iTunes Price

[BallinWithNash]

I know it has been upped to 1.29$ for awhile ... but why? ... that is way more then I want to spend ... I have stopped buying songs ... anyone know exactly why? or at least have a good hunch?

[markw]

Because they can. Where else can you go?

[Feanor]

I know it has been upped to 1.29$ for awhile ... but why? ... that is way more then I want to spend ... I have stopped buying songs ... anyone know exactly why? or at least have a good hunch?

The music producers and distributors wonder why there is so much music piracy. For my part, I wonder why you can buy a CD with, say, 10 songs for <$10 bucks but you have to pay more for a non-phyisical product that hasn't had be produced, inventoried, shipped across the country, shelved, and sold with by a human cashier.

If the music providers want to cut piracy, they would cut the price of song for download to something that is more reflective of the distribution cost. That would be in the range of 10¢ to as much as 20¢ per download.

I think Markw is right: it's greed. Customers who will pay 99¢ will not their curtail purchases by much if the price goes to $1.29. Or ... is there a cynical calculation involved? Tolerate piracy but charge the suckers who are will to pay, more to compensate for it??

[noddin0ff]

The $1.29 price point was for a higher quality, DRM-free version marketed as iTunes Plus. Regular iTunes are 128kbit/s AAC, iTunes Plus are 256 kbit/s. I speculate that most people who cared about increased quality would more carefully weigh the $1.29 per song vs the CD and opt for CD.

Cut price because it's cheap to make? They made the same argument when CD's came out. Cheaper to produce, prices a gonna drop...obviously they never did. If anything prices jumped after the acceptance of CD was well established.

The cost of music has never been about actual costs to produce. The cost of anything isn't about making a fixed percent of cost to produce. It's what the market will bear and what the competition is doing.

I like iTunes, I like what they're doing. But it's not worth it to me to buy their music; I buy CD's. But 6 billion songs sold suggests there's a lot of people who feel otherwise.

[captjamo]

I for one, love itunes because I spend less money per month on music than I did in the old days of CD's. And my library is full of tracks I actually listen to. Buying music by the track has made more economic sense for me because I no longer pay for whole CD's that have from 1 to 5 tacks that I will actually like and play. This is why I am happy with 1.29 per track because my library is honed to my taste, good audio quality as well, and less money spent on music overall.

[Feanor]

....
The cost of music has never been about actual costs to produce. The cost of anything isn't about making a fixed percent of cost to produce. It's what the market will bear and what the competition is doing.

I like iTunes, I like what they're doing. But it's not worth it to me to buy their music; I buy CD's. But 6 billion songs sold suggests there's a lot of people who feel otherwise.

Noddin', you're right that the price is determined by what the consumer will pay and not by the cost of production. This is true not only for music, you'll agree. The price tends to decline towards the cost of production only where there is real competion: of course that can't happen legitimately where materials are copywrite.

Like you, I'm not willing to pay more to get less. I'm not going to pay, say, $15 for 320kbps when I can get 1411kbps for $10.

What bugs me a bit is that producers whine about piracy but don't lower prices which would be the most effective thing they could do to reduce it. Instead they just want ever more draconian laws that restrict the rights of buyers.

[noddin0ff]

What bugs me a bit is that producers whine about piracy but don't lower prices which would be the most thing they could do to reduce it.

Amen.

[BallinWithNash]

yea i have over 400 CD's at least .... then i started using iTunes because it was only 99 cents (i know the quality is worse but through headphone who cares?) ... now i will just go back to buying CD's because it is cheaper and they sounds MUCH MUCH better when played on a decent stereo.

[02audionoob]

I've often heard it said that piracy would be reduced if music wasn't so expensive. But 20 years ago, it seems like I remember a new release on vinyl was $9...or maybe $10. With a little online comparison shopping, I can pay about the same for an album on CD today as I did for one on vinyl 20 years ago. It seems cheap enough to me...and I'm pretty thrifty.

[Kevio]

Probably not a fair thing to do because of all the other changes that have happened, but if you plotted price vs. piracy over the past 25 years, you're not going to have a very convincing argument for lowing prices to reduce piracy.

Probably stronger contributors to the waxing and waining of piracy are availability enabling technology, cultural factors and the state of the overall economy.

[Feanor]

Probably not a fair thing to do because of all the other changes that have happened, but if you plotted price vs. piracy over the past 25 years, you're not going to have a very convincing argument for lowing prices to reduce piracy.

Probably stronger contributors to the waxing and waining of piracy are availability enabling technology, cultural factors and the state of the overall economy.

Yes, it was hard to pirate LPs ... until the compact cassette came along.

[Kevio]

But still, do you remember how much the recording industry freaked out over cassette tape. I believe there was a time when a royalty was included in all blank tape purchases. There was also a Supreme freak-out over VHS and a mandatory copy protection system for DAT tapes. There was a hissy fit over CDRs but ironically, as far as I remember, they never got officially upset over CD-ROM drives.

[02audionoob]

Probably not a fair thing to do because of all the other changes that have happened, but if you plotted price vs. piracy over the past 25 years, you're not going to have a very convincing argument for lowing prices to reduce piracy.

Probably stronger contributors to the waxing and waining of piracy are availability enabling technology, cultural factors and the state of the overall economy.

And of course the fact that people just love to get stuff free.

[Kevio]

Free stuff, yes. Stolen stuff, not so much. That's where the cultural piece comes in to play. If culturally we consider it "sharing" there will be more piracy than if the practice is recognized as stealing.

[02audionoob]

Free stuff, yes. Stolen stuff, not so much. That's where the cultural piece comes in to play. If culturally we consider it "sharing" there will be more piracy than if the practice is recognized as stealing.

Do you think the millions of people who are posting copyrighted material for the world to download currently understand the practice to be stealing?

[Kevio]

Surly some of them do. Some of them don't understand or have philosophical problems with the concept of intellectual property. Some simply don't bother thinking.

[02audionoob]

People do have varying limits on what sort of copyright infringements they'll commit. The idea of having a royalty on blank tape admitted that a copy for personal use was condoned. Making a copy for or from a friend takes it to a slightly higher level that has long been condoned. When it comes to posting files for internet access, that crosses the line for many people. But for others, it's just access to free stuff...probably not occurring to them that it is piracy or that piracy is stealing. People who wouldn't shoplift or sneak out on a restaurant check will download copyrighted music.

[Feanor]

Free stuff, yes. Stolen stuff, not so much. That's where the cultural piece comes in to play. If culturally we consider it "sharing" there will be more piracy than if the practice is recognized as stealing.

The ingenious "sharing" attitude probably isn't the primary rational for music (or software) piracy. I suspect main rational of the pirates/thieves is this ...

I wouldn't buy it, (because I'm too poor or whatever), if I couldn't get it for free, hence the producer isn't out of pocket if I do, so where's the problem?

I'm not necessarily condoning this attitude.