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Music Media Your Rights Online

Music Labels May Seek Higher Download Prices 446

Posted by Zonk from the they're-never-going-to-get-it dept.
punxking writes "Some of the big music labels are now clamoring to raise prices for digital music downloads. From the article: 'Music industry executives said introductory wholesale prices for digital tracks had been set low to stimulate demand for online music sales but the success of Apple's music store had prompted concern that they may now be too low.'" Relatedly, the BBC is reporting that iTunes is under investigation in Britain for charging disparities between the UK and the European continent.
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Music Labels May Seek Higher Download Prices More

Music Labels May Seek Higher Download Prices

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  • Dupe City (Score:2, Funny)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 )
    This is getting ridiculous. Next article, please.

  • Costs? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:28PM (#11815811) Homepage Journal

    Can I simply ask somebody who really knows? What are the costs associated with digital distribution versus printing and distribution of physical media? Is this simply a case of music labels being greedy? Come on now. This is an industry that simply does not get it. Music sales declined through the late 90's because the music that was being promulgated on us by the music labels sucked. Big time. Throughout the entire decade of the 90's, they waited for somebody else to innovate the digital distribution of music (Napster), and waited for Apple to do it right with the iTunes Music Store, and now they want to profit on top of all of others hard work. I guess it is a business model that works, but come on now, have some respect for what you do! Are you making a profit with iTunes with the current pricing scheme? It would certainly appear to be the case, so why are you now trying to increase prices? The cost of distribution through the Apple iTMS has not changed. Apple has not changed the terms for distributing music in your contracts. Apple is not making any more money on it than previously agreed. I guess we should not really be surprised though. Remember when CDs first came out? Remember the cost of a vinyl album at the time ($7)? Remember the cost of a CD at the time($12-15)? Remember the music industries promise that CD costs would drop when they became popular? Consider especially that shelf space could hold more CD's and the distribution costs for CDs were significantly less than they were for vinyl. Consider that the costs for pressing a CD were/are significantly less than those for vinyl. I would assume that there is an order of magnitude difference in the distribution costs for Internet delivery versus physical media delivery that would make Internet delivery significantly less expensive and thus more profitable.

    Here is a prediction: If the price for music increases right now for digital distribution, sales will fall and piracy will increase. Apple did the hard work of market research on what folks want to pay for music downloaded from the Internet and they concluded that .99 cents/song was the sweet spot where they could offer a service, make minimal profit from the songs themselves, and distribute most of the music profits to the music labels. Of course the iTMS should be considered a loss leader of sorts as it drives sales of iPods, but Apple themselves are making almost nothing on music sales specifically.

    • Re:Costs? (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by cayenne8 ( 626475 )
      Hell, I don't pay $.99 right now for songs that are in a quality degraded format as it is. If they sold them in a lossless format, such as a .wav or .flac...I might consider it.

      But, I'm not going to pay what they charge now for less than top quality songs, much less a higher rate.

      I'd rather have the best format I can...and I'll do the compression (lossy) for non-home listening environments like the car or portables....

    • Re:Costs? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by PortHaven ( 242123 )
      Simply....MUSIC LABELS BEING GREEDY

      Example: I recently released a CD for a friend's band. Cost was about $1,500 for a 1,000 CDs...shipped. Now, RIAA presses in 100,000 to 1,000,000 of units. So I am wagering they are well under a $1.

      Now explain to me why I have to pay $12.49 - $21.95 for a single CD that cost under a $1? I would not mind if the artists saw $5 of that cost. But usually they are lucky if they see .25 cents.

      • The real reason why major labels need to charge so much: to pay the pretty dancers in those expensive music videos.

        I'm joking of course, but really, it's true.

        • Re:Costs? (Score:5, Funny)

          by QMO ( 836285 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @05:08PM (#11816382) Homepage Journal
          The real reason they want to charge more is that it will increase the market value of piracy, thus the marketing value of piracy, but not substantially increase what they really lose from piracy.

          Example of their current arithmetic:
          1,000,000 songs at $0.50 each = $500,000

          but, if they charge more it suddnly becomes:
          1,000,000 songs at $0.75 each = $750,000

          Oh, no! Piracy has just gone up 50%!

          Just a thought.

      • Re:Costs? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Joey7F ( 307495 )

        Now explain to me why I have to pay $12.49 - $21.95 for a single CD that cost under a $1? I would not mind if the artists saw $5 of that cost. But usually they are lucky if they see .25 cents.

        Because the MPAA believes that 12.50 to 22 dollars a CD is where the product of their volume and the price is a maximum.

        Price is dictated partially by price but also by demand (I would argue PURELY demand because if it costs you 100 bucks to build a nail, no one will pay that).

        That said, what CDs are you buying at

      • Re:Costs? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Macadamizer ( 194404 )
        Just a question -- when you buy a box of Corn Flakes, are you concerned with how much the corn farmer gets? Or when you buy a car, how much the designer got paid? I know this is kinda flamebaitish, but it seems like everyone justifies that "CD's are too much" because the artists gets so little of each CD sold -- when in reality, the artists signed a contract agreeing to so much per CD sold -- if they didn't like it, as many others have pointed out, nobody held a gun to their heads to make then sign the co

    • Re:Costs? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Fizzlewhiff ( 256410 )
      I still pay between $12 and $15 for a new release CD. Record stores and bookstores have too big a markup so I get them at the large discount stores like Target. If I want to get ripped off really bad I'll shop at the mall. It is the same for buying clothes, shoes, and jewelry. Want to be over charged, shop at the mall. Why don't you kids get it?
    • If the price for music increases right now for digital distribution, sales will fall and piracy will increase

      The amount of music paid for, compared to the amount of music downloaded for free, is still just a drop in the bucket. $10/album of low quality music was always substantially more than free high-quality music. The people who were paying so much money for 128kbps songs aren't going to start stealing it at $1.25.

      And inevitably, sales will fall with higher prices. But it's in the seller's obvious i

    • Re:Costs? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Ironsides ( 739422 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:53PM (#11816190) Homepage Journal
      Can I simply ask somebody who really knows? What are the costs associated with digital distribution versus printing and distribution of physical media? Is this simply a case of music labels being greedy?

      Well, for the labels the recuring cost of online distribution is zero. They suply the song, but the distributor pays all the bandwidth and associated costs. Their costs deal with producing the song and administration.

      Throughout the entire decade of the 90's, they waited for somebody else to innovate the digital distribution of music (Napster), and waited for Apple to do it right with the iTunes Music Store, and now they want to profit on top of all of others hard work.

      Remember, they own the music. Quite literaly in most cases. Unless an artist retained the rights, the Recording Companies own it. It is up to them to set the price.

      Are you making a profit with iTunes with the current pricing scheme? It would certainly appear to be the case, so why are you now trying to increase prices?

      To make more money, of course!

      The cost of distribution through the Apple iTMS has not changed. Apple has not changed the terms for distributing music in your contracts. Apple is not making any more money on it than previously agreed.

      Frequently when a new product comes out, a company will test the waters with various prices to find the one that maximizes their profits. Sometimes fewer sales at higher margins means more money. Sometimes more sales at lower margins means more money. They are trying to find the peak in that equation. Personally I think they should go lower. But that is up to them.

      Here is a prediction: If the price for music increases right now for digital distribution, sales will fall and piracy will increase.

      No argument here. But the main questing from the recording execs is, will sales fall so much as to offset the increase in revenue per song?

      Sure I'm analyzing this from a money grubbing point of view. But then again, that's what you have to do in order to understand what the labels are doing. They want to make more money.

      I personally won't buy lossy formats. I don't consider them good enough quality for what I listen to. (Classical) But many people will, especially for pop and rock. All this is, is a basic exercise in Econ 101.
    • Here is a prediction: If the price for music increases right now for digital distribution, sales will fall and piracy will increase.

      no no.. that cant be right. there's this big pot of money called consumers and you just keep on hittin' em and hittin' em like a big ol' pinata and the money keeps pouring out!

      uh.. right?

      Well hell, there's always high quality corporate rock radio! [popealien.com]
    • I really don't think Apple, Napster or the other players in the music download business did that much market research on the price. The fixed $.99 price at all of the big music download sites is just a blatant demonstration that the record labels are opposed to the free market.

    • Re:Costs? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @05:16PM (#11816483) Homepage
      ...Is this simply a case of music labels being greedy?...

      Not simply a case of greed. Record labels don't *want* online distribution methods to work. Sure, it saves them money. Whereas packaging and shipping used to cut into the price of a CD, no money needs to be spent to produce more copies of an digital/medium-less album.

      However, the fact that iTMS is working means that people aren't buying CDs, which is an indicator that the "music industry" is obsolete. The fact is, you can produce an album on your own and get it on iTMS, use internet/viral marketing for your promotion, and bypass major record labels altogether. We don't need them and there business model anymore, and they know it, but they don't want you to know it.

      Their big hope is to convince everyone that p2p sharing is immoral and online music stores are too expensive-- it would cost more than a CD and you don't even get a lossless copy or the medium or liner notes or anything. As long as they can scare us into sticking with medium-based distribution models, they still have a business.

      So what I'm suggesting is, this raising of prices is just sabotage.

      • Re:Costs? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by hackstraw ( 262471 ) *
        However, the fact that iTMS is working means that people aren't buying CDs, which is an indicator that the "music industry" is obsolete. The fact is, you can produce an album on your own and get it on iTMS, use internet/viral marketing for your promotion, and bypass major record labels altogether. We don't need them and there business model anymore, and they know it, but they don't want you to know it.

        That is worth being bolded and repeated:

        However, the fact that iTMS is working means that people aren't

      • Re:Costs? (Score:3, Informative)

        by shark72 ( 702619 )

        "We don't need them and there business model anymore, and they know it, but they don't want you to know it."

        Slashdotters have been claiming that the Internet will destroy the record industry since the days of the original Napster. I typically see "the record industry is already dead" or "it will happen real soon now" but that's just not happening. Do you have an estimate of when it will happen? Next year, five years from now, ten years from now?

        Unfortunately I don't think it's this simple, and Slas

    • Re:Costs? (Score:3, Informative)

      by shark72 ( 702619 )

      "Remember when CDs first came out? Remember the cost of a vinyl album at the time ($7)? Remember the cost of a CD at the time($12-15)? Remember the music industries promise that CD costs would drop when they became popular?"

      I remember CD prices being closer to $18 at launch in the early 80s, but we'll use your numbers. That $15 you remember paying in 1984 is $26 in today's dollars. The average price of a new CD is now south of $13 [bandradio.com], so that's a 50% price drop in the past 20 years. I only wish that a

  • The Heroine model... Nice...
    • To which model do you refer? Zelda, because she kicks butt? Xena, because she's a frickin' hot warrior-lady? Or maybe it was Samus Aran... Or Lara Croft...

      Oh, wait... heroin... :-)

    • Im not a spelling nazi by any means, but I am an accuracy nazi, and the heroine model (whereby a company lures customers by appearing beautiful from a great distance and then appears ugly only AFTER their hair is used to ascend the tower wall) has little to do with this story. Perhaps you mean heroin, the popular and illegal drug whose addicts are lured by free/low cost doses and then once addicted are forced to pay an exorbitant amount.
      • I think he really did mean the "heroine" model ... you know, about how hookers are better than drugs because they can always wash their crack and resell it.

        this is what the music companies are doing with degraded MP3s at a higher cost per song than the original album.

      • Re:Heroine or heroin? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by inkey string ( 35594 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @05:19PM (#11816524) Homepage
        Except this never actually happens. I wouldn't expect slashdotters to have any first hand familarity with heroin or the drug trade, but let's just think this through in a few steps.

        1. Demand for heroin is extremely high.
        2. Supply for heroin is extremely limited.
        3. This lack of supply, coupled with extreme demand, will produce very high prices.
        4. Extremely large profits can be made easily in this trade, as there is a large volume of willing buyers with little "brand" loyalty, and a consistent "regional price" (compared to a "world price" in macroeconomics) due to easy (local) transport and a highly liquid market.

        So the major problem in the heroin chain is not selling (very deep liquid market relative to supply), but instead obtaining supply to sell.

        Now that we know this problem, ask yourself why dealers would choose to give away supply? Answer: they don't. There is no benefit to them, as there is already a large volume of willing buyers. There is only downside, namely the opportunity cost of not selling the damn stuff instead of giving it away.

        Too many people have this vision of a guy hanging aroung with a truck of heroin twiddling his thumbs wondering how to addict people and make cash. Doesn't quite work like that.

  • Slashdot raising subscription rates! (Score:4, Funny)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:29PM (#11815815)
    Slashdot and OSDN are clamoring to raise subscription rates!

    In a move that the OSDN bean-counters believe will give Slashdot and OSDN more cash on hand, Slashdot.org is announcing that they are raising subscription rates to $5.25 for 1000 pages of ad-free* viewing.

    More and more frequently Slashdot has been giving its readers the opportunity to read day old news AGAIN! The editors of the site claim that this is part of their overall marketing plan:

    Rob Malda (aka CmdrTaco) was quoted in the NYT (vampire sucking required) as saying, "well we give you TWICE the news in two days so we thought it was only right that our subscribers pay a little bit extra!"

    Zonk was quoted as saying, "well we give you TWICE the news in two days so we thought it was only right that our subscribers pay a little bit extra!"

    While Slashdot does have an e-mail link on their site to allow Slashdot subscribers to report these duplicates to the "Editor on Duty" the editors have admitted in secret taped conversations (on IRC) that the email address is bunk and goes to /dev/null... "How are we to justify raising subscription rates if the readers weren't getting the same old shit twice?"

    * - ad-free only refers to banner ads, not posts to the main page that are made to appear as "stories" when they are in all actuality advertisements (i.e. iPods)

  • higher prices again? (Score:5, Funny)

    by justforaday ( 560408 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:29PM (#11815816)
    I thought they were just talking about doing this a few days ago...Greedy bastards...sheesh!
  • The music labels are really having fun raising prices this week [slashdot.org]!

  • Ha! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:30PM (#11815841)
    Good luck pushing Wal*Mart. They've never bowed to a supplier. If they want to sell digital music at 25-cents a track, the music industry can just take it in the rear.

    • Re:Ha! (Score:4, Funny)

      by e2d2 ( 115622 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:47PM (#11816102)
      Yeah but Wal*Mart would rather get their music from China anyway.

    • Can WalMart can break the collusion between the labels?

    • Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SirChive ( 229195 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:48PM (#11816120)
      Nope. The music industry is not just a supplier. They are a cartel that has a legal lock on an entire segment of our culture.

      They will charge Walmart the same as the other download services because they just don't care. If they drive customers away from downloads and back to physical media it doesn't matter. They own that too.

      • Not selling music "would mean nothing to them" (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Rescate ( 688702 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @05:32PM (#11816694)
        Wal-Mart Squeezing Record Labels to Cut CD Prices [slashdot.org]

        Posted by michael on Thursday October 14, @08:25AM
        from the win-win-situation dept.

        Raindance writes "RollingStone.com has a revealing article detailing how retail giant Wal-Mart is making loud noises about throwing its weight around in order to get significantly better bulk prices on CDs [rollingstone.com]. Says one industry executive, 'This wasn't framed as a gentle negotiation, it's a line in the sand -- you don't do this, then the threat is [your product is dropped].' This is the first time a big player has attempted this sort of hardball move on the labels, and the labels may be forced to deal, as Wal-Mart sells 1 out of every 5 retail CDs. Monopoly one, meet monopoly two."

        Telling quote from the linked Rolling Stone article:

        Tensions are not as high now as they were last winter, but making sure Wal-Mart is happy remains one of the music industry's major priorities. That's because if Wal-Mart cut back on music, industry sales would suffer severely -- though Wal-Mart's shareholders would barely bat an eye. While Wal-Mart represents nearly twenty percent of major-label music sales, music represents only about two percent of Wal-Mart's total sales. "If they got out of selling music, it would mean nothing to them," says another label executive. "This keeps me awake at night."

        So, it seems as though Wal-Mart is playing chicken with the music labels, betting the labels will blink first. I would suppose if they can do this with physical media, they can do it with downloads as well.

  • Is this a joke? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cot ( 87677 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:30PM (#11815852)
    They want us to download the songs with our network connections that we pay for, in lieu of them pressing CDs and printing inserts, and now we're supposed to pay MORE than you pay in a store for a CD? At $1 a track, it's already not a very good deal. For more than that, the only thing they'll be stimulating is a new resurgence in p2p.

    • Bingo (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Hlewagastir ( 857624 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @05:06PM (#11816353)
      You see, if they make it painful enough to buy tracks online, we'll all revert back to the old model of taking it up the rear at our local record store for a 25 cent chunk of plastic. Online music sales scare the crap out of the recording industry because they become obsolete the second somebody can simply make their music available online to whomever wants to download it. If recording industry can kill online music sales early, they won't slowly fade away into obscurity as recording artists choose other venues to promote their wares. iTunes has somehow, despite the industries best intentions, (through extremely high prices for what you're actually getting), become a viable alternative to the old way of getting music. Therefore, they raise the price even higher to discourage sales. If the price is high enough, people will return to the old business model.

      • "Many in the music business fear Apple's clout" (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Zhe Mappel ( 607548 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @05:42PM (#11816796)
        Good point. For Apple this is going to have serious immediate repercussions. From TFA:

        Many in the music business also expressed concern over Apple's growing clout. This stems from the fact that Apple's music store and player are not compatible with any others. One fear is that Apple will become too powerful if consumers continue to choose its digital music platform. Apple declined to comment.

        "One fear"? I'd say it's the main fear. The sticking point is not Apple's proprietary technology itself as much as how market share allows Apple to assert downward pressure on per-song pricing. The music biz wants to kneecap Apple. The goal is to force Apple to open the iPod/iTMS, distribute the platform's market share among any number of companies, and so get digital distribution fully under the music industry's thumb. Cartels like chattel, not coequals.

        The big question is: if Jobs refuses, will the labels start to defect from iTMS? Apple will have planned for this scenario and their response is going to be very interesting--it will tell us pointedly where the power truly lies.


    • P2P doesn't work to solve the problem. It only antagonizes, and what's worse, it provides the with the rope that they have used to slowly hang us- in the form of ever-restrictive laws that govern copyright and fair use. If you disagree with the price increase, don't "share" the music. Do what you'd do with any other product - just leave it. Let the RIAA wallow in its own muck until someone finally has a lightbulb moment, and "gets it".

  • dupe dupe dupe (Score:3, Funny)

    by aendeuryu ( 844048 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:30PM (#11815854)
    dupe dupe dupe
    they duped the URL (dupe dupe)
    they duped the URL (dupe dupe)
    they duped the URL...

    As I walk though
    Slashdot's world
    Nothing can stop
    These dupes of URLs...

    etc. etc.
  • ... Dupe? Perhaps they should start charging more so they can pay EDITORS to FILTER SUBMISSIONS..... oh wait....
  • Slashdot is under investigation for duplicate articles.

    And duplicate posts.

  • Pete and Repeat where in a boat..... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by philkerr ( 180450 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:32PM (#11815878) Homepage
    MP3 Download Prices to Rise? [slashdot.org]

    So, might as well post my old comment.

    I wonder if this push for a price increase is to put a dampner on the existing on-line players as they did with the CARP [copyright.gov] act a few years ago regarding streaming.

    The problem, as the established media companies see things, with these new electronic outlets they have problems excerting their marketing influences to pimp their latest one-hit manufactured artist.

    If they can put the breaks on things until *they* control the market then this is better for them. Its not really an issue concering margins as all the big players seem to be reporting big profits.

    • wonder if this push for a price increase is to put a dampner on the existing on-line players..

      Dampner is not a word in the English language. Damper is a word, as is dampener. A damper reduces oscillation. A dampener makes something moist. Some router vendors have introduced a feature called route flap damping. Other router vendors have introduced the rather silly route flap dampening. I really wish large companies would hire a few editors to review their products. Just FYI.

  • I would love to see one of these copies to have no posts relating to the topic but instead every single post is crying out "DUPE"

  • Aw hell... dupe reply (Score:3, Funny)

    by the_skywise ( 189793 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:36PM (#11815919)
    Well they have to raise prices!

    Because the cost of manufacturing has...

    Er... Because they have to hire more employees to handle the purchasing load...

    Er... Because the Britney Spears needs a new swimming pool for her poodle... yeah!

    Isn't it time we just declare the RIAA a monopoly and start regulating it because, obviously, there is no competition.

    (I'm reminded of that montage scene in Real Genius where more and more people don't show up to class and instead have tape recorders to record the lecture... eventually the professor stops coming to class and just has a tape to play to the tape recorders...)
  • http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/28/ 1738239&tid=141&tid=3 Can we please stop this nonsense?

  • Applesoft? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Renaissance 2K ( 773059 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:38PM (#11815955)

    The music industry loses all credibility the moment it says "Apple may become too powerful."

    Oh, so now Apple is trying to take over the world?

    What next? The Salvation Army?

  • Enough with the freaking dupes already! don't the editors READ slashdot anymore???
  • Buy used CDs.

    Online music stores sell a lower quality format, they put DRM restrictions on it, and then they want to charge MORE than the price of a used CD?!?!?

    The minor inconvenience of ripping the music to put it on your mp3 player counterbalances the inconvenience that you would have later on, when you are trying to get all of your DRMed iTunes songs to play on a new computer.

    And with used CDs you don't even have to bother backing up your music because it already comes to you in physical form.
    • But ripping CDs to a convenient and high-quality file format (like Vorbis for example) gives you more flexibility over what you hear. Writing scripts to generate or control XMMS in real-time is easier to do than swap your CDs every 3 minutes because you just wanted to hear one song and need to change the style of music you listen to (change of mood, debugging time...)

      One idea I had is to write a small GUI on your PDA to remote-control XMMS (but I don't have time for it :( why don't you do it for me!)

  • Financial Genius, I tell you! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drakaan ( 688386 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:40PM (#11815975) Homepage Journal
    "Oh no! They're buying lots and lots and lots of music! Raise the price and stop them, stop them now!"

    These are the same people who are trying to say that piracy is the reason that they're not making wads of cash? Did they miss the whole supply/demand/equilibrium price part of economics class in high school (okay, some of them may have gone to college).

    Let's see. We have a product that is being sold at a price point that has people drooling, there are very low distribution costs, no need for shipping or inventory maintenance, and people can buy from home. Sounds good...*too* good...let's raise the prices and kill it off.

    asshats.

  • Well, that explains a LOT! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anita Coney ( 648748 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:41PM (#11815986) Homepage
    The music industry thinks that because iTunes is a success, the prices must be too low. That explains why CDs sales are down. Every time people start buying them, the music industry raises prices. The music industry seems afraid of success, every time it gets close, they squash it.

  • Not just one, but TWO dupes in this article! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Harik ( 4023 ) <Harik@chaos.ao.net> on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:41PM (#11815998)
    The main "iTunes raising prices" is a dupe from yesterday, and "iTunes under investigation in the UK" is _ALSO_ a dupe from a recent article. Jesus christ, Taco, if this were a free-site and you were not getting PAID for it, I could see slacking off. But damnit, you have advertisers and subscribers. That implies a certain level of responsibility. Live up to it.

  • Pretty soon... (Score:4, Informative)

    by l4m3z0r ( 799504 ) <kevinNO@SPAMuberstyle.net> on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:43PM (#11816019)
    Pretty soon they will give us what we have all been waiting for... A /. article whose primary source is another /. article.

  • A dollar is too high (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) * on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:45PM (#11816057) Homepage Journal
    A dollar is too high for a lossy-compressed, DRM-wrapped song. That's roughly in the same neighborhood as audio CDs. They need to either get the price down to, like, twenty or thirty cents, or keep the price where it is and start removing the disadvantage that make them inferior to CDs (i.e. sell un-DRMed FLAC-encoded files, plus offer some kind of free backup or free re-download-it-later service to make the information roughly as durable as CD media, also make them transferable).

    Or well, I guess there's a third option to make 99-cent downloads competitive: raise the price of CDs. ;-)

    The very idea that download prices are too low, is just ludicrous.

  • Dupe posts (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Darth Maul ( 19860 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:45PM (#11816074)
    It's a shame that all these dupe posts are getting modded down. It's about time the Slashdot editors actually see what a mess Slashdot has become. They seem to post a dupe every day now.

    Please, stop modding those posts down. This duplicate posting must stop.

    • Re:Dupe posts (Score:3, Funny)

      by fname ( 199759 )
      Seems appropriate that it's from the "they're-never-going-to-get-it dept." The editor should get a +1 Unintentionally Funny for his so-sad-it's-funny quip.
    • It's a shame that all these dupe posts are getting modded down. It's about time the Slashdot editors actually see what a mess Slashdot has become. They seem to post a dupe every day now.

      Please, stop modding those posts down. This duplicate posting must stop.
  • These companies are looking for the 'sweet spot'. They are looking to milk out as much as they can so they could care less about the amount of downloads . You can compare this to other products like 'BROADBAND'. They really don't want the broad public(low + middle income) to get broadband because that would mean the price would have to be real low. They just want the top tier of buyers with the most bucks.

    Anyways aren't the music companies under some government supervision since they were caught monopo
  • Here's yet another article...
    "Some of the big music labels are now clammoring to raise prices for digital music downloads. From the article: 'Music industry executives said introductory wholesale prices for digital tracks had been set low to stimulate demand for online music sales but the success of Apple's music store had prompted concern that they may now be too low.'" Relatedly, the BBC is reporting that iTunes is under investigation in Britain for charging disparities between the UK and the European con
  • They just raised the rates a few days ago... and now they are already doing it again?!

    Runaway inflation, I tell you.

  • Apparently the side-effect of the slashdot effect is a disorder whereby the creator of the effect is compelled to repeat itself randomly.
  • Are you fucking kidding me? Does nobody in Editorland ever read the site to see what's been posted before?

    The only answer I can think of that makes sense is that the Editors know it's a button that gets us going, so they push it when they're bored.

    This is getting rediculous.

    Also, what has this got to do with "Your Rights Online"?

  • Who's your daddy (Score:5, Funny)

    by fulldecent ( 598482 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:56PM (#11816239) Homepage

    I kind of like Walmart's discussions with the media industry a little better:

    Walmart: I think it's time you started selling me CD's for under $10
    Labels: That's some bullshit
    Walmart: I retail 4% of the GNP, if I stop selling CD's, you die
    Label: Ulth... fine, but-
    Walmart: But what?
    Label: ...um but nothing

  • Why does this remind me of ATMs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bronz ( 429622 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @04:58PM (#11816249)
    a) Started out "free" -- reasoning the bank didn't have to pay so many human tellers.
    b) Moved to a small fee for the operator of the ATM, which is understandable.
    C) Fee doubled when your bank realized it could charge you in addition to the charges of the ATM operator.
    D) Mext the fees nearly doubled to an average of $1.50 each side of the transaction (minus the "free" out of network uses you get per month).
    E) Finally -- we end up with bank plans where you can be charged to talk to a human teller.

    If we figure out where we went wrong with banks and ATMs it might help us not repeat the same mistake.

  • Is the Slashdot Shuffle Playing Favorites? (Score:4, Funny)

    by saddino ( 183491 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @05:09PM (#11816404)
    saddino [slashdot.org] writes "Steven Levy at Newsweek is reporting that Slashdot seems to favor certain stories for dupes [slashdot.org]. Is Slashdot receiving kickbacks to promote certain companies? Slashdot denies it, of course, and Levy had the good sense to ask a mathematician [discoverengineering.org] and a cryptographer [cherrycorp.com] who explained it's probably just humans finding patterns where there are none [slashdot.org]."

  • .99 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Tuesday March 01, 2005 @05:10PM (#11816416) Homepage
    The reason raising prices will hurt them more than it will help them is because of what it means when a product costs less than a dollar.

    For the vast majority of people who would be considering buying online music, anything less than a dollar is change not worth worrying about, so it is much more "disposable" than things that are priced more than a dollar. That is why retailers list things as .99 instead of 1.00.

    And while I know prices can never stay the same due to inflation, I have to say that the industry deserves no more out of this than they're getting. I'm using MY bandwidth that I pay for to get their product. They're not even providing me with the method to do so, Apple is.

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