“iTunes has been hailed as the first successful online music store, with over 50 million songs downloaded. Its success has been due largely to Apple’s powerful name, the iPod, flexible use of the tracks, and the 99 cent-price per song or $9.99 for an album. More than that, it has been celebrated as a sign of things to come for an industry still in its infancy,” Matt Buchanan writes for The Washington Square News.
“Despite iTunes’ success and the growing success of other services, the record industry still isn’t happy; it thinks that 99 cents a song is too cheap, and the five major labels (Universal Music Group, EMI, BMG, Sony and Warner Music) are discussing a price hike ranging from $1.25 to an eye-gouging $2.49 per song,” Buchanan writes. “At that price, downloading music will become far more expensive than buying CDs, which would practically destroy the online music market.”
Buchanan writes, “This is counter to everything the record companies should be doing. If anything, they should be cutting prices to make it more attractive to download music legally. Instead, this move will push online music junkies back into the world of file sharing. After all, who wants to pay more for less?”
Full article here.
Never will I buy a CD at a store nor an itunes for more than 99 cents, what for? So they can have some of these artists display their luxury items on us? Back to Limewire it is!
There’s more to life than listening to Titney Spears breath heavy. I say fsck ’em. If they try this garbage, I’ll boycott them for good. I won’t buy their copy protected CD’s or Janus subscriptions. Life goes on.
Good riddance big 5…you’re going to lose big time!
IT will be back to trading music with friends again. We’ll trade them over the internet encrypted and thumb our noses at the greedy artists.
Does anyone have a link to send email to or an online petition to sign?
Everyone should understand that it is the Record Co Ex’s and their ilk who make all of the money for recorded music. What the musicians take home is pennies in comparison.
If all of the artists who record were to leave the big 5 and produce their own music & made it available thru services like the ITMS, the cost to the public could be LOWER than 99� AND the musicians would probably make more money since the overhead (obscene Recording industry profits) would be gone.
Besides, live music is best!
� just one more BOLD example how dumb, sick & arrogant they are.
�and this after a SUPERBOLD demonstration of unableness in reinventing their own business�
peep, peeep & peeeeeeeehhhHHHeeep !!!
Can you say “pediatrition”? I thought you could.
Time to grow up boys and girls.
* dedicated to the deceased guy with the red sweater, traffic light,
train set & his own imaginary world — Fred Rogers
PEACE
CT
A$$ho!es. If they really go through with this, they’ll be shooting themselves (and Apple) in the foot. Or would it be in the head?
Illegal file swapping my friends… screw ’em. I buy all my online tunes legally through iTunes, but if this price hike happens, as much as I love Apple and iTunes, I will not be buying anymore. This will only fuel peer to peer software writers to figure out how to swap music and not get caught. And as much as I want music artists to get paid, maybe this will finnally spur change in the way music is produced and how artists get paid. Skip the RIAA altogether adn post your music on iTunes for a buck a song and keep that money for yourself.
And you thought medical school was expensive…back to the books
so you can vie for a full scholarship to the school of your choice.
“Ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no river low enough…to take
me away from you”
This gotta be worth somethin’…don’t it? Who gets paid?, who sets the
price?, This is HEAVY…don’t jump to conclusions on my time.
Goodnight
CT
doodeman: Up here in Canada, we already have a levy on CD-Rs. (As well as other media, such as, more recently, MP3 players, much to my dismay. Makes an iPod that much more expensive.) Of course, it was always recently ruled that file sharing is legal here.
Anyway, this is completely ridiculous. The $0.99 per song price is perfect when buying songs individually, although I probably wouldn’t buy an entire album from iTunes with the current pricing. (Only because I can often get the actual CD for only a few dollars more.)
(Of course, this is all hypothetical, since iTMS isn’t available here yet, anyhow.)
$2.50 per song is way too much, unless they’re trying to push people back to piracy.
How out of touch ARE these people?
Van Morrison got it right in the song “Big Time Operators”
I think we need a better reference point.
That’s all…:/
It’s all about the aliases baby.
Gut nacht
CT
WHOA….I don’t think this is about the money, it may be about the control of distribution. The proliferation of online stores since itunes may be causing the labels to feel threatened. This sounds like a preemptive action to slow the growth of online sales.
The reason that online p2p networks took off so dramatically was because the record industry was too greedy and priced its wares way to expensively. ITMS was an attempt to turn the tide against illegal DLs – and it was a good start. Looks like all that work will be undone.
The easiest way to reign in illegal DLs of music would appear to be to reign in the greedy music industry first.
We’ll see if the record labels can pull this off…I’m skeptical. Unless they really fix prices like a cartel (in which case, they can/will be BUSTED), the first company to do this should see a STEEP drop off in online sales–and probably other kinds of sales as well, since folks will be PISSED. I can only see them pulling this off for Top 10 songs, for a short period.
In the 70s & ’80s I bought vinyl, then in the 90’s I bought CD’s (because vinyl was disappearing)
Now they want us to buy online at $2.49? I for one will just borrow CD’s from my friends and local libraries and just copy them.
I hope the whole rotten industry goes down the toilet.
Then possibly we might get one or two bands with talent instead of the false marketing “pop idols”
RIAA
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Ridiculously Ignorant Amateur Arseholes
Really Idiodic Arrogant Attorneys
Right, I’ll Alienate All
… you get the picture (I’m sure you could think of much better ones
Bunch of dickheads really. And what with movies being pirated on DVD as well, these types of people just don’t get it do they? I don’t steal much music anyways, but they do this, I’ll steal heaps just to be spiteful.
So, it’s a big F***-you to music execs who came up with this.
The record labels are just stupid. STUPID STUPID, 2.50 is too expensive, 99 cents is really too expensive too, but not to out of line. What do this people think– that we all make 100k a year or more and spend money like a drunken sailor. I would have to really love a song to pay 2.50 for a song, most “artists” represented by the big labels are’nt worth that much, their not that good.
This is moving right into the M$ world domination plan. The classic model will be:
Renting is cheap
Buying a single (artist) track will be prohibitively expensive
Buying a cluster of (artist) tracks (ie an album) will save you some money per track.
Expect this move to be made as M$ launches its portable player onto which – it has stated – rented music can be loaded. M$ will heavily subsidise its hardware (ie XBox) or subsidise a rental contract for a year – making it ridiculously cheap.
Here we go…
‘rich b’ sez:
“What do this people think– that we all make 100k a year or more and spend money like a drunken sailor”
Well to put things in perspective, I’m 54 years old and have been buying singles since the dinosaurs ruled the Earth, or about 1958.
Anyway, from the late 50’s thru the 60’s a single ( a ’45 RPM disc in a sleeve usually with a worthless song on the flip side unless it was the Beatles) went for about .79 to .99 cents.
My first jobs paid about $1.25 (minimum wage in those days was around there somewhere in 1966), so I was paying about a buck or a little less for Strawberry Fields Forever.
So. If you adjust for inflation a single should cost about $5, because minimum wage is about $5.15 now. Anway, I wasn’t ‘rich’ in the 60’s and I bought singles.
Which does not mean that I advocate paying even $2.50 for a single, BUT what everyone wants is a product untouched by inflation for almost 50 years.
And as Austin Powers said, “and I want a solid gold toilet, but it’s not in the cards”. And granted the storage and distribution costs of compressed singles is a lot less, but we are ALSO getting a pretty durable product that will sound the same after a MILLION listenings.. Much better than my old ’45s. So there is added value there.
(go to next post,please)
from previous post)
Anyway, just trying to put things in perspective that .99 is a DARN good deal, but the producers, creators, copyright owners, publishers, performance rights owners and EVERYONE will charge you what you will PAY.
As business people do in every situation when they decide the price of a product or service. The product is ‘worth’ what you will pay, and the people selling the product will feel around for the floor and ceiling.
I’m a copyright owner who has an agent who sells my photographs around the world. Sometimes a certain picture will sell (meaning the buyer can use it for a specific time) for $100., depending on the market and the usage.
That SAME picture, a year later CAN sell for $10,000 (of which I keep half). So what is that picture worth? What’s the fair price? The fair price is what someone will pay for it.
If I was selling vaccine for sick babies, I would feel guilty, But it’s a PICTURE and the buyer could always buy a different picture. I don’t decide the price, my agent does.. I don’t even know it’s being haggled over, I just get a big fat check that month.
BTW , business is terrible, the internet is allowing cheaper photographers all over the world to undercut my prices by a huge amount, and I’m making maybe 25% of what I used to make. In case you think I’m lighting cigars with $100.bills.. And the beat goes on.
For ME anyway. Bob Dylan would probably be bummed if he got a check that impressed the hell out of me. However, since I create all my pictures myself, with my money I own 100% of the copyright. I understand that a lot of recording artists yield their copyright because the label backs them with a LOT of dough that ONLY has to be paid back if the artist makes money.. So the labels gamble all the time. Only about 5% of artists hit it big enough to recoup costs.
(from previous post)
I often see it stated here that few or no artists own their music.. which is not true.. I’m in the middle of a project where i want to use a DEVO tune, and the first people to talk to are the people at Mark Mothersbaugh’s company in LA. And he (and probably others) decide whether they even WANT to sell it to me. No doubt there are other ‘owners’. The other performers in the band who own their share of the performance rights, and I’m sure that the label nicked them when they fronted the band with dough. If you want to use “Born To Be Wild ‘ by Steppenwolf you gotta talk to John Kay, but Mars Bonfire wrote the music and lyrics. I think John makes the deals for the rest of the band..
On the other hand LOTS of artists make bad deals when they are young with the label or a manager or whatever and lose millions.
Heck, Billy Joel had a relative handle his money, and one day found himself to be ‘poor’, like only $350,000. in the bank when it should have been in the tens of millions. Grand Funk Rairoad lost MILLIONS to Terry Knight.
My point is that OFTEN the artists can do quite well, even today, with contracts with record companies, if the record company wants them badly enough.
So when you cough up that .99 cents, heck you could be helping Eminem buy a new speedboat.
There! don’t you feel better!!??
And .99 is a deal if you adjust for inflation, and those nasty record companies WILL charge you more if they can.. But remember it’s MUSIC, not polio vaccine.
So if the price is too high, just don’t buy.. If enough people DON’T buy, the price will drop. Guaranteed.
But in my opinion the ITMS is a GREAT deal. I LOVE paying the same for a single now that I paid over 45 years ago. If it went up to $1.50 I would grumble. At $2 I would only buy in certain cases, I don’t believe it will EVER o over $2. But it would still be less than I was paying when I was a stockboy in 1966.
So hey, c’mon. let’s all have fun with this.. isn’t that the point?
David Vesey
See how vulnerable the iPod and ITMS really is people?
I suppose that those five companies are planning their own music stores.