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iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed

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ValerioB
04/07/09

In reply to iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed
Wait... Are people still paying for music because they believe there isn't an alternative?

Or is it because they are scared to get 'caught'.
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Kaiser-Machead
04/07/09

@ValerioB: Or, perhaps people are paying for music because of a consistency in quality and download speed. If an album is not as popular and doesn't have as many seeders, it can take hours to download, more than that if it's a particularly large album and higher bit rate. There's a great deal of value in the convenience that paid online music provides, that being speed and reliability.

Fuck torrents.
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Camelot!
04/07/09

In reply to iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed
does the artist see more of this money or apple?
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Kaiser-Machead
04/07/09

@courtneywoah: Hard to determine, but in either case, if Apple makes more money than the artists do per song, this is squarely the fault of the labels. Apple has to pay for the costs of facilitating their online store, like storage, bandwidth, and so forth. They make roughly 30% off of each sale and so make little overhead. The label gets the majority of the profits, and it's very likely that the artist gets a smaller fraction of that percentage.
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DesignHobo
04/07/09

In reply to iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed
I'm so glad I never jumped on the iPod bandwagon! I'll stick to my normal MP3 player in which is cost me NADA to upload songs to from anything =)
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Kaiser-Machead
04/07/09

@DesignHobo: You do know that iPods can play regular generic mp3 files, yes?
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the_Sleepwalker
04/07/09

In reply to iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed
Steve Jobs, you broke my heart. Amazon knows how to take care of me.
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illpacin0
04/07/09

In reply to iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed
Here's the problem with all this...

So a new album will likely cost $1.29/track. If there're 12 songs on the album you'll be paying over $15 for less than CD quality digital copies of the album.

So what's the benefit in going all through iTunes if you like to buy the entire album? Do they still do a reduced price if buying the entire album?
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Kaiser-Machead
04/07/09

@illpacin0: After a brief browsing, it seems that album prices have not gone up, or at least not noticeably. Either way, buying the whole album is still much cheaper per song.
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Kaiser-Machead was starred Kaiser-Machead was unstarred

Mike Delozier
04/07/09

In reply to iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed
Just another reason why Apple rips people off for everything they sell them.

Long live torrents... thats as cheap as you get.
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Kaiser-Machead
04/07/09

@Mike Delozier: Music and movies are the only things Apple sell with minimal overhead compared to the rest of the their sales. The music and video content are just fronts for their iPod hardware. It actually does them more harm than good to have tiered pricing, and they know this, which is why they pushed to get lower consistent pricing across the board in the past.
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Kaiser-Machead
04/07/09

In reply to iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed
What I don't understand is, after all of the Giz article about the RIAA and their repeated attempts to play hardball with Apple, people still assume that Apple is the one that decides to have tiered pricing on their content, even after pushing to get a solid universal pricing in the library. They had to cave before when they started releasing iTunes Plus, but then was able to get the price pushed down when the store was being reformatted to entirely DRM-free. Now they'll have to cave again and try to play nice with the labels, who pick on Apple just a bit more, because Apple also tends to pick on them (but they most certainly deserve it. the fucks). The reason Amazon and others haven't gone through this yet is because Amazon and others aren't as big. Why waste your time struggling with Amazon, Zune Marketplace et al, when you can use them to screw with Apple and try to convince them to go your way?
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Takamofo
04/07/09

In reply to iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed
Seriously WTF. Hot Fuss by The Killers is almost five years old and songs like Somebody Told Me, Mr. Brightside, and All These Things That I've Done are $1.29!
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DustyButt™
04/07/09

In reply to iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed
If you listen to steaming piles of shit like "Boom Boom Pow" or anything by Flo Rida you deserve to pay more.
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John Herrman
04/07/09

@DustyButt: This is the closest thing to a positive side to this. My purchases are still all 99c, as far as I can tell.
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Samifumi
04/07/09

In reply to iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed
Oxymoron of the day = gently screwed
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ALT
04/07/09

@Samifumi: You don't always HAVE to fuck her hard. In fact, sometimes, that's not right, to do.
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stre
04/07/09

@ALT: sometimes you've got to make some loooooove, and fuckin' give her some smoochies toooooo.
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Monty
04/07/09

@stre: Damn it - I knew I was doing it wrong.
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madog
04/07/09

@Samifumi: "Undeservingly anally raped", there, I fixed that for ya.
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rcast1986
04/07/09

In reply to iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed
Meh! Who cares that Apple is up to their usual tricks and treating consumers like shit?? No matter, Zune suxz0rz lol!
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Jim Topoleski
04/07/09

@rcast1986: Apple is up to no tricks. RIAA members set the new prices, no Apple.
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rcast1986
04/07/09

@Jim Topoleski: Uhh, then why is it only affecting the iTunes store?

I was under the impression prices were changing because of DRM-Free. That and greed.
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phoomp
04/07/09

@rcast1986:

It's only affecting the iTunes store because the RIAA members are trying to break the iTunes monopoly over music sales.
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ahow628
04/07/09

@phoomp: Monopoly? I haven't used iTunes for months. All my music comes from Amazon mp3. No song >$.99 and most popular songs are $.69-.89. I'm not sure what everyone thinks the big deal is. Use Amazon.
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Kaiser-Machead
04/07/09

@ahow628: I believe he meant monopoly in the looser sense of the word. You haven't used iTunes lately, but that doesn't stop it from being the #1 online retailer of music.

When Amazon gets larger, watch the RIAA turn on them as well.
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ahow628
04/07/09

@Kaiser-Machead: I'm not sure what you mean by the "looser sense" of monopoly. Monopoly implies that there is not a viable substitute. Just because they have a huge market share doesn't mean there are a monopoly. Not even close. Furthermore, I would say that Amazon mp3 is not only a viable substitute, it is a superior substitute: lower cost at equal or higher quality.
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madog
04/07/09

@ahow628: Because this is the internet, and we can male up words and shit. Regardless of that, we also have varying degrees of what a word actually means.

SNARF!
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rockhopper
04/07/09

In reply to iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed
You actually listen to this crap? What are you, 14 years old?
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John Herrman
04/07/09

@rockhopper: On this here internet, see, sometimes we do things for humorous effect.
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Kaiser-Machead
04/07/09

@rockhopper: @John Herrman:

I can't believe you didn't take the opportunity to say Fuck you penguin!
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Nabeel
04/07/09

@rockhopper:

I can't see why people imply the term "are you x years old?" ( where x = young age ) when they have no other ways to troll.

I'm 14 and I take serious offense to that. All I can say is, grow up.
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92BuickLeSabre
04/07/09

@Nabeel: You deserve a heart for that last line.

I'm not going to give one out right now, but it doesn't mean that you don't deserve it.
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strider_mt2k
04/07/09

In reply to iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed
Nothing is happening to you that you aren't allowing to happen.
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Xeno
04/07/09

@strider_mt2k: I'm starting to grow Grey hairs, does that count?
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madog
04/07/09

@Xeno wishes there was a preview button: You let that happen to you, you filthy old slob.

Really doesn't make any sense now that you mention it...
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David Mc Ginley
04/07/09

In reply to iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed
Sure artists/labels can charge what they like for a CD in a shop (RRP Pricing), its unfair to let another company decide what price gets charged for their good. Even if what is charges now is still WAY too much for a track.
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Purple Dave
04/07/09

@David Mc Ginley:
The downside to this is that it will help bolster the pop music "industry". Word is that once single-track purchases became available, their sales fell off a cliff because their fans only care about the "latest, greatest" and buy all the hit tracks, but you can't sell a whole CD full of duds just because you put a #1 hit on it. Basically, they've been surviving off of ringtones for the last few years (if you've ever wondered why it costs more for a 5-second clip than it does for the whole song...).

Basically, they _need_ that extra $0.30 to survive...which is why I'm well and truly pissed that Apple caved and gave it to them.
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xair
04/07/09

In reply to iTunes Tiered Pricing Goes Live, We Get Gently Screwed
That sucks, but what were we expecting from apple anyway?...

Anyway John... did you have to bring up Yanni and Vanilla Ice?... almost made me puke!... Please warn of shocking content next time!
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UnseenLlama
04/07/09

@xair: Expecting from Apple? Why don't you look towards the record companies my friend. They are the ones in control of the pricing now.
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Beastage
04/07/09

@UnseenLlama:

Oh really, so why Apple are the only to do this?!

The record company excuse is growing thin.
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Kaiser-Machead
04/07/09

@Beastage: Part of the reason being that the record companies are trying to play harder with Apple than with others, for the same reason that the iTunes library went DRM-free much later than the likes of Amazon, and why Universal Vivendi was threatening to take content off the store. It's a dick move, and pretty senseless, since during all this power struggling, they were offering the stuff at the prices that Apple was pushing for through other distribution channels anyway, just to fuck with Apple.
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