iTunes: Still the same old tune
Kevin Maney has written an excellent article about why iTunes, Apple’s 99 cents per song music service hasn’t really changed anything about the artist/label/consumer relationship. 99 cents per song is still expensive, and the artist is still only getting low single digit percentages of music sales.
A new site, Magnatune, aims to change this, or at least offer an example of a better system. With Magnatune (a record label / download service), an artist simply submits music to the label and gets 50% of the proceeds. But the part that really impress me was the flexible prices. A downloadable album might be priced at $8, but you can pay less (as little as $5) or more if you want. And here’s the kicker: the average price people opt to pay is $8.93
When the price is already affordable and you KNOW the artist is benefiting from your purchase, you are much more likely to be willing to pay more!
Yahoo! News Story: Apple’s iTunes might not be only answer to ending piracy
