Comments on: Apple Goes to Variable Pricing, Amazon Now A Better Deal

By: Kelsey

Kelsey — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 23:08:11 +0000

The increase will only lead to an increase of pirating. Seriously, why would someone pay 1.29 when they can easily download the music for free somewhere else. I agree that the music industry needs to find a different way to turn a profit, but doing this only allows the technologically savvy youth to fit through the loop holes. Nice try, industrious Goliath, but don’t pull Apple iTunes down with you. (Amazon, Wal-mart, etc have raised their prices as well, or so I read…) I found a video that gathers opinions from major nat’l and international media outlets…some good, some bad, but all HONEST!

http://www.newsy.com/videos/itunes_changes_its_tone/

By: So Much for Cheaper Music on Amazon. | Technologizer

So Much for Cheaper Music on Amazon. | Technologizer — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:43:11 +0000

[...] Well, it didn’t take very long for the other music stores to follow suit after iTunes’ price hike Tuesday. By late evening, both Amazon and Wal-Mart had simarily raised prices on some of their top [...]

By: pond

pond — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:16:02 +0000

Amazon is also tiered pricing, .79 to 1.29 – is this true? Did they change right along with Apple? Does that mean Amazon is following the market leader, or that this is all being controlled by the major record labels?

By: Randall

Randall — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:58:42 +0000

Richard Baguley and I just had a conversation about this over on TechVi. http://techvi.com/f

He had an interesting point that basically this cuts the real-world value of iTunes gift cards by 30%, and people who didn’t capitalize on their gift cards ahead of time are essentially screwed.

By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:56:31 +0000

I think you saw a good example of that with the U2 release that was what, $3.99 on Amazon for the whole album? I think they have the flexiblility to make more surgical strikes like that that will definitely keep me coming back and can siphon off some my apparent Apple tithing.

Still though, high price or not, it’s still signifigant for others to compete with iTunes’ path of least resistance. Until Amazon figures a way around that, they will remain a distant 2nd.

By: tced

tced — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:05:47 +0000

I have another term for variable pricing: higher prices. The recording industry has been plotting higher prices all along. They used to have a “minimum price” – the price of a CD. Then they got talked into track prices. Not a happy situation for them.
I am old enough to remember track pricing in it’s previous form – 45 rpm records. I even remember going to the music store and being able to listen to them in small booths!