[opendtv] News, OT: Apple Shifts iTunes Pricing; $0.69 Tracks MIA
- From: Kon Wilms <konfoo@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 09:13:05 -0700
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/07/238219
Can't say I told ya so..
"Steve Jobs vowed weeks ago that when iTunes shifted to a tiered price
structure in April, older tracks priced at $0.69 would outnumber the
contemporary hits that are rising to $1.29. Today, several weeks
later, iTunes made the transition. While the $1.29 tracks are
immediately visible, locating cheaper tracks is proving to be an
exercise in futility. With the exception of 48 songs that Apple has
placed on the iTunes main page, $0.69 downloads are a scarce
commodity. MP3 Newswire tried to methodically drill down to unearth
more of them only to find: 1) A download like Heart's 34-year-old song
Barracuda went up to $1.29, not down. 2) Obscure '90s Brit pop and
'50s rockabilly artists — those most likely to benefit from a price
drop — remained at $0.99. 3) Collected tracks from a cross-section of
1920s, '30s, and '40s artists all remained at $0.99. Finally, MP3
Newswire called up tracks in the public domain from an artist named
Ada Jones who first recorded in 1893 on Edison cylinder technology.
The price on all of the century-old, public-domain tracks remained at
$0.99. (The same tracks are available for free on archive.org.) The
scarcity of lower-priced tracks may reflect the fact that the labels
themselves decide which price tier they want to pursue for a given
artist; and they are mostly ignoring the lower tier. Meanwhile,
Amazon's UK site has decided to counter-promote their service by
dropping prices on select tracks to 29 pence ($0.42)."
Cheers
Kon
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