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Price as Signal: The recording industry is lying about why they want different prices (2005)
- notaddicted 18y agoThere is an extra slash on the end of the link.
- mechanical_fish 18y agoThe proper link: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/11/18.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/11/18.html I remember this article well. This hypothesis would explain why variable pricing has arrived on iTunes now: It was a quid pro quo to convince the music industry to let Apple sell the 100% DRM-free music that it needs to sell in order to compete with up-and-comers like Amazon.
- ambition 18y agoLet's accept the assumption that iTunes pricing doesn't obey the rule of lower price implying greater volume. For the theory to hold up, iTunes would have to represent a significant share of an artist's total revenues. Otherwise the artist wouldn't be bothered by a decrease in iTunes sales volumes. But! As the importance of iTunes sales grows, an artist's incentive to keep a record label as distributor diminishes. Any artist can list themselves on iTunes - why would they share revenue with an evil record company if they don't need help with distribution and marketing?