Tuesday, January 6, 2009

YOU LACK THE ONE THING THAT IS DEVOTION: The WSJ is reporting that Apple either will be announcing or already has announced (depending on the MacWorld schedule, which is something I don't monitor) changes to the iTunes pricing structure. Rather than selling all songs for 99 cents, the company will move to a three-tiered system, whereby the most popular songs will go for $1.29, others for 99 cents, and others (supposedly the "vast majority") for 69 cents.

So when you decide that OMG, I have to buy that treacley AI single the very minute it goes on sale after the confetti finishes falling into the winner's hair, the privilege will cost you $1.29, but presumably my download of Soup Dragons' Divine Thing, which I heard in the gym last night for the first time in ages and which I can't believe I didn't download back when I was creating a sweeping digital music library of every song I'd ever heard via Napster a wholly legit music-sharing platform, will go down to a mere 69 cents.

Will this change your music purchasing behavior in any way?

(edited to add: Less relevant to me, but likely more relevant to others, are a couple of other forthcoming changes: (1) elimination of digital rights management (aka the annoying thing about iTunes that restricts the number of times you can copy a song purchased on iTunes and which kinds of devices you can play the song on) and (2) procurement of licenses to sell music directly over the air to the iPhone.)

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