Buck Twenty-Nine Fail
About a year ago, Amazon.com raised the prices on some of their MP3 offerings to $1.29. Previously, songs were offered in the $0.89 to $0.99price range individually, and less when buying entire albums.
This was a move mirrored by Apple and other online music sales due to price hikes and retail price demands from record labels
I was a big fan of Amazon MP3, and this price hike greatly saddened me. It also changed my music consumption habits, or rather reverted them. I’ll still buy a $0.99 song from Amazon, but if the offering isn’t available at that price point, I will break the law and download the song — often the entire album, because that’s just as easy — for free.
The music industry continues to slowly dig it’s own grave.
April 18th, 2010 at 09:21:54 pm
I too have noticed that digital music & video is often being priced above digitizable shrink wrapped bit versions of the same. Sure, I could go out and purchase a copy of the media on disk and rip it for my personal use, but when the publisher create barriers & inconveniences to being a customer, I am likely to just pirate something or find something else to watch. There is no lack of quality content out there, so you better make it damn cheap and easy for me to purchase and watch yours.
I have similar feelings about ebooks, where publishers have recently started releasing ebooks at greatly increased prices, often greater than retail hardcover prices. Ebooks, particularly when accompanied by DRM, offer me less as a purchaser than a dead tree edition, as I can’t resell my copy when I am done with it, loan it to a friend, donate it to a library, etc. Given that the publishers don’t incur any printing costs and close to zero distribution costs, ebooks should be priced comparably or less than mass market paperback costs. If I can’t find an ebook at such a price, I will buy a paperback and feed it through my scanner or download it from a non-official source. I wish more established authors would reserve the etext publishing rights for themselves and self-publish. I would feel much better about forking over money if I knew a greater portion of the money was going directly to the creator of a work.
The media and publishing industries seem to me to be increasingly exploitive of both content producers and consumers, while their rationale for existence becomes increasingly slim.