A Different Perspective

Jimmy Iovine, the chairman of Interscope Records, Universal’s biggest division, told the newspaper: “We need to convert a lot more people to the habit of buying music online. I don’t think a way to convert more people is to raise the price.”

At least one of the record companies is making some sense. The others seem to be pressuring Apple to raise the cost of songs based on popularity. So you could be paying (or not paying) 2-3 bucks for a really popular song.

So are they going to raise the cost of really popular albums? To my knowledge, though I haven’t purchased a physical CD in a couple of years, they all pretty much come out at a standard price. Some go on sale almost immediately, though, but it doesn’t actually seem to be based on popularity. Some of the hottest sellers go on sale right away.

Any way, I’m pretty much done buying individual songs on iTunes any way. The couple of times I’ve done it, I wished I had purchased the whole album. But since I’ve already spent the whopping 99 cents, I don’t want to pay for something I’ve already bought. Stupid, I know, it’s just 99 cents. But it’s in my head.

I’m certainly not paying more than 99 cents for an individual song at this point in time. I’d probably just go back to my logic of “it’s not stealing if they’re not losing anything.” Or, “They weren’t going to get my money, so there’s no loss on their part.”

For my own defense of past downloading habits, when I found an album I really loved, I bought it. I never spent a lot on music, as I mostly listened to radio. In the day, I spent much more on worship CD’s, but I just listened to the radio for all other music.

Due to the price savings of buying albums on download, I’ve purchased The Killers, Dashboard Confessional (A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar… for just 5.95), Spamalot (hillarious songs from the musical), and some Ben Folds over the past few months. Honestly, had they not been available via iTunes for cheaper than CD prices, I would’ve just listened to internet radio for free. I love somafm.com‘s indiePopRocks.

So any way, if the prices go up, I go back to a radio only existence, internet or airwaves, for awhile. And maybe I’ll download a track here or there P2P. I don’t know.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 29th, 2005 at 9:17 am and is filed under Art, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.