Amazon, Walmart and Others Up Digital Music Prices

Posted by | 04/08/2009 | 3 Comments

amazon-ukmp3-launchYou kind of knew it wasn’t going to last and that this would happen. The day after iTunes put its price increase into effect (some songs for as high as $1.29, some as low as $.69), the other big online music retailers followed suit. Amazon, Wal-Mart, Lala, and Rhapsody,   have now raised their prices as well.

All but Walmart now list prices for hot selling and new stuff at $1.29 per song. Walmart is at $1.24. Now that there isn’t much difference between prices or DRM restrictions, it will be interesting to see how the on line music market plays its next tunes.

Somewhere some music industry execs are smiling and smoking cigars over this.

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Category: Mobile, Software

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Warner Crocker is a professional theatre director, producer and playwright and also a Tablet PC enthusiast. He is also a Microsoft MVP for Tablet PCs. Send email to Warner.
  • http://sumocat.blogspot.com Sumocat

    Yep, nothing fights piracy better than raising prices.

  • Kelsey

    The reason that the music industry is raising prices is so that they can attempt to turn a profit bc, lord knows, nobody is buying CDs anymore. But, I don’t know if this is the best way to do it…why would someone buy music for 1.29 when they could easily steal it for free? I found a video that takes multiple perspectives on this and even poses some questions about about the potential of Pandora Radio stepping up.

    http://www.newsy.com/videos/itunes_changes_its_tone/

  • C-141XLer

    Raising the prices will be what they do until they find sales declining because of people using torrents. Then they will blame their customers and raise prices some more blaming their customers. Price increases don’t matter a lot to me as they mostly put out nothing but crap now a days anyway – so I buy less. If they really want to make a dime, put out a higher quality product – not just the music itself, but compression free.

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