OT: Recording Industry Ripoff

[El_Phil]

Xrati said:
Caught a blurb this morning on TV. It mentioned that Apple was blasting the recording industry for being greedy. Something to the effect that they wanted to raise prices from .99 USD for "downloaded" music. Apple was stating that the recording industry was getting greedy and if they raised their prices that piracy would increase. Here we go again!

Hmmmm

Apple is in fact screwing the artists worse than ever. So if the recording industry is greedy, what does that make Apple?

Hypocritical bar stewards I believe.

[Fyron]

That is a problem with the music labels constantly shafting the artists, not necessarily iTunes... Apply pays the fee to RIAA et all, who then dole it out in small chunks to artists.

[El_Phil]

No Apple sets its own rates. Look at the original article, you have the head of Warner Music complaining about Apple. Now you may doubt his motives for complaint, but this is Apple shafting the artists. And the writers as well.

No-body in that industry is particularly nice, but at least the rest aren't that hypocritical. Its breath taking.

[Fyron]

"For all his complaints about iTunes and Steve Jobs, Clark's problem really lies with the labels. iTunes, Napster, Virgin Digital, Wippit and co. are all retailers - performance royalties are negotiated by the labels and artists' managers, not by the retailers."

The pricing Apple dictated was 79 cents to the label and 20 cents to Apple, where the label gives out the standard royalty rate to the artists... The proportions really aren't that much different from CDs sold in physical retailers.

[El_Phil]

I think the whole point is that the artists only get 1/2 the rate (percentage wise) for downloads as CDs.

Given Apples power they could pretty much dictate the pricing, as the labels were panicing mildly at the time they got badly screwed by Apple on that deal. Of course they kept a good cut for themselves (they weren't panicing that much) so it was bad for the performers and writers. They are getting much less than standard %s on iTunes sales, of course this is nothing to do with Apple that isn't my complaint about Apple.

My problem is that Apple got a very good deal to start with and fleeced alot of people. Lets be honest they don't do much, certainly not enough to justify a 20% cut. So with their cut now under threat as the record labels start wondering why Apple gets so much money for so little, they accuse everyone else of greed, when they themselves have spent the last few years being epically greedy.

[Fyron]

Lets be honest they don't do much...

Which is precisely why downloaded songs should have an upper cap of 50 cents, not a dollar, or up to two dollars as some of the labels are pushing for... There is a hell of a lot larger profit margin in them than CDs, and for lower quality sound... Until pricing becomes more reasonable, piracy will not be abated.

[Phoenix-D]

El_Phil said:
My problem is that Apple got a very good deal to start with and fleeced alot of people. Lets be honest they don't do much, certainly not enough to justify a 20% cut. So with their cut now under threat as the record labels start wondering why Apple gets so much money for so little, they accuse everyone else of greed, when they themselves have spent the last few years being epically greedy.

Apple doesn't do much?

They host the servers, make the software, etc..and pay all the bandwith costs! This isn't a trival undertaking.

And, er, lets just say I'm rather more inclined to trust the company that hasn't been convicted of price fixing..in this case that'd be Apple.

[El_Phil]

Phoenix-D said:
Apple doesn't do much?

They host the servers, make the software, etc..and pay all the bandwith costs! This isn't a trival undertaking.

And, er, lets just say I'm rather more inclined to trust the company that hasn't been convicted of price fixing..in this case that'd be Apple.

Software, one off cost and not tricky. Bandwith costs while not trivial aren't even close to 10c for a few meg song. Server hosting, not that expensive given the loading involved. None of that lot is worth 20% of the cost of the song. Does any other online retailer claim such an exorbitant markup? Sure the low value and lack of shipping costs make music a bit different, but not that different.

Well as Apple is running a natural monopoly they don't have to price fix. Macs are over priced for what they are, but as competition is impossible for Mac hardware they can't be done for price fixing.

As I said neither side is particularly good, but only Apple is so hypocritical.