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133 Comments
- coasterswim, on 04/16/2009, -0/+138Higher prices = lower demand. Did someone really not see that coming?
- aspec, on 04/16/2009, -1/+115It's pretty easy to overlook when your business model includes suing your client base.
- haxxorboi, on 04/16/2009, -1/+68Damn pirates taking all the money away from our artists... well to compensate that we'll just increase the price of digital music! What do you mean our sales are decreasing? DAMN PIRATES!
When will they learn.... - yano, on 04/16/2009, -1/+62The price should not have changed in the first place.
- gotflash, on 04/16/2009, -1/+61Maybe if the songs were actually worth paying for...
- anubis2night, on 04/16/2009, -1/+61I guess Apple had it right all along, .99 cents is the magic thresh hold people will pay for crap, they might throw a dollar away on some corporate top 40 song and if they don't like it hey it's a buck but even raising 30 cents makes people think twice
- spazzcat, on 04/16/2009, -1/+59I'm shocked SHOCKED I tell you...
- rdmorley, on 04/16/2009, -3/+49I'm gonna step out on a limb here....
***** the RIAA!!! - inactive, on 04/16/2009, -1/+42Hmm, this must mean there must be some connection with price and demand... Someone should do a study on this.
- jpop, on 04/16/2009, -1/+40The guy has a good point. How much of this 30 cent increase is going to the artists?
- imronburgundy83, on 04/16/2009, -1/+35And they wonder why people download music.
- ahhell, on 04/16/2009, -0/+33My guess would zero.
- cromulent742, on 04/16/2009, -0/+32It's times like this when I wish I could digg a comment more than once.
- nesagwa, on 04/16/2009, -0/+26Why get them for free if they suck is the real question.
- GhostRidr, on 04/16/2009, -0/+24Even .99 I think is too high. That isn't cheaper than buying a CD outright (per track cost wise), and that gives me a disc that lasts for years (instead of the risk of losing a digital-only hard drive copy). I will continue to buy CD's and rip them myself. Downloaded songs should cost half of what a CD does, so I think 50 cents is better.
- Kanten, on 04/16/2009, -0/+23"Shortly after the increase, both Wal-Mart and Amazon switched to the almost identical increased prices. "
- scoot2006, on 04/16/2009, -1/+22Who'd have thunk it...
Dear Music Label Execs,
No one wants to pay more for the complete ***** you put on the radio. Quit trying to milk the old school model of ***** us out of our money at the fastest rate possible. Put out a decent product priced to create a good relationship with your customer (yeah, that's what it's actually coming to if you want people to buy what you have) and have a good sales model behind it.
There's this thing called the internet. Everything you have, we can get for free. Embrace that. Work with it. Come up with a useful sales model. When you do, your sales will go up.
- The Internets - cromulent742, on 04/16/2009, -0/+18I'd put the over/under at like 1/1000th of a cent.
- c010rb1indusa, on 04/16/2009, -1/+18Doesn't matter, sales could go down 20% for a song but they'd still be making more money than selling it at .99c
Record companies don't care about billboard unless they are making cash - arbulus, on 04/16/2009, -0/+17If it's garbage, why would you want it, free or not?
- inactive, on 04/16/2009, -0/+17None! The contract stipulates "until a net profit is obtained and all current debts are rapayed"
and thanks to clever accounting it never will be. - jlm408, on 04/16/2009, -0/+17These are all of the same executives who will be ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED AND APPALLED when future data shows a significant spike in file-sharing and torrent use.
- shutaro, on 04/16/2009, -0/+17They did, I think it's called Omnomnomnomics or something.
- IAmDavid, on 04/16/2009, -0/+15That would be logical if that were actually the case. I heard that some of the 1.29 songs are as old as 80's classics. There is a disproportionate number of 1.29 songs to .69 cent songs currently.
- WhiskeyLemur, on 06/30/2009, -1/+15reed - the whole point is that hiking up prices makes a chunk of your existing customer base suddenly BECOME "not your customer base."
- SPECOPS, on 04/16/2009, -0/+13the sales can go down 23% before they start to lose out (actually break even). So expect them to change it back to 99c once it reaches 22.99% lower sales.
- cromulent742, on 04/16/2009, -0/+13@reed
So people who pirate music have never and will never purchase music legally? Most people I know pirate some music and purchase some legally. What the labels need to do is find a way to convince Joe Consumer to steal less music and purchase more. - jpop, on 04/16/2009, -0/+12I find it has benefitted me as well, I pretty much don't buy any new music at all anymore (other than the .99 album specials at Amazon). Music is a want, not a need, and they made me not want it anymore.
- imronburgundy83, on 04/16/2009, -0/+12Why buy them period if they all suck?
- rogeris, on 04/16/2009, -4/+16I'll be downloading more songs via torrent now...not because I can't afford the 30 cent increase, but because I think it's a crock that they are doing it. It's not like the artists are going to get any more money as a result.
These people need to understand how the average person will react to stuff like this. - mizike, on 04/16/2009, -0/+12Go check amazon prices....go ahead, i'll wait. Notice anything? This is the work of the record companies, they set the prices. Whatever irrational hatred you likely have for apple, they're the ones that kept the prices low for so long; the reason they've gone up now is that apple had made a trade, no DRM in exchange for letting the label's up the prices by $0.30. Besides, the only reason amazon hasn't had to deal with this nonsense is, surprise, they're being propped up by the record labels because the labels are terrified of apple outright controlling the online music market.
- KSUdesigner, on 04/16/2009, -1/+13Digg it down first, then you can digg it up twice.
- protogenxl, on 04/16/2009, -0/+12Right now there are more than a few apple execs saying I told you so.
- demonbaby, on 04/16/2009, -0/+11Who gives a ***** either way? In 2009 the Billboard Charts are about as relevant as my nutsack. The only people who pay attention to that ***** anymore are the grandpas of the dying record industry dynasty, because it's the only thing they'll ever understand.
- onlysc, on 04/16/2009, -2/+13wah
- Azerael, on 04/16/2009, -0/+11The whole zero?
- shark72, on 04/16/2009, -2/+12Thanks for pointing this out. Lots of people aren't aware that the ideal point on the pricing curve isn't the price at which you sell the most units, but the point at which you make the most money. If the volume goes down less than 30%, then it was the right thing for the record labels to do.
This rule applies to other businesses, too. Designer clothes, sports car brands like Ferarri, and countless others -- there's a reason that they sell their goods at the prices they do.
As an aside, the new pricing has actually benefited me. I don't buy the Top Ten stuff anyway, but I've found that a lot of the more obscure stuff that I like is now at a lower price. I don't think it's caused me to purchase more (ie. this is not the outcome that the record companies wanted) but at least I've saved money. - Hamletlere, on 04/16/2009, -0/+10So, if they raised the prices of all popular songs (as in, songs people like to listen to, regardless of age) by 30¢, and lowered the price of unpopular songs (as in, filler tracks and songs people didn't like and weren't buying anyway) by 30¢, you see this as a zero-sum change?
Give me a break. - rogeris, on 04/16/2009, -0/+9Same here.
- inevitablity, on 04/16/2009, -0/+9On top of that there are no production or distribution costs like a CD would have, so you are absolutely correct in the price should be at minimum half of the .99 price point.
- KSUdesigner, on 04/16/2009, -0/+9Lowering prices of certain songs does not negate the price increase of other songs. A price hike is a price hike, whether they lowered other prices or not.
- angusm, on 04/16/2009, -0/+8News just in: the concept of "price elasticity of demand" is apparently not taught in business school any more.
- SPECOPS, on 04/16/2009, -0/+8there sure are a LOT of older songs (maybe 99.99% of them?) that are still at 99c, no logic there.
- aspec, on 04/16/2009, -0/+8@cromulent742.
Exactly. Right on the money. Like promoting band loyalty. Or producing good music. We'll take 311 for an example. I've never pirated one of their albums. I always buy one. Even if it sucks. But that's because I like most of their music and their live shows. And they don't come out and call everyone a thief.
One huge problem I see is that you're expected to give money for a product that you have no way of verifying the quality of until after you've purchased it. By that time, it's not a returnable item anymore.
We could look at Chinese Democracy. Or St. Anger. Both of these albums are debatable in quality. However, why should you have to wait until you've committed your money to find out?
Why can't artists offer some sort of trial? Like streaming music on the website? Or low quality torrents? Trust your fans, ask them not to pirate your music and offer them a way to listen to your stuff before they spend their money. This is what the recording industry seems to be missing, and also why it needs to collapse.
Artists need to be taking money more directly, and we need to get rid of this generic, hammered-out sound that most music seems to be taking on today.
/obviously I feel very passionately about this subject. - inactive, on 04/16/2009, -0/+8I bet that was troublesome..
- WhiskeyLemur, on 06/30/2009, -0/+8The thing is that, for most artists that I personally ran across, each CD has 30-50% of worthwhile songs and the rest is ***** padding to make the album the requisite 60-90 minutes long. I'd much rather pay $5 for 5 songs I'll listen to than $15 for 5 songs I'll listen to and 15 songs I'll skip. IMO the song-by-song purchase option puts more pressure on artists to release consistently good tracks, since they'll make the bulk of their cash from the "good" bits.
- FearlessFreep, on 04/16/2009, -0/+7emusic.com subscription and Pandora FTW
- Shakermaker, on 04/16/2009, -0/+7FTA: "Now, it should be pointed out that looking at two days of sales of only 100 songs does not take into account the natural ups and downs of each song, a single that has been falling for weeks continually falling would not be a sign of an effect from a change in price."
EXACTLY. Let's not get all ***** over 2 days worth of data. - PRlME, on 04/16/2009, -1/+8µ
- MaverickAlex, on 04/16/2009, -0/+7Quality loss from making a copy? That guy is a retard, its called a copy and guess what it makes a complete copy of the file. If your encoding each file again just to move it to a different device you need some basic computer lessons.
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