iTunes Raising It’s Prices? What Does this Mean for Music?

Thursday, May 21st, 2009
by Dustin

It has been a while since Apple’s iTunes and music store launched in early 2001, revolutionizing the music industry. iTunes makes it easy to organize and sync you’re music library and make it portable. Up until a couple months ago, all the audio files were sold as protected files for 99 cents, making it impossible to put iTunes store bought music on anything except for an iPod. In a way, Apple was forcing iTunes users to use iPods in order to listen to their music on the go. Now however, the 7-year tradition has changed. Apple has recently removed the DRM protected file format enabling people to share and copy music to their phones as mp3 files. People in the music industry have anticipated this change for several years with endless possibilities for sharing their music with others. This change however does not come with out a price. Along with the removal of DRM protected format, iTunes has begun offering music at two different prices, $.99 and $1.29 for certain tracks.

The price hike can be looked at in both a good and bad light. Apple reports the reason for the change is because every song is available in the highest quality moving from 128 kbs to 256 kbs. This is great but could the average person listening to their iPod with ear bud headphones really be able to tell the difference between the two qualities? In my opinion, there should be an option to upgrade to the higher quality if one chooses to do so instead of being forced to pay the extra $.30. This however does not fully explain why some songs are more expensive than others. The real reason for the price hike is because the DRM protection has been removed, People are more willing to by songs from iTunes since they can easily organize songs and use mp3 players other than iPods. Apple simply sees it as a way to make more money off popular songs that people are willing to spend more money on especially if the quality of the song is better.

This could prove to be disastrous to iTunes however people could also see a rebound in the CD industry. Now that people are forced to pay more per song for the convenience of staying home, CD prices have been lowered to try and draw people in. Now that the music store prices have gone up, music fans might prefer going to their local CD store to save a few bucks. Because several of the iTunes music store’s customers are teens and college students who often times don’t have much expendable money, there will probably be some negative effects due to the entire price hike. During an economic downturn like the one that is present today, do people really have the money to buy songs? Even though $1.29 is not considered a lot, when you have thousands of songs on your iPod, it adds up.

Photo of CD by Rebopper

Photo of iPhone by Powerbooktrance

Photo of iTunes gift card by Heck Meck

Popularity: 25% [?]