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Still, there's stuff I don't get. How are the very same labels that bitched and moaned about Apple's refusal to price anything above 99 cents with DRM restrictions going to be willing to let Amazon sell their stuff for ten cents cheaper and without restrictions? I guess it's already happened with the first two that signed on, but I'm suspicious that some agreement is in place whereby Amazon agrees to jack up the price after a certain amount of time. I guess we'll see.
That agreement does seem odd.
Record execs seem to hate Apple because Apple refuses to allow them to charge more.
So they make an agreement with Amazon that allows Amazon to sell the songs for....less?
And why do you think that is?
Change of heart?
The objective is to either kill iTunes or to make it at least a 50/50 split between iTunes and another competitor so that the music execs have some kind of leverage to get what they really want -- to jack up the price.
This is only about one thing: they want to charge 50 cents for a download of Lou Vega's "Mambo #5" and charge $1.99 for the latest new releases.
This model is obviously more profitable because for every 1 person buying an oldie there are a thousand buying the latest Amy Winehouse.
Reducing prices on old songs just to jack up prices on new releases (and calling it "market based pricing") is a bad deal for consumers in the long run.
