iTunes drops all DRM, adds variable pricing

This doesn't seem to be TOO bad in the UK iTunes Store. Of the top 100, 13 are 99p and 1 is 59p, leaving the remaining 86 tracks at the usual 79p. £1 still seems like a lot of money for 1 track though.

I believe the theory that the stupid recrd companies try to recreate the situation where they secure their own position!
The position where they are very necessary!
How much do the artists get from the 1,29$
How necessary is large scale comm in the age of Internet.
Record Companies try to go back 10 years.

Some labels behave like cheap callgirls.

Check out U2 who went on to sign with RIM?

Long life to iTunes. It's the best thing that happened to musiclovrs and artists, but also made the Record Companies a little less pertinent.

C|Net is reporting that Amazon's prices have increased to $1.29 as well.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-10214556-27.html

What a joke. all of Pearl Jams songs are 99 cents except for every version of "Even Flow" Are you kidding me. Morons. It would seem that the most popular do get the 1.29 pricing. This will come back to bite the record industry I hope.

It's obvious the record companies want to covertly encourage piracy: they make far more money suing people than selling them music...

I'm hungry, Waffles sound good.

Jackasses.

Variable pricing is just a nicer way of saying that we are increasing the price of songs that people actually buy by about 30%. I'll take Amazons Lame VBR any day over 256 AAC files and they are now 30 cents cheaper. Why ruin a pricing plan that has kept you at #1?

What a rip-off!! A 30% price increase during one of the worst economic downturns since the great depression is uncalled for!

You may have also noticed that the price of many regular CD's have increased 30% as well!! (Just take a quick look at the prices of CDs at amazon.com).

Does the RIAA really want to encourage piracy?

Like other posters, I have not seen one 69 cent song. I have seen many $1.29 songs. Many of the $1.29 songs are from VERY old bands like the eagles.

It looks like the record companies are setting the price of a sonmg based on the popularity of the song. i.e. The more popular, the more expensive the song.

IMHO. music pricing has never been set based on the cost to make the music. Since the record companies have a MONOPOLY over EACH particular song, the record companies tend to set the price based on how much the market will bear.

Send the RIAA and the record companies a CLEAR message. Do not BUY any $1.29 song....

Look at amazon MP3. Typically each MP3 is LESS EXPENSIVE than the AAC's in the iTunes Music Store.

89 cents per song at amazon.com seems a lot more reasonable to me. It could be LESS..

Horrible idea.

One step forward away from the archaic, greedy practices of the Recording Industry and a quarter mile jog backwards complete with bullshit salesman rhetoric like "supply and demand" for something with an infinite supply.

This works out well for me. I think it's a waste of money to buy entire albums on iTunes anyway, and I would only buy "Plus" songs for single tracks. Doesn't AAC encoding or the increased audio bitrate mean anything to anyone? Sure, Amazon MP3's are all $.99, but they're MP3's.