Comment by RP N10 on April 9, 2009 at 1:24am

Was buying D/L from Apple iTunes ever a good deal, except for people who were previously forced to buy filler to get one good song? For album buyers prices in the UK usually meant that it was as cheap to buy the CD from an on-line retailer as on iTunes (for which you also get the artwork). Most d/l I get are from emusic which cost only 13p ($0.185) each. Hence why iTunes has been trying to get more exclusive content like bonus track you can only get there.
And DRM was gone for the cost of a blank CD, so that's no big deal.

Comment by simon2307 on April 9, 2009 at 5:30am

My guess is they’ll roll out a series of “new” deals and lower prices for some time yet as they strive to hang on to their market dominance and to carry on selling track by track, sooner or later things will move to subscription based services and Apple will eventually have to go that way too ?

Amazon in the UK are selling tracks as low as £ 0.29 each, although only 0.002% of what's available - so it's no more than a gimmick, to coincide with Apple's news.

Comment by Tom Savage on April 9, 2009 at 8:54am

I've been buying CD's rather than downloading. Lately, I've noticed that you get the CD for about the same price as the mp3 version, if you're willing to forgo the instant gratification aspect of downloading. I'm also into listening to entire albums these days.

The new tour van doesn't have an Mp3 player either. I have to get one of those tape deck adapter thingys.

Comment by Easy Ed on April 9, 2009 at 9:37am

iTunes is still by far the dominant player in selling legal downloads, with a huge market share compared to the rest of the pack. One might suggest that Amazon has simply expanded the market and brought on new users as opposed to carving too deep into the iTunes numbers.

But obviously it was increased competition from Amazon that forced the change in iTunes pricing strategy. As for DRM...Apple has always fought against it but the labels resisted. They changed their tune with Amazon in order to help them peel off the Apple market dominance, but it didn't quite work out that way.

The death of DRM would seem to be the next logical step to take us closer to a subscription model. The upshot of all this will probably not be in the artists or composers interest because the revenue drops from dollars to pennies. But I guess that'll be better than nothing.

Comment by Mat D on April 10, 2009 at 7:48am

As an unknown independent artist I've found two things to be very helpful to me in regards to sales profits at a local/regional level. For indie releases I've been pushing consumers to CDBaby- which pays artists 91% of the profits for digital sales. When I sell my songs via CDBaby I get $0.91 vs. $0.67 per every unit sold thru the larger retailers. Obviously, for established/major label artists a entity like CDBaby isn't always available. Nine times out of ten I'm going to buy my music where it's the most affordable to me. Whether it be hole in the wall digital retailer or my local Chinese Distribution Discount Center ala WalMart (cringe!) for a CD. I believe most listener's living on a dime do the very same thing. I'd be happy to shell out a few more bucks to an independent record store but they've gone the way of the buffalo here in Sioux City. A sad situation.
Secondly, I've begun selling download cards at shows which have become a big hit for those who don't like CDs but still like the music. I sell a card for $8 for 10-15 songs and they're pretty cheap to set up. The response has been pretty strong and folks seem to dig them vs. shelling out $12-15 for a disc.
As far as music subsrciptions (unlimited listening for a monthly fee) paying a penny per listen- those pennies add up. I made $12 last week on listens and I sat on my hands...so bring it on.

Comment by Jeff Gilbert on April 10, 2009 at 9:02am

I buy a lot of music from CDBaby (including yours, Mat). I really like the fact that they are so artist friendly. And they are offering more and more music via download. My only complaint about them is that CDs are apparently shipped via wagon train; they take forever to get to me here in the east. But the music is always worth the wait. Also worth noting is the fact that CDBaby has awesome customer service. Check out their website; new music each and every day. http://cdbaby.com

Comment