iTunes charges .99 or something to that effect for a single musical cut presumably from a CD but the resulting file is no where near CD quality. Why do they do this and why do people pay more for less? Is it just convenience?
Has music pricing ever made any degree of sense? Why does 30 minutes of the Beatles cost the same as 80 minutes of Tool? The store charges what folks are willing to pay.
Agreed. You’re not paying for the physical object, you’re paying for the effort and creativity that went into making the music.
You may not agree that it’s worth the price, but then you can exercise your right not to purchase the music.
Are you making this up or do you know this to be true? Does anyone know where there is a breakdown i.e. like a pie chart that illustrates how the $.99 is distributed or how the price of a CD is distrubuted amongst all involved?
Whatever it is, it’s going to be grossly generalized, as it all depends on the contracts between the artist and the label, the label and the publisher, label and the merchant, between the merchant and the credit card companies, and hell, who else is there? Lawyers? I’m pretty sure those lawyers don’t want us seeing all those contracts.
This article contains an optimistic pie chart on CD costs from Billboard http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8189/Is+2007+the+year+the+CD+died%3F
It’s about halfway down, ctrl+F for ‘billboard.’ It’s in pounds sterling, but the image is pretty.
Feel free to explain to us how else you would pay $0.99 and actually get music in return. I don’t ever recall seeing a CD that price.
For your $0.99, you get the music immediately, you get it loaded onto iTunes immediately, no trip to the store, no searching the racks for the CD, no issues with it being out of stock, no hassles. You also get the ability to buy the one song from an album you like and only spend one dollar, rather than buying a CD full of songs you hate for $16.
I believe you also can buy many full albums for $10 on iTunes, which is generally less than a CD from the store, so that would be paying less for less.
No, that’s not quite how capitalism works. You’re paying the price that the seller thinks will maximize his profits. That’s all there is to it. A product or service is worth what people will pay for it, no more, no less.
That’s irrelevant.
They charge $0.99 because that’s the market-clearing price. No other reason. If they could make more money charging 50 cents, they would charge 50 cents. If they made more money charging $5 a song, that’s what they would charge.
The price of downloadable music has nothing to do with any cost, because there’s no marginal costs involved (nothing significant for the purpose of this discussion, anyway.) They charge whatever price will bring in the largest total amount of bucks, and apparently that price is 99 cents.
Whether you personally think it’s a good deal or not is interesting, but it’s apparent that enough people think it is a good deal to make it the ideal price.
I would dispute this. I’ve never had a problem with sound quality from iTunes. The only bad mp3’s I have are ones from a CD I compressed too much myself.
The issue isn’t whether a lossy compressed track is CD quality, because it obviously isn’t. Only lossless compression or uncompressed audio can provide actual CD quality.
The real issue is transparency. At what bitrate does the loss of information become transparent to the listener? Many people can tell the difference between a CD and a 128 kbps MP3 but very, very few can hear a difference between a CD and 192 kbps MP3. And AAC is an even better performer than MP3 at lower bitrates. See the Hydrogen Audio Forums for exhaustive technical discussion of audio formats, including several double-blind listening tests.
Given the above, the iTunes AAC format and default bitrate are perfectly adequate for most people. The only real audible loss in quality comes when people transcode lossy formats, i.e., when they burn to CD then re-rip to MP3.
Also, the iTunes default $0.99 per track price is hardly universal. I belong to emusic, which provides unencrypted 192 kbps MP3 files for download. It’s a subscription-based service so, depending on your monthly plan, you could end up paying as little as $0.27 per track. The only caveat is that there are no major label artists available. However, if you’re into jazz, classical, or indie music, you’ll love it (I know I do).
Pretty much. Frankly, I, too, don’t get it. I’d say a downloaded song is only worth about $0.50 given the fact you get a lossy format, limited use restrictions, no packaging, etc. I suppose people are just willing to pay for the convenience. Me, I’d rather go out and buy a CD. But apparently not enough people think my way, since the market can bear a buck a song.
Do any of the formats iTunes uses give quality that matches CD quality?
From a Wikipedia article:
Is this taking in account the equipment most people use? In other words, if the average person were to listen to a commercially produced CD on a very high end stereo and then one downloaded from itunes using a 192 kbps MP3, would he be able to tell the difference?
If so, how about using one of the better formats I quoted above?
Which is why the dearly departed (almost) allofmp3 (I know, I know) was more sensible- you paid based on the size of the song. Its silly for itunes to charge the same 0.99 for the album version of “Autobahn” as they do the Beatles “Yesterday”.
But I still wouldn’t call itunes overpriced necessarily, as the last time I bought 45’s on a regular basis was the early 80’s and they were 1.99 or so for one song (or two, if the artist cared about B sides).
Well, there are also a lot of people out there who hear one song by an artist - just one - and like it. They just don’t like it well enough to pay for the entire CD to get that one song in the most perfect format.
Susan
An iTunes song is 99 cents. A typical CD is about 15 bucks, and has about 15 songs on it (checking my collection, I have CDs ranging from 11 to 23 songs). Then you consider that with iTunes, you can pick and choose the songs you want, so you don’t have to buy a bad song just because it’s on the same album as a good song. That sounds fair to me (at least by comparison).
A typical listener couldn’t even tell the difference between a 192 kbps MP3 on a mid-quality sound system and a CD on a really good one. Most of what audiophiles pay for is just bragging rights, not actual difference in the experience.
I disagree. A typical listener could easily tell the difference between a CD on a mid-quality system and a CD on a really good one - an experiment I have performed on several occasions. Many typical listeners claim they couldn’t mainly because they have never tried. The only real issue is whether the typical listener could hear a difference between a 192 kbps MP3 and a CD on whatever quality system the typical listener is likely to use. Sadly this typical system will be rather poor and in that context the MP3 makes perfect sense.
I should note that the assertion that 99 cents is the reasonable value for a song on iTunes based upon free-market principles is only correct if there is a competitive market for what Apple is selling. Apple may, in fact, be under- or over-pricing the songs, and would never know without conducting some price-variation experiment (for example, putting them on sale for a lower price and seeing if the profits are higher). But for any individual sale, it is true that the true value of the service or good sold is the value paid. Based upon this fact alone, one would have to say that Apple has made a good “guesstimate” of the price many are willing to pay (iTunes has had pretty good sales, you have to admit).
As to why they do it, why else do you expect? First, it allows the tunes to be played on the highest selling MP3 player on the market without doing anything more than plugging in a simple cable and running the iTunes software (convenience). Second, I can purchase from an incredible smorgasbord of tunes, without ever leaving my house (convenience). Third, regardless of the quality issue, I can carry around something in my pocket that plays thousands of tunes at a time, as opposed to carrying around a portable CD player that plays one CD at a time (convenience).
I suspect the OP is a rant in disguise. 
What upset you, Sumisu_919?
I suppose it depends on where you shop and what you’re buying but Amazon.com’s general price range hovers from about $8-$12, and a heck of a lot of stuff at Best Buy is in the same range. I can’t remember the last time I spent 15 bucks on a CD. Quite often, I can find a CD that I want for less or the same price than a download of the same album through iTunes. And I get a physical product, with all the album artwork, the case, and the ability to play it wherever the hell I want, not just a limited amount of computers. It’s that last bit that really irks me. I’ve been in situations where there’s a group of people sharing their playlists, and if you have your audio file from the iTunes store, you get that stupid digital rights management warning and it doesn’t let you play the song.
Now, I’m an album buyer. Obviously, it seems that most people aren’t, so the same considerations don’t apply to them, I suppose.
So are you saying there should be no copy protections, and all music should be public-domain and free for everyone? And by extension, that all musicians should be volunteers and not make any money?
Indeed! How else can you explain the incredibly high price of Tool recordings?