Music Exec Fires Back At Apple CEO

geniusj writes "Warner Music Group CEO, Edgar Bronfman Jr., has fired back at Steve Jobs in response to the Apple CEO's claim that having variable pricing for iTunes music would be 'greedy.' From the article: 'To have only one price point is not fair to our artists, and I dare say not appropriate to consumers. The market should decide, not a single retailer ... Some songs should be $0.99 and some songs should be more. I don't want to give anyone the impression that $0.99 is a thing of the past ... We are selling our songs through iPod, but we don't have a share of iPod's revenue ... We want to share in those revenue streams. We have to get out of the mindset that our content has promotional value only.' Perhaps iPods combined with iPods are selling music as well, and it's not just a one-way street?"

Comments

Re:The Obligatory Remix

[dgrgich]

The parent is indeed funny but the metaphor is not quite appropriate.

It should be obvious to anyone that the intrinsic value of say, the latest song/album for Kanye West or (checking iTune top 5) Black Eyed Peas song is higher than an oldie by Elton John or the Doobie Brothers. Apple's pricing model is static - .99 a song or (for the most part) $9.99 for an album.

The "evil" music industry simply wants what all corporations want - to maximize profits and increase shareholder value. Music companies do this - at a most basic level - by selling songs. If current hit album/songs were priced at say $11.99/1.99 instead of 9.99/.99, wouldn't it be fair to say that profits would be increased? There would be grousing at first but this would be the normal grousing. At the same time, why not price that old not-as-popular-as-the-first-album second album of Hooty & The Blowfish at $5.99/$.49 to stimulate sales? The record companies probably have some sort of model that indicates that lowering the price of certain songs/albums might stimulate sales and 10000 downloads at .49 per pays better than 2000 at .99, right?

My numbers are all completely imaginary but certainly, we can all understand this argument, right? Is this so out of whack as to be "greedy"?

The only thing in my view is whether or not there is a contract. If the contract is due to expire soon and the music industry feels strong enough, they'll withhold signing. They'll launch their own services and if their model is successful, it will do better than Apple's. If it is not, they'll come back and Steve will get better terms than he has now.

This is all simplistic, yes - but it illustrates the point.

Unfair? Fuck You, Edgar, & The Bentley You Rod

[cmholm]

only one price point is not fair to our artists, and I dare say not appropriate to consumers.

Unfair to Edgar's artists? Perhaps he should slide his dick out from "his" artists' arses before telling Apple about fairness. And note that in regard to consumers, he says "appropriate" rather than "fair", because it's a given that one tries to screw the consumers to the wall as hard as the music industry has with CDs. Jesus, what a dick.

Re:Notice what he didn't say...

[BioCS.Nerd]

I caught that in the quote too. If there was variable pricing for anything, it should be for things that should cost less, e.g. old recordings out of copyright. Would I pay more than $0.99 for a song? Sure:

1. Songs that are longer than the average pop song, e.g. 10+ minutes, i.e. anything by Godspeed You Black Emperor, or Mogwai
2. Songs in a much higher bit rate
3. Songs in an unencumbered format

If you don't like it ...

[Agarax]

... move to Soviet Russia, you Tree Hugging Commie Pinko Terrorist.

Maybe you can form some kind of Beowulf Cluster Hippie Commune.