Report: Variable pricing comes to iTunes April 7

According to a report in today's Los Angeles Times, Apple's iTunes Music Store will begin offering variable pricing for single-song downloads, raising the price of the most popular tracks to $1.29 while lowering the price of other tracks to $0.69. (CNET's Greg Sandoval broke the original story when Apple announced this variable pricing plan back in January.) Some industry players quoted in the story point out that raising prices in the worst economy since the 1930s doesn't make much sense--especially since, as I've pointed out many times in the past, iTunes competes with a huge number of songs that are priced at $0.

This is especially true now: illegal file-trading has been around since the early Napster days, but there are an increasing number of free or cheap legal streaming services out there like Spotify, Imeem, Lala, and Songerize. Then again, none of these services offer what iTunes does: a simple way to buy songs and get them directly onto your iPod or iPhone. I imagine that customers will continue to use a wide range of streaming services to discover new music, but when they actually want to buy, iTunes will remain the default choice.

Beginning Apr. 7, many of these selections will probably cost $1.29.

(Credit: Screenshot)

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[Vegaman_Dan]

Somehow I don't see prices going *down* much. $1.69 is too close to 99 cents that I expect people wouldn't blink at the higher price.

[ckh1272]

Ummm...did I miss something?? $1.69?? It clearly says $1.29 for some new releases and $.69 for some older selections. I guess some people only see what they want to see IMO.

[kelmon]

Will I continue to use iTunes once variable pricing comes into effect? Sure. Will I buy tracks at the new higher prices? Well, that remains to be seen but unless I absolutely want the track desperately then I am inclined to suggest that I'll simply wait until it drops in price.

[sparrowhyperion]

I wish the writers of these articles would not make blanket assumptions and then fail to back them up with any reasonable explanation. I don't see iTunes increasing their customer base any with these new prices. Sure, they cut prices on some songs, but only the least popular ones. For the most popular, people will end up either paying more, or going somewhere that doesn't gouge you for prices. Then again, Apple is known for it's over-inflated high prices and it doesn't seem like this will change any time soon.

[FrostDust]

If there's a bright side to this, is that it will encourage shoppers on iTunes to discover less popular music. If the newest release from [pop sensation of the month] costs the highest price, users may go bargain hunting and buy decent music from artists who may have simply not had a large enough marketing campaign behind them.

Of course, this would work if the pricing tiers were based on percentages (top 10% is 1.29, bottom 10% is .69, for example) . If it was based on selling over or under an arbitrary numbers of sales, I see prices simply going up on average for Apple's whole catalog.

[Mulder_s2]

I'll be interested to see what happens when this rolls out in April. I believe it's just the record lables being greedy. They already get most of the money from itunes music sales anyway, i think it's $.70 for every $1. I tend to buy full albums instead of just a 1 song so the quesiton I pose is will this also increase the $9.99 album price as well? I certainly hope not because if it does. I'll be going back to Amazon MP3 store.

[ringaround]

One thing I would really like to see Itunes do is allow unlimited downloads of songs I have purchased. Why can't they be available whenever just as my books with ereader are in my library forever? I find this little issue annoying and wish they would change their ways.

[Assais]

The hell with iTunes and all the boring iPod owners who enjoy being like everyone else, I'm all for Amazon MP3 which is cheaper and compatible with my player and everything else

[azzuro2006]

There needs to be variability in pricing but particularly at the lower end. I think its ridiculous that for instance, a track on a comedy audio album is worth $0.99. And for movies, its even more ridiculous....old movies like an old Woody Allen movie rents and sells for the same price as say, Matrix. How many woody allen movies would they sell compared to movies like that. They should sell those typs of "niche" media at lower prices. They have special offers every week, but its for a very small number of music and videos.

[cmsell]

Raising prices in this economy - I don't think so. I'll stick with downloading just from amazon. I love their daily mp3 deal. I usually get two or three complete albums for between $1 and $3. I just track that each day and get fantastic deals, especially compared to iTunes now. I use the following page and gadget to make sure I never miss the deal:

http://www.frugalgadgets.com/amazon-mp3-daily-deal.php