James Delahunty
20 Sep 2005 20:23
Apple Computers CEO Steve Jobs has attacked major record companies, claiming that the world's biggest labels have begun demanding that the iTunes music store prices are raised. Speculation regarding iTMS price hikes has been around ever since the store launched with a strict music pricing policy. Jobs believes that these record companies are simply getting greedy and a price hike could damage their competition with online piracy.
"We're trying to compete with piracy," he said. "We're trying to pull people away from piracy and say, 'You can buy these songs legally for a fair price'. If the price goes up people will go back to piracy, then everybody loses." Jobs also reminded the labels of the sweet deal they are receiving from the iTunes store.
"The labels make more money from selling tracks on iTunes than when they sell a CD. There are no marketing costs for them." he said. "If they want to raise the prices it just means they're getting a little greedy." For months now more and more businessmen from labels have been anonymously complaining about Apple's pricing policies.
Some believed that Apple shouldn't have the right to set the prices of the music tracks they provide to the service. iTunes has sold over half a billion songs and the sales increase daily, so it's no wonder the businessmen over at the worlds largest record companies want to increase prices. Even a few cents extra per track multiplied by millions makes a whole lot of difference.
Source:
The Register