Way to go, Steve. You've got my vote.

Song prices do not need to be lowered--at least not across the board. One dollar (in the US) is a good price point economically and psychologically. Lowering it probably wouldn't increase sales as much as raising the prices would hurt sales.

You tell 'em Stevie...he gets my write-in vote next election

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Guest wrote:
You tell 'em Stevie...he gets my write-in vote next election

Steve is a resident of California and Governor Swartzenagger recently announced that he will run for re-election next year. Jeez Arnold's ratings are lower than Apple's market share.

Okay on topic. I would probably buy even more from the iTunes Music Store if they lowered the prices, but as dhp said in the above post $0.99 is a good price point.

I think Steve hit the nail on the head. I believe he has his pulse on the market. $0.99 US is a fantastic price point. For the consumer, it is inexpensive and hits that "it's less than a dollar per song" mental barrier that it needs to. For the industry and Apple it provides them with ample profit off of a "zero-inventory" product. It is truly a win-win-win situation. He is also right in that raising prices willdrive people to piracy. I sincerely hope that the record labels take a hint.

I guess there's no bottom to the depth of record company greed. Money for nothing, yet they want more. Typical.

I think their greedy, but there's a control issue as well. Steve is too straightforward and honest to fit in with the music industry. They want control of the prices so they can advertise "Britney Spears--22 cents per song!", and then charge $1.50 for the songs everyone wants to hear. They know how to squeeze money out of their customers, and that's all they know how to do. They didn't get into the music business just so someone could "give" them a living (like Steve is doing), they got into it so they could enjoy the hunt, the kill, and the feast.

I may be a bit cynical. Does it show?

...about how the major labels control music distribution. It is totally vicious.

Of course, the labels switched long ago from actual music into media loss-leaders for the pornography industry, so who's surprised?

Record companies charged $17 to $19 for CD's for years before anyone realized CD's cost pennies to manufacture. Those three and four digit proffit margins are hard to give up, even when hackers have figured out how to get them down to almost zero.

<I>One dollar (in the US) is a good price point economically and psychologically.</I><P>
Not for me it's not. I've bought three or four songs total. For a quarter I'd get all my music that way. And no, a quarter is not ridiculous. It's very profitable. I would *love* to get in that business. It just doesn't fit with the current way of doing things - spending absurd amounts developing "acts." But sooner or later it *has* to happen. The market can be controlled for a while, but its force is like gravity. It's not strong, but it never stops pulling. And sooner or later, it gets its way.

I think that iTunes Music Store should allow music execs to experiment with pricing on a smaller scale to see how consumers react to it.

Whether consumers go back to piracy or not doesn't hurt Apple. It makes little or no profit from iTunes Music Store. Most of the price already goes to the labels. The rest pays for card transaction fees and broadband delivery services from Akamai. It's a loss leader for the iPod franchise. And iPods will store pirated mucis indiscriminately.

So, if consumers buy less, the labels will hurt the most. Let them experiment with pricing but charge them an admin fee for the trouble.

I wouldn't mind paying a buck for newer stuff but look at the older music. I can still buy a 20-25 song CD of older hits for about 6-8 dollars. What's needed here is a 2 tier pricing program. 1 for new releases and 1 for older music. I'm not giving someone a dollar a song for music they aren't even paying musicians like Johnny Lee Hooker's estate royalties on either. The music business is ran by a bunch of greedy Ba$^%rds. Go get em Steve!

Steve,
Way to go! It's amazing how these guys have no conscience and act as if we're going to HAVE to do business with them. It should be obvious that there is always going to be a work around to share music if this is what we can expect from them. I'd like to see .25cents a song for a start. China and others will join the frenzy and their customer base will go up by millions upon millions. Show them the way Steve!!!!

.99 per song and you STILL can't search by record label....? and for 9.99 an album the artowrk and liners should come with the d/l.

and why aren't the longer songs available without the album? it defeats the purpose of buying music online.

the eMusic.com model has it going...

Steve Jobs needs to eat his own words.

The record industry never fails to amaze me. First, for those of you old enough to remember this, there was the transition from LPs to CDs. At the time, a new LP cost approximately $7.99. When CDs came out, they cost approximately $12.99 and all of us audiophiles screamed about the price. The record industry's response to the uproar over the price increase was that "this is new technology and you're paying for the development of it and for the (new) infrastructure to support it. Once those costs have been recovered and CD sales eclipse LP sales, a CD will cost LESS than an LP." I'm paraphrasing here, but that was the gist of their message. And I do remember how expensive blank CD media were when they first came out. I used to pay approximately $5 per blank disc. Now they're under $0.15 a disc. But instead of the cost of CDs dropping, as the music companies had promised us, new CDs list for around $17 or $18. There is no reasonable justification for this. Steve Jobs was being uncharacteristically polite and diplomatic when he said "a little greedy."

Recently, one of the record company executives made a comment (regarding the iPod and the ITMS) that he didn't think it was fair that Apple was making more profit on the iPod than the music companies were making on the songs on the iPod (again, I'm paraphrasing). My first thought when I heard that comment was, "Did you (Mr. Record Company Executive) develop the hardware or software for the iPod? Why would you be entitled to profit from a device that you didn't design, develop, and build? Why do you have such a sense of entitlement? Were you not held enough as a child? When was the last time your company came up with something innovative?"

The fact is, the failure of the Record Industry to keep up with technology is rapidly making it clear to everyone that they're little more than middle-men who are (with good reason) worried about their future. If they plan to survive, they'd better come up with something more positive, interesting, and innovative than lawsuits and grumbling. At this point, I'd love to see them cut out completely so that the best songs and artists (as decided by music listeners, not by a bunch of old fat cats in a board room) make lots of money and the majority of that money goes to the artists.

Well, Steve certainly has drawn a line in the sand. He knows the labels are still making money, he's giving it to them. The other music download services are chomping at the bit to knock off iTunes and the iPod, yet, how can they do that? He's already got the bare bottom price the labels will even agree to. So they can't really undercut Apple in this case. Unless consumers take a big whoop ass beating to the head, become stupid, and wake up one day and say, "I think I'd rather rent my music from a subscription service", Apple really does have controlling interest of the market...all by consumers choosing..no funny business.

Now that's market dominance.

I use iTMS to check out music (not new music--I'm way too old for the new stuff). If I find an album with several songs I want, I make a note (save it on my PDA) and go to a really good locally-owned CD store. First, I check the used CDs, then then new CDs. If I find CDs that I might want, I mentally calculate (easy at $1/song, $10 for most albums) what it would cost to get the songs I want on iTMS. If the CD is priced less than that, I buy the CD. As a result, I've bought many MORE CDs per month since I started using iTMS than I did before. (In the last month, I've bought 7 CDs, but no songs on iTMS.)

Since a lot of what I get is old (somewhat old, like 50s-60s rock, or REALLY old, like Renaissance music), I do check the compilations/collections, like the Billboard series, which are usually reasonably priced. I've also bought a "few" songs on iTMS: my Purchased Music list has over 1100 songs. (I've spent less than $1100, as some were albums with 15-20 songs.)

One great thing about iTMS: it lets me check out different versions of the same song by the same artist, including live performances and remastered versions.

Reality Check said the instant the recording labels wanted a price-hike, Jobs would give in. There goes another one of his "predictions" down the toilet.

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Guest wrote:
I think that iTunes Music Store should allow music execs to experiment with pricing on a smaller scale to see how consumers react to it.

Whether consumers go back to piracy or not doesn't hurt Apple. It makes little or no profit from iTunes Music Store. Most of the price already goes to the labels. The rest pays for card transaction fees and broadband delivery services from Akamai. It's a loss leader for the iPod franchise. And iPods will store pirated mucis indiscriminately.

So, if consumers buy less, the labels will hurt the most. Let them experiment with pricing but charge them an admin fee for the trouble.

Uh, thats a BAD idea for two reasons:

1) The statement "Whether consumers go back to piracy or not doesn't hurt Apple" is a FALSE one. No, Apple doesn't make that much money off of iTunes directly, they make money off of selling iPods. Suppose you raise iTunes prices, what happens then? Two things:

A) Younger and/or more tech-savvy folks go back to the P2P networks, and piracy goes up
B) Those not fitting into group A and who want to get their music legally end up buying LESS MUSIC. Which means they have less need for the capacity of an iPod. iPod sales take a hit.

A healthy iTunes does = healthy iPod sales, at least to some extent.

2) You would REALLY want the music industry execs to set pricing? The same gang of clowns who almost ran the industry into the ground? Yeah, that'll work.

These guys do NOT have a vision, all they have is greed. They do NOT know what they're doing when it comes to the digital distribution of music, they've proven this over and over and over again. Jobs doesn't want to let them take the wheel and run the ship aground, and frankly, no one sane can blame him. 80

Actually lowering the price WOULD absolutely help the industry make more profits. Its obvious with how many people are switching to things like Yahoo Music ($5 dollars/mo unlimited downloads) and Napster ($10/mo unlimited) The truth is that they HAVE to lower their prices soon if they are going to compete with such websites as these...

This excessive grab for the all mighty dollar is not just in the music industry but T.V., sports and especially the movie industry. But back to music about five or six years ago I saw an article in the San Diego Tribune that said there was an ongoing investigation into price fixing in the music industry. There were at least five or six labels under investigation and then, just like Caesar Sosai, Poof, it vanished. A lot like the whole Microsoft law suite. My guise it had something to do with a new administration coming. Well when you have that kind of money and power you can wait it out. Any way the other problem are young consumers these days are not as thrifty and savvy as their parents and grandparents. Having to deal with a depression and a major world war can do that for you. Well as a result this new generation is getting reamed left and right and gobbling up every new gadget that is marketed at them. And so the basic laws of supply and demand and open competition leading to better prices for consumers seems to be a thing of the past. So think before you spend.