could sell for $1.49, while a golden oldie could go for substantially less than 99 cents.'"
Of course, this could be their goal: to make iTunes less profitable and drive them out of business, then swoop in and offer a different service... Or maybe they want to make iTunes less profitible in order to drive music consumers back to purcashing CDs... ??? </conspiracy_theory>
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
If this new policy is adopted, expect to see sales drop or at least level-off while piracy increases. Up until this point it has been a fair deal for FairPlay, and if these record companies demand more money for doing absolutely nothing but allowing Apple to sell the products and do all of the heavy lifting for them (and barely break even on it as Apple does with the iTunes store) they really are out of touch with reality.
They have found the sweet spot in the market and simply collect the checks. But the corprate mantra of constantly growing profits has taken over. Which is not a bad thing, but it should have manifested itself in the recruitment of new musicians, not the raising of prices for the hell of it. That of course, would take effort, and when you make more money off of an album than the artist does - after you have merely loaned them the money to make their next album - you get used to screwing people over as much as you can.
If banks worked like the music industry, you would pay 90% of your paycheck to whatever bank gave you a student loan 20 years ago - 15 years after they were paid off.
Of course, they'll be absolutely convinced the price is too low. How many morons downloaded the Crazy Frog ringtone at a significantly higher price than 99 cents? They want to go back to gouging the customers and giving kickbacks to corrupt legislators to take your house off you for petty copyright infringement.
Honestly, someone give me a google map for the RIAA headquarters. I've got my Illudium Q36 explosive space modulator somewhere around here and a strong urge to use it.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
because apple could have told them to go to fucking hell. and held their ground or even smearing the record labels in advertising.
"$0.99 a song is no longer possible due to the rampant greed from BMG,SONY and other record labels."
it works we do it all the time in the cable industry. Discovery tried to increase their rates to us and force us to carry some more of their crap channels.. we said no, they pulled our encryption key so we replaced discovery with a screen that said "discovery wants to raise your cable rates, we said no and rthey pulled the plug, call 888-888-8888 and tell them what you think."
we were down 5 days on that channel before they agreed to make the calls stop.
the record companies are making HUGE profits at the $0.99 pricing. they just wnat in on this price gouging that the oil companies are enjoying right now.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This is internet business we're talking about, folks. Retailers can track sales minute-by-minute, adjust prices moment to moment, and tailor prices to individual customers.
Replace the 'hot new hits' smokescreen with 'anything that's actually popular' and you have what the music industry actually wants. Does 'Highway to Hell' get more action than the latest push-the-star album? No problem.. that song gets a price hike.
It leads to a state of smoke and mirrors, where all the songs that sell less than one copy a month are $.50, anything that actually has an audience is $.99, and anything getting more traffic than normal, for any reason, gets kicked up to $1.99. Even more heinous, but technically feasible, would be per-user and related-hits tracking, so if you buy a $.50 song, all the 'other songs purchased by people who bought this one' go up to $.99 for you personally. In such a system, the only way to get the low prices consistently would be to buy random selections of stuff nobody else wants.
It's a great dodge, from a marketing standpoint. The labels can come out and say that 99% of the music in the iTMS catalog is listed below $.99, while quietly failing to mention that 90% of the actual purchases were at $.99 or more. Then they can wring their hands and claim that those "few" premium-priced songs are the only place they make a profit, and that anyone who wants to take away that price tier is just a nasty mean corpse-raping villain.
Personally, I'm amused that the labels are willing to play chicken with a company that recently announced a major change in its hardware platform. Apple (or Steve Jobs) certainly has the nerve to tell one of the big labels to take a hike if necessary, and it's not like the market is just flooded with other venues where the labels can peddle their goods.
The game theory of the situation is interesting.. if all the labels bailed at once, it would hurt Apple a lot. But if only a few labels leave, the ones that stay will probably do better business, since they'll have less competition. The more labels that go, the better the advantages for the few that stay. So basically, all the labels are in a position where they want someone *else* to sacrifice profits and teach Apple a lesson, while they personally stick around and glean the benefits of both the smackdown and reduced competition. But nobody wants to be the hero who dies for the good of everyone else.
All told, I hope.. and expect.. that Apple will stick to its guns on simple, flat pricing.
It seems to me that the primary problem with the music industry is the history of price fixing.
That, and the trend for albums to contain 2-3 good songs (at most) and a load of filler crap. Why would anyone want to buy an album like that?
I heard an interview with Jay Kay of Jamiroquai talking about the way the trend towards downloading means fans are buying individual tracks at a time rather than whole albums, which is forcing them and other artists to spend more time on the "other" tracks on their albums to make sure they're up to scratch. If this is the case (more people downloading = higher quality music), then great! And if we can get it for less than $0.99 even better!
Let's hope it's really true and not just words...
65 cents, actually. Apple pays CDBaby 0.70 per song, CDBaby take a 5-cent cut. Pretty cool deal for us indie bands that don't have enough of a presence (yet!) to get Apple's attention by ourselves.
(yes, i am totally shameless: http://www.meetgoodwin.com/
I have bought a couple of albums because it was still cheaper than buying a CD. As an example, American Pie by Don McLean. A great album of the early 70's (yeah, I'm old)
Great! Really. Except that it should be in the public domain by now. Like most of the music I listen to these days. So you bought stuff. Great! Now watch me not pay for stuff that should be free decades ago.
It seems the **AAs are succesfully wiping the notion of a public domain from people minds.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
As you may or may not have noticed, I never said artists shouldn't get paid. However the point off copyright isn't that artists should be able to live indefinitely of whatever they create.
Copyright is a legal construct, an artificial monopoly which provides artists a incentive to create, which in turn was meant to benefit society by making society richer (ie the public domain).
Are you going to tell me that Beatles, Miles Davis or whoever weren't going to make that music anyway, if they knew that they would "only" be able to profit from it, say, 35 years? You got to be kidding. If I could strike any deal like that for anything I did, I'd sign up before you could say "showtime".
Had todays copyright regime existed in the time of Beethoven, Bach or Wagner we would have never heard about them at all, as they'd be copyrighted into oblivion. Now we can all enjoy them instead, as they belong to the public. As it should be.
Can you please tell me exactly what copyrighted material has entered the public domain since the creation of Mickey Mouse? Which incidently was based on Steamboat Willie, which incidently also was copyrighted, but happened to have entered the public domain.
Had it not been for the public domain, Disney would never have existed today, nor would your dear Mickey Mouse. Copyright is granted with the intent that the copyrighted material should in the end belong to society. It's simple. There's supposed to be a balance. Now there is not.
With the de-facto end of the public domain, watch me no longer respecting the artifical construct that copyright is.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.