Apples chief executive Steve Jobs spoke out ahead of the Apple showcase in Paris stating that record companies are becoming “greedy”, pushing for higher prices on music downloads from iTunes music store. Jobs is determined to resist the record companies, although it seems that many of them are in a comfortable position as many contracts are due to expire with Apple and need to be renegotiated.
According to Mr Jobs record companies are already making a bigger profit through iTunes than through CD sales, due to no manufacturing and shipping costs. "So if they want to raise the prices it just means they're getting a little greedy," he said. It is the big companies that are looking to alter their contracts which are due for renewal in the US.
Although in the US prices are considerably cheaper than in Europe 99cents (55p), compared to 79p in the UK Mr Jobs insists “Customers think the price is really good where it is". Speaking about the iTunes service he added “"We're trying to compete with piracy, we're trying to pull people away from piracy and say 'you can buy these songs legally for a fair price', but if the price goes up a lot, they'll go back to piracy. Then everybody loses.”
News source: BBC News
According to Mr Jobs record companies are already making a bigger profit through iTunes than through CD sales, due to no manufacturing and shipping costs. "So if they want to raise the prices it just means they're getting a little greedy," he said. It is the big companies that are looking to alter their contracts which are due for renewal in the US.
Although in the US prices are considerably cheaper than in Europe 99cents (55p), compared to 79p in the UK Mr Jobs insists “Customers think the price is really good where it is". Speaking about the iTunes service he added “"We're trying to compete with piracy, we're trying to pull people away from piracy and say 'you can buy these songs legally for a fair price', but if the price goes up a lot, they'll go back to piracy. Then everybody loses.”
News source: BBC News
Neowin wants to know what you think about the iTunes service, will a price increase change your downloading habits? Will it make you consider using other legal services? Would you like to use other services but are unable to?
still, it's worth pointing out that steve jobs is hardly the most charitable person on the planet, but then he's always been one to talk the talk, and not necessarily walk the walk.. :>
/me does the maths and is sticking with iTunes
* each to their own
yep, bittorrent is alot cheaper.. i have spent my last dime on crappy music.. I only download DJ mixes anyways, there is not one band out that I like at all... c r a p!
Timmah - keep on rockin with torrent my man... record companies get our money at things like gigs and festivals like Leeds (which rawked!) - so at least we're paying for some things!
I've bought full albums from iTunes then realized my stupidity. It was costing me more thang buying a cd from the store in most cases.
Actually, most of the time record companies don't get squat from bands touring (unless they set the tours up which only happens for the smaller bands). That's where the artists make the most money.
Also, I have bought both 128kbps and 192kbps iTunes songs. Crappy thing is you can't tell what quality it is until you buy it.
Did they add 192 recently? They've always been 128 (which is way too low with a crappy codec like AAC).
That's one thing I prefer about MSN Music - as well as their simpler Activation/Deactivation for computers. However, there are still plenty of things I don't like about buying from ANY of these stores (including MSN). One of them is price. $1 is way too much per song.
With iTMS you're getting far less than you get from a CD. So why should you be paying a higher unit price?
Do they really expect you to pay $5000 to fill your 5,000 song iPod? That's absurd.
$1 sounds cheap, but it doesn't scale. Not with the quantities of music that people expect to have available to them these days.
Personally I use Yahoo! Music Unlimited, if this push goes through im not sure if it will affect subscription prices as well?
I don't see it happening at all either... how about do away with the FN record companies, or limit how much they are allowed to make on an artists music. Damn greedy bastar@#...
iTunes was made by Americans, of course we're going to get the songs cheaper. If you Brits are so smart, why don't you create your own online music store?
you do realise that us so called no so smart brits actualy invented quite alot of stuff that you americans take advantage of everyday , like the railway system for one
anyway back on topic , its about time record companies got a good old kicking but something tells me it wont be apple that will be doing it , they will give in and drive up the prices they wont have a choice specially when contracts come up
Its like me saying the chief designer for Apple is British.. if you guys are so damn smart, why don't you get your OWN designers?
Nimrod.
If the United States Government wasn't so busy driving their currency's value into the dumps (compared to most other nations) then the situation would much better for the Canadians. At end 2002 currency values, Canadians would be paying 40% less than Americans.
I use MSN Music, actually - single songs are $.99, and almost all albums are less than $10, which is cheaper than a lot of retail stores. You just have to not care about not getting the pretty packaging.
-Spenser
Doesn't matter if consumers get rippoed of if they get that and 'stay open' does it?
tool.
its already cheaper lol
As if they have not been greedy forever and a day!
My understanding is that the artist does not make ANY money off a iTunes sale, that the song is considered a promotional, and therefor not a sale in ref to the artist's contract.
In either case, artists need a site where they can sell their tunes and get a good percentage of the sale (ie: 50+ percent) I believe that MP3s and the net will be the doom of the standard Record Label in the next 10 years. Artists will be able to self promote, or another "Record Label" type of entity will come along to allow the artist to have a fair share of their work.
Peace,
James Rose
PassionRose.com
I don't see why artists today have to put up w/ such commission when they have many other means of distributing their music without the need for a major publisher and distributor (who siphon most of their income to begin with), specifically the Internet.
If major artists that people all 'round the world simply started to have their music for sale from their own fansites (or something to that extent), I'm sure their fans would gladly follow and purchase their music off the Net.
Labels offer more to a band than studio time and CD pressing:
Promotion, gigs, merc, more promotion, interviews, CD reviews, some more promotion, tours, high quality website production, tracks on popular compilations, etc etc.
Without those things, I *assure* you any band or artist in the charts today would have failed.
How do you think CDs appear in shops, without heavy heavy promotion by labels? They don't just get magically noticed by HMV. The same goes for websites, you don't randomly google for strange potential band names.
You're the last person in the world to be talking about spin and slinging your 'crap "crap" at the other side of the fence.
Back on topic..... the problem is the recording industries greed, and once again as always they will fail to learn their lesson. Keep the digital tracks cheap, or suffer at the hands of another generation of computer goobs bent on sticking it to the man.....
Steve's in it for the iPods. Profit on the Music Store is pretty slim for Apple, and the only reason that they run it is because it helps sell iPods.
-t.y.
99c per song, added with the ease of use, is enough to sway illegal downloaders away from p2p/bittorrent. I don't think it's wise for the record companies to alter things at this point in time; They still don't have the upper hand yet, and the RIAA needs to recognize this fact.
I personally prefer buying the actual CD. I like to have the hard copy and the artwork that accompanies the CD. Of course, I rip the songs to listen to them, while the CD lies in a collection in the corner of my room. However, I always have the source at hand.
I do use p2p for the albums that are very rare, however.
Raise the price as long as you let me download .wav's
I still prefer cds too. The sound quality is much better.
1) Avoid terrible rips/poor releases from home users/release groups
2) Avoid fake files and speaker-damaging "booby traps"
3) Ability to get hot new releases instantly at 192kbs (usually)
4) Conscience relief
5) Ability to search for all songs on a compilation, not just the Top40 chart topper singles
6)[not sure about this one] Ability to preview song clips before purchase to ensure proper selection
7) Additional artist suggestions: "If you liked ____, then try..." for genre-knowledge expansion
I feel that the prices are fair as they are. I would rather create a mix cd of my favorite tracks than listen to the same artist for an entire car ride (eg.)
However, there are still CD's out there as well if one feels he prefers quality over accessibility - and sometimes online music stores just don't have the song you want.
Price increases would discourage me from downloading because the restrictions are too high and the quality is shaky enough already...if the quality were to be increased then maybe $1.25 a song would not be that bad.
1) Avoiding music with DRM
2) Avoiding music with DRM
3) Ability to get hot new relases before release at 320kbps (minimum) without DRM
4) Avoiding music with DRM
5) Ability to aquire every album or obscure song ever made by a group/artist without DRM
6) [totally sure about this one] Avoiding music with DRM
7) Avoiding music with DRM
Piracy will never die no matter what anyone tries to do about it. As far as music is concerned, people pirate it not so much because of price but because if you go and buy it you are being restricted as to what you can do with it.
My point was it exists because of the limitations that are placed on what consumers buy. Until those restrictions are lifted p2p will dominate. I buy what's useful to me. Music is useful but not when it's restricted.
Do you ever borrow a friends cd and make a copy for yourself? Ever "owned" a piece of software you didn't pay for? I bet you and most everyone on here has.
I have my opinions on things and you have yours. I don't care if you agree with it or like it or not.
Last edited by 62595 on 21 Sep 2005 - 13:58
-Spenser
If you are in Europe it is difficult to get unreleased tracks and rare songs from american artists.
-Spenser
Thru all that you lose quality.
Reasons I pirate:
1) Easier than getting up from my PC and going to the store
2) Music doesnt have DRM or any other protection
3) EVERYTHING ever recorded and released/leaked is able to be downloaded
4) New releases leak before they normally do.
5) Custom remixes made off songs in P2P
6) Free
7) No need to have ANOTHER CD laying around
The issue is that the Record Companys see that people are using iTunes and want to raise prices so they can get more money, even though there is no reason to because they are already making more money than they were.
Jobs wanting to capture more of the O/S market is called business, Apple doesn't have a large percent of the market so it's their goal to capture more of it, as is every business goal. It has nothing to do with greed, it's called surviving.
Actually it did have thought put into it, and it is connected to the subject. Why should one persons/companies ambition be another companies greed?
It will be interesting to see how this pans out, was it any other store and it probably wouldn't be such an issue but since 75% of MP3 players are apple products and apple products can only buy tracks via iTunes this will effect alot of people. I also suspect that raising the price a few cents, while it will produce negative feedback and break the $1 mark might not dampen sales too much if at all if the rise isnt large due to the fact iPod owners cant buy songs elsewhere anyway (besides instore).
However I for one believe the cost should come down. CD's in Singapore are already pretty cheap, about USD9 ~ 10. However most have anti rip crap on the disks, which makes it a pain to rip music for my portable player. I recently sent a couple of emails to EMI asking for a copy of a CD release without this crap on the cd, of course didn't get a reply. They lost a sale over that (I'm sure they care) but I still got the cd
The only reason Jobs is against piracy is becouse it takes away from his own greedy ass. No more, no less.
STV
Greedy record labels, OMG say it isn't so. With a big name and power behind Steve Jobs, maybe, just maybe the Labels and the RIAA will revevaluate their "GREEDY" position.
STV
Says a lot for their computers...