digg

i hope they don't raise the prices ....if they do.... then there are many ways to find songs and they are not going to like losing money.

The industry can demand whatever price they want. I'm not paying more than they charge now for songs on iTunes.

99c flat per song is great, I'm glad Steve is holding his ground on this one.

Steve Jovs vs. The Record Industry.

Steve Jobs wins.

This type of stuff is why people become KoolAid drinking members of the Mac cult. You gotta respect a filthy rich white guy fighting to keep something cheap. I mean seriously, when does that ever happen?

Yes!

Guess the RDF affects even the most ignorant and stubborn. I'm joking about the RDF thing. I'm actually a Mac fan myself. Who saw this coming though? Anyway, great news.

One high-level music industry executive, who believes the record industry will ultimately abandon its push for variable pricing, blamed the labels for not standing up to Jobs. "Where in life does the retailer set the price of the content?"

Answer: WAMART has been doing this for years.

I think this just prooves the influence Apple now wields with music distribution. I think this is the beginning of the marginalization of the RIAA which is good because we all know that they are greedy bastards that are stuck in the past. I'd like to see more artists completely skip deals with the labels and go straight to iTunes.

Eh! Steve!

reminds me of the "golden egg goose" story

Apparently when two companies meet who control different markets, the consumer wins.

Who would have thought that the company that controls the online music market (Apple) and the association that controls US music (RIAA) met, there could possibly be an outcome good for the average user!

Why don't the record companies just charge Apple what they think each song is worth and let Apple figure out how to set a retail price? The whole thing stinks of price fixing.

So can I buy the Thick as a Brick album by Jethro Tull for $1.98? It only has two tracks.

Why don't apple just set themselves up as a music label (keeping the iPod).
They'll make more $$ this way than they ever will/have selling computers.
At the moment 70% of each 99c/song goes to the RIAA, most of the remaining 30% goes to paying the bandwidth costs associated with ITMS, and a tiny little bit (say 5c) is profit. Become their own label and sign up artists, and not only will that lost 70% allow them to pay artists what they're realy worth, it will be a nice little money spinner for apple.

This just shows how stupid the industry execs are when one of them says this: "Where in life does the retailer set the price of the content?"

This has to do with the consumers who want the same price for everything. As soon as they start variable pricing, its gonna get way out of control. Go ahead record execs, fight Jobs trying to keep things simple and reasonable, the songs are just waiting to be downloaded for FREE.

"Where in life does the retailer set the price of the content?"

little did they know, they don't exactly set the price either.

It's pure demand and supply.
Cheap Legal Download VS Free Illegal Download

On a side note, the iTunes store in Japan already has different charges for different songs. Most are 200 yen ($1.7), though some songs are showing up for 150 yen ($1.28). Expensive, but unfortunately Japan has been indoctrinated into paying a lot for music for a long time...

I have someone else's opinion to offer: http://www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/2005/10/beware_riskfree_business_model.html

Well, as a working composer I can see the labels point. What's wrong with paying a buck more for a new release and sixty five cents (or whatever) for older stuff? It really is up to the artist to make sure that they have a proper deal when they sign with a label. every other medium seems to have premium content on the web and that's somehow ok but when it comes to music it's not? give me a break.

Eh. At first glance the fixed-dollar track seems like a good idea: the first thing anybody hears is that the record companies want to charge you more for the next Avril Lavigne or whoever else is popular right now.

What is not immediately clear is that the record companies want to charge you *less* for stuff that's not as popular. This is sound economics - it's called price discrimination - and it's as good for consumers as it is for producers. People are willing to spend more for Avril Lavigne tracks because *it's worth it to them*; let them. People aren't willing to spend that much on Harry Chapin's _Cat's in the Cradle_, so why should they? Lower the price so that it becomes worth it for *them*.

In the end, more people get what they want for prices that better accord with their desires. (This isn't voodoo: the same principle can be seen in senior prices for movie theaters. Old folks don't want to spend as much as whippersnappers on tickets, so the best thing is to lower the price for them and accept *lower* profit instead of none at all for that particular market.)

Good. The profit margin on downloadable songs is already huge. It's ridiculous to claim that they need more than $0.99 per song.

Dugg simply for the title.

If this is the future, then count me in as a newly-stamped fanboy.

Seriously, this is big. It marks one of the first times that a hardware company has semi-amicably convinced media companies to do the right thing (eg. without going to court).

"Where in life does the retailer set the price of the content?" said this person.

Wal-Mart - that is how they do business. Sell us the product for X dollars or we will go else ware, causing the company's to shut down.

"Where in life does the retailer set the price of the content?"

Um... anywhere where you're selling something for which there is highly elastic demand. If no one actually needs the product you're selling, then it's a matter of marketing to convince people that it's "worth" more before you can charge more for it.

Besides, this is Jobs we're discussing. Reality doesn't apply.

Here is the funny part. All you stupid ***** bithc like little girls qabout how HORRIBLE all music today is. Yet THAT is the music that would cost MORE. The oldies would cost LESS!

So...since all the music today sucks...to the point where you will never buy it, why wouldn't you WANT iTunes to follow simple Supply and Demand economics?

"Yes, threaten to steal content if you don't like the price. Very ethical. Do you take a gun into a store and negotiate prices with the owner over a barrel?"

Ya it might not be right to download music without paying for it but I don't think its right either to take $5,000 from a mother of 4 or $5,000 from a grandpa who doesn't even know how to check his email, all because of stealing a couple of songs especially when they aren't really aware of what's going on. Really think about it once, how much trouble would you get in for going to a CD store and stealing 1 CD costing $20 with 10 tracks on it... maybe $100-300 but the RIAA charges you at least $1000 for each song for downloading the content off the net, not even for stealing the actual plastic casing, booklet, and CD(materials).

I also don't think its right to not share profits of online sales with the artists who are creating the music (or if they do make money its an extremly small percentage).

F the RIAA, support the artist, go to their concerts, send the artist a couple of bucks every once in a while, and while your at it check out allofmp3.com ... I personally would not recommend downloading music tracks thru torrent sites, etc. If the RIAA does catch you that just means more profits to them (NOT THE ARTIST)!!!

Nice.

Apple - 1
Music Industry - 0

variable pricing? yea the popular music should stay at 99c and other stuff should go down in price now thats variable pricing. I would also like to see the sound quailty go up from 128 to 192.

seems the recording industry had to give in on this point. the article mentions that Apple sold 8.5 million ipods in the quarter. so, it comes down to this, either those 8.5 million get filled with songs from apple itunes music store, or from limewire. With the former, the industry makes some money; with the latter not one thin dime.

Steve Jobs = 1
Recording Giants = owned

"Where in life does the retailer set the price of the content?" said this (high level music exec).

Quote of the year. I mean come on, the record industry has only been exploiting their artists for what, 50+ years now? They practically wrote the book on making money off of other peoples genius.

Or are they going to try and convince me that Eddie Vedder is the one who decided Ten couldn't be sold for less than $18.99? Please.

Since Google, Yahoo, etc. can make plenty of money off of advertising, why not the music industry? If they set up a site that allowed free downloads of their artists music, their user base would be so high I'm sure they could get plenty of advertising. Put ads on the pages, at the beginning of the songs, I don't care, it's free!

Two unrelated comments:

1) Anybody else think the labels decided to give in once they saw Jobs is now basically running Disney? I do. Probably scared the hell out of them.

2) Peoples, quit whining about all the Apple stories on the front page. There is obviously a demand. Don't like them? Don't read them. Start an Apple-free site called "DiggPC." Apple may only have 4-5% of the desktop market, but they have far more share among the tech-savvy type of folks who read websites such as Digg.

Of course the execs gave up. They finally woke up to the fact that should prices have climbed the consumer would be faced with spending the same or MORE to DL an album from itunes vs. buying it in a record store. Talk about incentive to go to P2P or some Russian site!

While the costs of physically producing/ distributing a CD are small, they still are there.

First you have the pressing of the disc, printing the liner notes, and packaging it. Then you add in returns of defective discs, the whole root-kit issue, cost of trucking the Cd's across the country, etc.... and it really starts to add up to a headache they should be glad to reduce by allowing itunes to sell their music at a discount comparable to what the production/ distribution expenses would be.

Take all of that into consideration vs. the itunes model. Upload content to itunes, wait for check. Hard work there.

So why do they fight it? The real reason is they don't want digital music PERIOD. Why? For years the only figures an artist had on how many units they sold was the vague soundscan/billboard point of sale numbers and the internal numbers the record companies showed them. Now with digital retailers keeping exact numbers there is a third party that has the info, and it has no reason to hide it. In fact, itunes celebrates it. That makes it a lot harder for the music companies to screw over the artists the way they did in the past, costing them money they had no right to keep in the first place.

It's amazing the job Apple has done at curbing the RIAA's greed.

Gotta wonder sometimes what sort of tactics Steve has to resort to to get them to agree to reasonable prices.

Maybe an angry mob of Mac users weilding iPod minis as blunt force weapons?

QUOTE: "Where in life does the retailer set the price of the content?" said this person.

Wal-Mart does this exact thing. If companies want a product stocked at Wal-Mart, they have to bow to wal-marts pricing demands. otherwise the product simply will not be available to a large section of the populace.
there is a wal-mart in every town in america. from a vendors perspective; that's a huge market, you can't really pass that up.
it is in this way that Wal-Mart can consistantly undersell it's competitors.
it is in this way that apple can demand $0.99 and get it.



----edit: someone already said this. :(

Apple, or someone from them should found a new record company. This should be figured out, so that they could not get sued by the Beatles. They would be completely separate from Apple itself, and would work as a middle man between the artist and Apple Computer. The artists could sign up with them and sell their songs through them to Apple's iTunes Music Store. They would of course charge less than the current record companies and give back more to the artist.

That way the system would go around the greedy record industry and serve the customers and the artists.

Submit to your overlord Mr. Jobs RIAA :P

I dont get why ppl think that variable pricing is bad?
ok some song will be more expensive, but then some will be much cheaper.
99c isnt all that cheap anyway, i am sure lots of band are willing to sell song for half that and good bands at that.
Realize that iTunes has a monopoily on this, and sets prices for the whole industry.
After all this would not only be a move to variable pricing but also to flexable licensing perhaps some time in the future, now wouldnt that be nice?
Now, if iTunes reluctant to even change prices, forget about getting fareplay on your samsung mp3 or non-iTunes DRM on iPod. I sure hope europe will do something about this.

personaly i would like to see the following model be implemented
http://www.titr.uow.edu.au/DRM2005/presentations/drm05-arnab.pdf

Variable pricing i couldn't care less about... I've only bought 6 songs on itunes and they'd all be cheaper than 99 cents but...

GO STEVE GO!

He may be the first to put these greedy moguls in their place.

"not fair for our artists" BULL CRAP!

They've been ripping off artists for years now their suing grandma and you little kid sister. Steve may win the first victory over the record companies!

Maybe i will by and ipod.

well, that what it says in the article if you read it: " The companies all charge different wholesale prices - roughly between 60 cents and 80 cents a track - but within each company the prices are the same. Now they have said they want variable pricing - the ability to charge less for some tracks and more for others - something Jobs has resisted because he wants to maintain the standard 99 cents-per-track retail price."

Less and more. 60-80 is 25% variability right there, so i would expext some songs to drop as far as 75c.
I would say that its the Apple who is greedy and want to keep those 39c difference between 60c and 99c because 19c for 3Mb download just isnt enough

" ... One high-level music industry executive, who believes the record industry will ultimately abandon its push for variable pricing, blamed the labels for not standing up to Jobs.

"Where in life does the retailer set the price of the content?" said this person. "

Um, everywhere? Maybe I've missed something, but I think its illegal for the manufacturer to set the price charged by the retailer. At least, that's what I heard at the last CPG company I worked. Manufacturers can pull their product if the retailer is underselling, but that's their only recourse, I believe.

Quote from the article:
'"Where in life does the retailer set the price of the content?" said this person."'

How about the *customer* setting the price of the content? That in effect is what Jobs is doing. 99c seems "fair", so he is represented the public's wishes/interests.

Aggies

people stil pay for music?