Apple Raises Price On Many iTunes Songs
The new 3-tier pricing structure for songs on iTunes went into effect today. This means older, less popular tunes may drop to 69 cents (these seem to be few and far between at the moment), but it also means newer hits will cost $1.29 while most songs will still cost 99 cents. According to the New York Times, thirty-three of the top 100 songs now sell at $1.29, with the rest still going for 99 cents.
The only real upside here is that iTunes is dropping DRM once and for all (for music, at least). But beware: the files are still in AAC format, meaning they’ll need to be converted to play on some MP3 players.
Note that Amazon’s increasingly popular MP3 store also sells some tracks for more than 99 cents. The best strategy may be to check both places for each song you want to buy, although it’s likely that many of the same songs will be premium-priced at both stores.
When every new song can be easily had for free from bittorrent sites as a high-bitrate mp3 file, I’m not sure a new pricing structure that costs the typical user more is a great business move. Given the current economic climate, this price hike makes even less sense.
Of course, Apple didn’t have a solid business strategy for making this move — it was purely a concession to the recording labels in exchange for ditching DRM.
