Join RIAA Boycott

[efc]

Apple Computer dismissed rumors Friday of rising single-song prices at its iTunes online music store, saying that it planned to maintain the price tag of 99 cents per song.

Reiterating comments made by Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs last week, an Apple spokeswoman said the company is maintaining its single price tag for individual songs. The comment came in response to an article in the New York Post reporting the likelihood of higher prices as a result of new contracts with record labels. As earlier reported, some full-album prices have already begun to climb on the service.

"These rumors aren't true," Apple spokeswoman Natalie Sequeira said. "We have multiyear agreements with the labels and our prices remain 99 cents a track."

Apple's commitment to the 99 cent retail price point--which is shared by other music services such as Musicmatch--comes in spite of wholesale prices for music that are already beginning to fluctuate, according to record labels and other download services.

The big music labels are eager to move to a system where they can price prerelease or top singles differently than back-catalog tracks. This variable pricing has long existed in the offline world, and will help them make more money from the most popular music, while increasing demand for older tunes through lower prices, they say.

"The problem is, the systems that everyone built to get things going were built to get things going," said one top record executive in a recent interview. "The easiest way to do that was to have fixed pricing. (But the services) have been expanding those systems so they can vary pricing."

Some labels have already begun passing on these variable wholesale prices to the online services, executives have said. This has appeared in occasional rising album costs, but like Apple, none of the download stores has yet passed along the higher wholesale costs of singles to their customers.

Executives at other music services have said that the shifting wholesale costs would likely find the download stores beginning to experiment with both higher and lower prices over the next year. Apple, which retains a majority market share, will likely influence the decisions at services with smaller audiences.

[efc]

Associated Press
Hundreds More Sued Over Music File Swaps
06.22.2004, 03:51 PM

The music industry filed copyright infringement lawsuits against 482 computer users Tuesday, the latest round of litigation by recording companies against suspected online music file-swappers.

The cases were filed against 213 people in St. Louis, 206 in Washington D.C., 55 in Denver and six in New Jersey, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, the Washington-based trade group that represents the major recording companies.

As in previous complaints brought by the industry this year, the lawsuits were filed against unnamed "John Doe" defendants, identified only by their computers' Internet protocol addresses.

The tactic is used when the defendants' identities are not known because it allows plaintiffs to ask the court to subpoena Internet access providers to reveal the names of their customers.

"Illegal downloading continues to cause enormous harm to the entire music community," said Steven Marks, the RIAA's general counsel. "We must stay on the path of education, enforcement, and offering great legal services."

In all, a total of 3,429 people have been sued by the recording industry since its legal campaign against individual computer users began in September. At least 600 of those cases were eventually settled for roughly $3,000 each. None of the cases has yet gone to trial.

The recording industry blames lagging music sales in recent years on the rise of online music piracy.

While some surveys have shown the number of people engaging in file-sharing has declined since the RIAA began its legal assault, other data shows millions continue to share music, movies and software online.