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What Isn’t Clear
By ViRGE on 4/8/2009 11:35:57 AM , Rating: 2

No, it's pretty clear that the labels are demanding a larger cut of sales (or rather they're forcing price increases). Apple was the only one big enough to keep the labels at bay, which resulted in things like Amazon getting to go DRM-free faster in order to try to destabilize Apple.

Something (I suspect it to be the matter of cellular music sales and being able to go DRM-free all the way) finally made Apple capitulate to the labels demands. Once Apple fell, no one else was strong enough to resist the demands of the labels.

None of these guys are making any money off of music sales, and WalMart may very well be losing money via loss-leader pricing.

RE: What Isn’t Clear
By TomZ on 4/8/2009 11:42:24 AM , Rating: 4
I doubt that very much. I keep hearing that nobody is making any money from these downloads, but I just can't believe it. The entire cost structure for digital music is super-low, from manufacturing to inventory to distribution. As of mid-last-year, Apple had sold 5 billion songs on iTunes, which translates to about $5B in revenue. Somebody's making some money there.

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RE: What Isn’t Clear
By tallcool1 on 4/8/2009 11:54:01 AM , Rating: 5
What isn't clear is how does the movie industry manage to sell us a DVD of a blockbuster movie for the same price as a the recording industry sells an album (CD) which costs substantially less to make, yet they complain they are not making money?

RE: What Isn’t Clear
By DASQ on 4/8/2009 12:11:25 PM , Rating: 4
Because those damned spinners aren't going to buy themselves, yo

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RE: What Isn’t Clear
By AntiM on 4/8/2009 12:52:16 PM , Rating: 2
This article(from 2005)

says that the record industry receives somewhere between $0.65 and $.85 per song file (different sources quote different numbers). The rest goes to iTunes who picks up the tab for everything.

Steve Jobs has staunchly defended the $.99 per song model, so I doubt that anyone other than the labels are responsible for the pricing changes.

The labels are still trying to live in the past when they made enormous profit margins off the sale of CDs.

I have nothing against them raising their prices, the market will determine whether or not they succeed. They can charge whatever they want for their product, people don't have to buy it, and there are certainly other ways of acquiring it.

They can continue to try to market their shoestrings to a world that's wearing loafers. The labels are desperately trying to remain relevant in a world that doesn't really need them anymore.

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