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Price war Amazon launches 69-cent MP3 store for top-selling tunes
- danilocampos 15y agoIt's about time. Now let's see the same trend in eBook pricing. Completely inflated for the moment.
- apress 15y agoTough for them to do anything about that because of agency pricing imposed by all the major publishers (even Random House recently got on board). Not sure why that's not collusion, but there you go. Separately, with free cloud locker storage and now lower prices, should anyone be buying songs from iTunes anymore?
- danilocampos 15y agoYeah, let the authors sidestep the publishers as time goes on. They'll incur less overhead (dozens of unnecessary salaries that don't exist), keep more money and sell their product cheaper. The publishers will have to fall into line and sell the product at a price more in line with its value.
- bkudria 15y agoThe problem is, that is often throwing out the baby with the bathwater: editors. I think self-publishing will only take off after editors begin going freelance.
- rubergly 15y agoI think you're ignoring the fact that there's much more to publishers than just printing a physical copy of a book and shipping it to shelves. There's marketing, editing, screening, etc. Think what looking for books would be like if there was no quality screening or editing and you had to wade through an online catalog of thousands of books of crap just to have the off chance of happening to see a quality book.
- danilocampos 15y agoOh, sure, that's a valuable service. But it's definitely one that's bloated by way more salaries in the current model than are really needed. Moreover, this is the internet age. People develop direct relationships with people who write things they like. You don't need a publisher to tell you that you'll want to read, say, Paul Graham's book.
- ugh 15y agoThis only affects all the popular crap and cloud locker storage is not available in Europe.
- orijing 15y agoMaybe Amazon can have a publishing label that hires freelance editors. Amazon already handles a large portion of the publishing role, which is marketing.
- wccrawford 15y agoSeems to me that iTunes captured the market because of the amazing integration with music devices and not the price point. Until someone beats them at that, I think things will continue as they are. I'm not an Apple fanboy by any means, but nobody else has produced a device that makes it so easy to find, buy, and listen to music on the go. Amazon's Cloud Player is a good start, since it eliminates having to load the music on to the device, but the player still needs some polish.
- gigawatt 15y agoI buy music almost exclusively through Amazon now solely because of the DRM nonsense iTunes puts on its files. I have several albums that, when I try to play them on my media computer through iTunes home sharing, gives me the "This album is not authorized to play on this computer. Please deactivate one of your authorized computers to add it to this one." Problem is, that 2 of the authorized computers are in the scrap heap now, and the other ones I still use. Whatever convenience buying music directly through my iPhone would offer is more than canceled out by this inconvenience. I'll admit that I'm not the kind of music consumer that buys single mp3s though — full album or nothing for me — so I'm biased in that way.
- mediamaker 15y agomaybe "deauthorize all" and re-auth the computers you still use
- gigawatt 15y agoI'm sure there's a quick fix for the iTunes purchased albums I still have, but the long-term solution is definitely to avoid purchasing from iTunes. For me, at least.
- duskwuff 15y agoAs the iTunes Music Store hasn't used DRM since January 2009, no long-term solution is necessary. Just don't travel back in time and you'll be fine. :)
- cabose07 15y agoI wonder why they settled on '69'.
- neuroelectronic 15y agoI think both are losing out to the subscription services and streaming. They should consider buying up one of these companies that offer huge selection for a low price each month.