By way of Slashdot I found this story that tells us Universal is planning to sell tens of thousands of high-quality digital singles for 99 cents or less and albums for $9.99 through online retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy and Sam Goody.
Significantly, the company plans to let consumers download songs and record them freely onto CDs '”a major shift from the company's practice of limiting what users could do with downloaded music. |
The question is whether consumers accustomed to getting music for free will pay even 99 cents. Executives hope that, at some point, consumers will elect to pay a modest fee rather than steal.
"Forty-nine cents seems like the appropriate amount," said Ron Stone, president of Gold Mountain Entertainment, an artist management firm. "If you can get kids to spend 49 cents, consider it a gift. Make it 99 cents, you won't sell any, particularly if the singles market is a kids market."
Let this be the first sign that the record companies are going to change their attitude. We don't want restrictions and we want low prices, but if the profits of the record industry will be ever as high as they were ?
Maybe not and is that the price of abusing the consumers for years...
Source: Sunspot.net
