Anybody else notice that songs from iTunes now cost .69, .99, or 1.29? All the popular songs are 1.29 now so I'm guessing the labels just think lots of people will think "It's only 30 cents more, why not?" In reality, they'll end up making way more money. This very might pave the way for a serious competitor to iTunes. Do you think it was smart for Apple to allow this?
Yes. It's all a game to get the Beetles to come to iTunes. If they can make the Beetles come, which is the whole point, they won't have to worry about people leaving to Amazon or wherever. They'll gain millions of buyers.
No it's not. The new Green Day single, for example, is 99p in iTunes. You can get it on play.com for 65P!
Without willing content providers, iTunes would be nothing. So yes, in the interest of selling iPods and keeping iTunes the #1 online music store it is in Apple's best interest to not stonewall the record companies when they ask for things like price increases on hit singles.
that program crashed my computer twice, so i switched to mac and if the developers of that program were smart they would block the download of limewire pro from being downloaded from the free version of limewire....haha made me laugh when i figured out you can get the payed version free directly from the free version... oh and marlenedegrood limewire is technically not illegal, most people think it is but its not, all it is is file sharing...which is not illegal
These are both good points. Apple can attract more labels to iTunes by giving them the chance to earn a higher profit. Personally, I'm never going to buy a 1.29 song, so I'll be looking elsewhere for songs. If I'm in the minority, Apple will be making a decent amount of more money. If I'm in the majority, which I would doubt considering the monster iTunes is, Apple is pretty screwed. @brewstermax: You really think MILLIONS of people will buy if iTunes offered the beetles? Is Beetle Mania still alive and well today? I'm not suggesting anything because I honestly don't know.
Not if you have a Mac Works perfectly fine and nothing has happened to my computer yet. On this subject, I think they made a pretty dumb move. Although they'll get more money, more people will search for alternatives rather than using iTunes. I mean come on, 1.29 can get you Heavy Mach, UniWar, and so many other 0.99 apps. If you ask me, I would rather spend that money on apps and find a cheaper solution to getting music. Look at iTune's competitors. Cox Rhapsody is only 14.99 a month for unlimited songs. Amazon.com is also very cheap and so is Best Buy. The competition was already probably pretty tight due to the economy, and doing this will have more customer stray away. Bad idea Apple, bad idea...
People don't mind paying a premium for convenience. There's a reason there are close to 8,000 Walgreens and they manage to stay in business despite the fact that you can almost always buy things cheaper somewhere else. I don't mind paying an extra buck for a gallon of milk at the Walgreens a block from me as opposed to driving to the grocery store. Same thing goes for iTunes. It's a great media player, and the few cents difference in pricing doesn't make a difference to most people. iTunes is #1 in part because of how well Apple nailed it with the all-in-one experience between playing, managing, and buying media.
The "premium" track prices were a push from the record companies when renewing the itunes contracts, not apple's idea I believe. And I think it's only for more popular tracks (say, top 200 or something) It's not related to the beatles. The AppleCorps Vs Apple thing was resolved, I think it's just Sony (who I think "bought" all of michael jacksons ownership) and McCartney and whichever beatles company own the rest of the backcatalog who have put it off and working on the remastering of the old tracks before releasing it digitally (and on the new remastered cds)
One more reason to keep buying my music from emusic. Have they encoded music in itunes at a higher rate? They used to encode to a miserable and stingy 128 kbps.
Doesn't affect me as I think it's completely stupid to buy songs from iTunes, especially with their prices.
