[Ti] [OT] Applemusic.com - is the price right?

Greg Chapel gchapel at worldnet.att.net
Mon Apr 28 15:06:38 PDT 2003



I agree with Trevor.

 The predominant demographic for music sales are people under 35. Music
sharing and trading will always exist with this crowd and most of them are
internet savvy. If they are going to be given a decent alternative to
"stealing" music then they are going to need incentive.

Most CD retailers sale CD's for $10 - $15 and there are an average of 10 -
15 tracks per CD. Most consumers see that as $1.00 per song. You get art
work, permanent archive storage of CD, convenience of around the corner
shopping, something you can trade and sell legally, excellent quality
reproduction.

Where as Apple's system yields no price per song discount, no artwork, no
storage medium, inferior but good quality reproduction and no legal rights
to sale or trade. Convenience is debatable depending on reliability and
bandwidth of internet connection vs. proximity to store and depth of song
selection catalogs.

The only clear advantage that Apple's service has is selection of individual
tracks but I think that advantage is lost on the consumer who realizes that
the cost of reproduction of an entire CD is much more than offering
downloads of the same. In addition I have a tangible item that I can legally
sale and trade. The download is illegal to sale or trade.

A much better pricing scenario is $.25 - to $.50 per song or better yet
prorated out on a per minute basis because some songs may be 20 minutes
while others are 1 minute 30 seconds.

This looks very much like a bomb! Similar to many of the other music
services that are failing. But we will see. If anyone can fix it, I do trust
Apple to make it work properly.

Greg




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