Record companies are greedy
Permalink | September 26th, 2005
But then again, we already knew that.
On the heals of Steve Jobs’ announcement that he’s standing firm on iTunes music pricing, the record companies are now seeking revenue from an alternate source — the iPod itself; and while doing so, also trying maintain that they are not in fact “greedy.”
On Thursday, one of the music industry’s highest-profile executives responded publicly to Mr. Jobs’ charges, made earlier in the week, that they were “greedy” when they requested a price hike for downloaded songs.
…
“There’s no content that I know of that does not have variable pricing,” said Mr. Bronfman at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia investor conference. “Not all songs are created equal—not all time periods are created equal. We want, and will insist upon having, variable pricing.”
…
“To have only one price point is not fair to our artists, and I dare say not appropriate to consumers. The market should decide, not a single retailer,” said Mr. Bronfman. “Some songs should be $0.99 and some songs should be more. I don’t want to give anyone the impression that $0.99 is a thing of the past.”
…
“We are selling our songs through iPod, but we don’t have a share of iPod’s revenue,” he said. “We want to share in those revenue streams. We have to get out of the mindset that our content has promotional value only.
“We have to keep thinking how we are going to monetize our product for our shareholders,” added Mr. Bronfman. “We are the arms supplier in the device wars between Samsung, Sony, Apple, and others.”
The market already decided, several years ago … how soon the record executives forget of the troubles that plagued them with illegal downloading. Now that the market is beginning to normalize, and illegal download is slowing, the record companies are willing to throw that all away by again alienating their clients and pushing for more money. Instead of battling technology, why not work with it? That’s the only way they are going to survive this “revolution”.
[via Red Herring]
