iTunes Might Lose Labels

Dreamwalkerofyore writes "According to the New York Times, the iTunes music store might have to change its 99 cents per song policy or risk losing a huge amount of songs due to recent disputes with record companies, who demand an increase in the cost. From the article: 'If [Mr. Jobs] loses, the one-price model that iTunes has adopted 99 cents to download any song could be replaced with a more complex structure that prices songs by popularity. A hot new single, for example, could sell for $1.49, while a golden oldie could go for substantially less than 99 cents.'"

"Its," damn it!

[MooBob]

According to the New York Times, the iTunes music store might have to change it's 99 cents per song policy

Change its policy! You wouldn't type "... might have to change it is 99 cents per song policy."

Re:Wow

[aussie_a]

Great way for the labels and Apple to discourage people from using legal methods for downloading music.

How is Apple to blame? According to the article summary (can't see actual article) Apple is fighting to protect it's current model, and may be forced to (or to lose a large chunk of it's inventory). I'd hardly say Apple is to blame for that.

The price is already $1.42 for me

[Andy_R]

If you live in Britain, iTunes songs cost 79p, or just over $1.42 at today's exchange rate.

Re:great!

[Jonboy X]

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Meme: "a unit of cultural inheritance, hypothesized as analogous to the particulate gene and as naturally selected by virtue of its 'phenotypic' consequences on its own survival and replication in the cultural environment."

Re:It was only a matter of time

[the_unknown_soldier]

Cd baby [cdbaby.com] Works very hard at getting independant music on the ITMS. Cdbaby works as an middle party between the artists who don't really know what to do and Apple who don't have the will to deal with a million artists on individually. Cdbaby then gives the artist a ridiculously large percentage, iirc they can end up with 60c from a 99c song sale.

Re:Geeeze

[Anonymous Coward]

A seller will increase it's price until enough buyers stop demanding.

Re:"Its," damn it!

[Anonymous Coward]

But "it" is a pronoun. Not a noun. Therefore rather than add an apostrophe and an 's', we replace it with a possessive pronoun (i.e. "its").

A Cent Sign

[webteeth]

Most comments I see posted responding to this article use "99 cents" or $0.99. To make a cent sign in Windows, hold Alt while pressing 0162.

On a Mac, press Alt + 4.

Re:great!

[RollingThunder]

The most concise (and thus, less accurate) definition I've seen is simply "an infectious idea".

Re:AllOfMp3

[Adam9]

Check this [bbc.co.uk] article out.

Last month the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) urged Russian authorities to take action against AllofMP3.com.

But Moscow prosecutors will not take legal action because Russian copyright laws do not cover digital media, according to news agency Tass.

WalMart is at 88 cents per song.

[Animats]

WalMart is at 88 cents [walmart.com] per song. Let's see how far the music industry gets by leaning on WalMart.

"The labels price things based on what they believe they can get -- a pricing philosophy a lot of industries have. But we like to price things as cheaply as we possibly can, rather than charge as much as we can get. It's a big difference in philosophy, and we try to help other people see that." - WalMart senior VP (entertainment) Gary Severson.

WalMart pushed the labels into a $9.97 retail price for CDs. Then they started signing deals with artists on their own. WalMart now has exclusive rights to Garth Brooks.

It's hard to cheer for either side here. But from the music industry's perspective, WalMart is scarier than Apple. Apple needs the music industry. For WalMart, audio CDs are a minor business. WalMart sometimes threatens to cut back on audio CDs and devote more shelf space to DVDs and games. And Apple doesn't care about content. WalMart imposes censorship on both music and cover art.

Turn you over to shake out that last penny

[Nom du Keyboard]

A sore point for some music executives is the fact that Apple generates much more money selling iPod players than it does as a digital music retailer, leading to complaints that Mr. Jobs is profiting more from tracks downloaded to fill the 21 million iPods sold so far than are the labels that produced the recordings.

At the price of 99 cents a song, the share of the major labels is about 70 cents

Apple needs to get their profits from the iPod, since most of the 99 cents is already going back to the record companies. What's so hard about this for the NYT to understand?

The other main battleground in Apple's coming confrontation with the industry has to do with "interoperability" of services and devices. Mr. Jobs has so far refused to make the iTunes software compatible with music players from other manufacturers, and he has prevented the iPod from accepting music sold from competing services that use a Microsoft-designed music format. As a result, songs purchased from Napster, for example, will not play on an iPod.

Ah, now we know the real reason why Sony is unhappy. Won't play on Sony players either.

Re:great!

[Vantage13]

The grand parent poster is actually referring to the Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill, Jr. [imdb.com] which Steam Boat Willy was based on

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