Tuesday, August 18, 2009 10:46AM - By Seraphina L.
iTunes continues to climb its way up the ladder to their final destination: Total domination in sales.
They’ve made a few changes here and there with the 3-tier pricing but it seems like it hasn’t phased digital consumers out there one bit. According to a release statement the NPD Group, Apple’s iTunes accounts for 25 percent of all music units sold, up from 14 percent in 2007 and 21 percent in 2008.
Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD, states, “The growth of legal digital music downloads, and Apple’s success in holding that market, has increased iTunes’s overall strength in the retail music category.” This is very true, except we’re not sure how steady the rate of legal or illegal downloads will be.
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Tuesday, June 30, 2009 4:54PM - By Adrian G.
Alice in Chains have released a new song entitled “A Looking In View” today on iTunes. The band, which was one of the main bands of the so-called Grunge movement in the early 1990s, was basically considered finished when vocalist Layne Staley died of an overdose in 2002. However, the surviving members of the band, which came out of the same Seattle area as fellow prominent bands Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, has since enlisted a new vocalist, by the name of William DuVall.
Before I heard this new song, I was apprehensive at best, as I always am when bands replace singers. Staley was the main focal point of Alice in Chains, so the prospect of replacing his thunderous voice made me skeptical. “A Looking In View”, though, BLEW ME AWAY. DuVall channels Staley so well it’s eerie. The track sounds like it belongs on one of AIC’s albums in the early 1990s. I almost can’t believe it came out today. I think this reinvention of Alice in Chains might just work, as DuVall seems more than capable of handling the singing duties.
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Thursday, June 11, 2009 11:00AM - By Jeffrey Hyatt
British police have arrested a group of London-based DJs who allegedly were involved in a music scam where iTunes and Amazon were used dishonestly to claim illegal royalties.
The 10-member group of DJs are said to have uploaded 19 song compilations to iTunes and Amazon via music distribution service Tunecore. Afterward they used over 1,500 stolen US and UK credit cards to open new accounts and buy the music at $10 per purchase.
The swindle was designed to reap the royalty payments off the music, which was paid by the unaware download sites.
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Tuesday, June 2, 2009 2:30PM - By Morelli
Music download service eMusic announced on Monday that it had struck a licensing deal with Sony Music. Sony will be including some of its older catalog releases in eMusic’s library of more than 5.5 million tracks later this year.
eMusic is a subscription service that gives users a allotted number of tracks for a monthly fee. As part of the recent Sony deal, the company has raised its price from $10 a month to $12, and lowered the allotment of tracks from 30 per month to 24. Some quick math shows that the price per track jumped from 30 cents to 50 cents.
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Friday, May 22, 2009 12:30PM - By Morelli
Amazon is partnering with Tunecore to provide any artist with on-demand CD printing and distribution for $31 a year. For that lowly sum, they will handle the creation of a 10-track album, passing all other costs to the buyer.
Finally, a service that will remove the middle-man and make it easier for artists to provide albums for fans on Amazon and iTunes, without the exorbitant cost normally associated with CD manufacturing.
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Tuesday, May 19, 2009 11:00AM - By Morelli
TuneUp, an iTunes plugin that provides artist names, genres, track numbers and cover art for you music collection, is launching a new user interface today with some added features. Since its launch in 2008, TuneUp has over 200,000 registered users, and you can try a free version of the software at tuneupmedia.com.
Launched in 2008, the plugin does what you don’t have time to do: it homogenizes your entire iTunes library. The free version corrects 100 songs and downloads 50 album covers, but the “Gold” version, purchased for $30 or for an annual subscription of $20, give you unlimited access to the Gracenote Global Media Database of more than 100 million songs.
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Monday, May 11, 2009 11:00AM - By Morelli
Sony Music Group has a long history of non-transparency with customers, even scandals involving the inclusion of dubious copy protection software on CDs, but is seems like the media company is trying to change. In an interview, Sir Howard Stringer, Sony Chairman, President and CEO, said that “Sony has begun the transition from a closed system to an open one.”
He explains that “Sony hasn’t taken open technology very seriously in the past. Its CONNECT music download service was a failure. It was based on OpenMG, a proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology. At the time, we thought we would make more money that way than with open technology, because we could manage the customers and their downloads.”
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Tuesday, May 5, 2009 6:00PM - By Morelli
Executives within the major labels are confirming decreased sales on iTunes ever since Apple implemented variable pricing on the popular digital music store in April. Digital Music News reports that individual song sales have dropped, resulting in a decline in overall revenue.
The most popular songs on iTunes were set to $1.29, and even though a drop in sales was probably expected, the higher prices were supposed to compensate for that loss. Even worse, the sales slump has for all songs, not just the top tier tracks. One of the industry execs told Digital Music News:
“It’s back to the abacus to figure out the best mix.”
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Wednesday, April 15, 2009 12:00PM - By Seraphina L.
In case you haven’t heard yet, April has been the first month for iTunes’ new three-tier pricing to be put into effect. Yes, iTunes has sold songs for amounts a bit less or more than $0.99 before, but you now see songs generally priced at $0.69, $.099, or $1.29. Record companies are hoping their ability to determine the 30 cent differences will help sales by setting older or less popular songs at $0.69 and their brand new hits at $1.29.
All songs on iTunes are also now free of Digital Rights Management (DRM), which means songs can be bought once and played on unlimited iPods and computers without dealing with copy protection.
$1.29 isn’t that much more when you think about it at first, but does it effect your decisions in regards to where you buy your music in the long run? Amazon.com is still selling their individuals songs at $0.99 at the most, and they’ve been free of DRM for over a year. The Orlando Sentinel actually suggested a program that allows you to easily compare iTunes and Amazon prices before you buy a song, but do you care that much? iTunes is the leading music retailer – Are you going to stop using it when all your music is already in an iTunes library? Let us know and vote below!
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