Beginning today, iTunes is implementing a new variable pricing scheme for music. After years of pricing every song at 99 cents, Apple will now charge $1.29, 99 cents, or 69 cents per track depending on its popularity. My musical tastes tend to favor the midlisters over the new hotness, so this change probably won’t affect me much. And I doubt many Lady GaGa fans will be dissuaded from buying her songs because of a thirty-cent price bump. The record labels are hoping this move will give a boost to their balance sheets, but I’m dubious. Pop music is such a fragmented industry these days; even big acts like Coldplay will never sell the ridiculous amount of records that a Michael Jackson or Pink Floyd sold in their heyday.
This kind of price variability might actually signal that the digital music market is maturing. After all, we don’t expect to go into a bookstore and expect to buy any book for $5.
When I first heard about the price change I remember thinking, “I don’t know how I feel about this — I’ll wait until somebody says something smart about it.”
Congrats — You win the prize. The book analogy is a great one.
I think pricing an MP3 over 99 cents will increase the digital theft rate of that song. A lot of people under 30 don’t believe in buying music. I can’t see that helping.