Friday, March 27, 2009

iTunes to Hike Price of Hottest Songs


Reported in the L.A. Times. This seems like a phenomenally bad idea to me.

"The world's largest music store, Apple's iTunes, plans to boost the price of many hit singles and selected classic tracks to $1.29 on April 7, breaking the psychological barrier of 99 cents in what could be the first big test of how much consumers are willing to pay to download individual songs. Although the date for higher prices has not been publicly announced, Apple has been notifying record labels it will go into effect on that date, industry executives said."

5 comments:

Will C. said...

iTunes is already a lousy choice for music downloads - they might have been the first to really make it, but Amazon mp3, emusic, and others offer better much better prices, and occasionally better selection.

Anonymous said...

And at the same time, I've read on numerous occasions, they'll be cutting the price of less popular songs to 69 cents. I'm not sure how exactly they define what a song should be priced, but I hope it's to the benefit of anyone who doesn't listen to top 40 radio station music.

Darren Emanuel said...

They are also going DRM free, which is a good thing.

Tom said...

It's about time!

Derek said...

I think the trade off is that, as they said when they announced this, they'll be more songs at $.69 and &.99 than the $1.29. Only time will tell as they roll this out, but I have a feeling it won't be nearly as bad as people are making it out to be. Plus, it's DRM free, higher quality, so they've already gotten past that hurdle.