The death of the iTunes Music Store

[MarmiteCarpenter]

According to this Washington Square News article, the big five record companies (Universal Music Group, EMI, BMG, Sony and Warner Music) aren't satisfied with the revenue from iTMS and all the other online music stores, and want to hike up the prices.

So how does $1.25 per song sound to you? Or...brace yourself... $2.49! I nearly fell off my seat laughing.

Fair enough, if you can buy single songs of an album, chances are you won't be buying many more full albums any more, and the labels will loose money. But too much? Are they just being fat greedy pigs? Would a company like Apple, who doesn't make a profit from the songs anyway, be able to foot the bill themselves and keep the price at $.99?

Luckily for me, I don't have any reason to buy music anymore. Theres a few websites I go to where the big daddies in those genres post along with everyone else, and put up good quality mp3's of the music they make every day, together with people posting good quality mixes. For most other stuff, I usually need to order from indie labels, sometimes overseas, but they still usually end up cheaper even with shipping costs. And of course, for everyone's tastes, there's always stream rippers *big grin*

[imitationleather]

$2.49? Gawd, and there was I, thinking you needed some intelligence to be a big cheese in a record company...

The phrase "Shooting yourself in the foot" comes to mind.

[Pinball]

The record pigs have to realise that they're bottomline will never be as high again as it was previously. iTunes has been a huge success story and the way they could profit from their product. It also shows that people will pay for MP3s if the price is right, despite P2P.

Fear & greed. That's all that drives these companies (not to mention investors, the stock market etc.).

[JJJJH]

Is there anything apart from the royalities going to the artists and the rest going to the label when music's bought over the iTMS? It's not like they can whinge about having to cope with shipping and printing costs, it's just duplication of audio files... surely I'm missing something, they can't be that greedy...

[Gazeuse]

Luckily for me, I don't have any reason to buy music anymore. Theres a few websites I go to where the big daddies in those genres post along with everyone else, and put up good quality mp3's of the music they make every day, together with people posting good quality mixes.

Will they not get tired of entertaining you for free???

[Crazy Penis]

The phrase "Shooting yourself in the foot" comes to mind.

Sony do a lot of that, what with them making and selling the equipment needed to copy their music.