Apple faces showdown with music industry over iTunes

This is just unbelievable. These music executives love to bite the hands that feed them. Not only do they steal profits from their own artists & not only did they refuse for years to sell singles instead of over-priced albums, but if it wasn't for Apple, there wouldn't even be an online market for music downloads right now. Any music executive who agrees with this decision to raise prices should be taken out back and shot. These music executives are nothing more than leeches, sucking the blood off of other humans.

fight this Apple!! ... don't let these greedy #%$^ win .... makes me sick ...

If some prices go up, expect 0.99 to be the basement price. (i.e. your not going to get a discount on older less popular songs because 0.99 is the discounted price!)

Major labels will die by their own hands, and I will gladly watch them do it. Fight the consumer and die. Embrace the consumer and thrive. The labels need to stop trying to rewind the clock. It's not 1998 anymore! At least Apple knows this.

This is bass-ackwards - and will be a departure from scaled pricing as we know it. CD prices do vary - but they don't do this by raising the popular songs - with CDs they do this by DISCOUNTING the older stuff - ditto DVDs - what makes them think anyone will buy (literally or figuratively) this nonsense? They're relying on the laws of supply and demand - but there is only so much elasticity to any market - and 50% increase is pushing it. Especially when there's still free versions of everything available. I love the quote about Apple having two revenue streams and the record company having only one. You're a businessman - diversify, take a risk on your own nickel, not ours.

col·lu·sion n. A secret agreement between two or more parties for a fraudulent, illegal, or deceitful purpose.

www.wikipedia.org In the study of economics, collusion takes place within an industry when rival companies cooperate for their mutual benefit. Collusion most often takes place within the market form of oligopoly, where the decision of a few firms to collude can significantly impact the market as a whole. Cartels are a special case of overt collusion, also known as tacit collusion.

It's quite possible that the record industry is setting itself up to be biatch-slapped in court.

I don't know why Apple just doesn't become a label itself. Worldwide distribution and let the bands cover some of the costs themselves. Most bands have websites already that they use to distribute samples. Instead, they could use iTunes as a framework to sell their music. The only problem I forsee with this is the relatively poor quality of iTunes downloads. But it would be a big positive for new bands or old bands trying to break with the industry.

There's 2 real reasons why this will never happen. Though it would be nice if it could.

1. Apple Records Inc. will sue AND WIN in court if Apple ventured into this territory. 2. Record labels do a lot more than just allow music downloads. To mimic the labels would require BILLIONS of dollars to even put their first foot forward, and it would possibly be a decade before any profit was seen. Such a move would be severely frowned on by share holders.

Because they would get sued by the Beatles? Anyway, Apple should continue to do what Apple does, innovate and design great hardware and software, not become a label.

Being in the music industry, I have a huge love/hate relationship with the industry. Sure I can see where they are screwing up in their thinking. The increased prices that they are talking about actually is only because Apple's iPods only work with iTunes, unless you rip stuff yourself. See to the music industry if ALL of the online music stores were compatible with the iPod, they could sell more music and would not be pushing for a price increase. But Apple wants to keep a closed system, their pergoative and I agree with them, in order to control the quality of the user experience and isn't that why a lot of have been supoorting the Mac for over 20 years anyway? I digress...should be interesting to see what happens in the long run. The one area that makes me nervous is Microsoft is entering the music game and they'll screw that up the same way they screwed up IE.

Personally, I can't use iTunes because of the crappy 128 rips. I work in a nightclub and those things sound horrible on a big system. Plenty of sites where I can get electronica at 320!

To change the pricing structure would be an incredibly foolish mistake. I recently read a statistic that each iTunes user only downloads 9 songs per month, on average. If the prices suddenly soar to $1.50 on the popular, most-purchased songs, you think even that relatively low number will remain that high?

Music downloading remains in its infancy. If the record companies want to go ahead and kill the only solution to their problem at the moment, they can be my guest. Apple has other ways of turning a profit. I just hope they realize that in this case, the long-term is far more important than the short-term profits gain they *might* experience.