kinda lame, why not just get Rhapsody and pay $14.95 for all you can eat.

This is pretty nice for those people who like to own their music. Plus for me I only purchase about that manys songs anyways, ie the new hits and some oldies that I remember. Pretty good but Not something I will be doing for now.

because it's drm free and you're owning it, not renting it like on rhaspody. but 15 songs isn't very much. I usually download between 25-30 songs a month.

I just don't see 15 songs as a huge selling point. I'm not one to listen to the same songs over and over again. I just looked at my iPod and my recently played consists of over 326 songs. With 15 songs a month, 1 year is 180 songs. Thats not enough to fill my urge for more music, then again, I don't mind spending more money than most on music.

I recently read concerning the proposed increase in royalties that of the $0.99 Apple take, $0.70 of that goes to the Record companies and from that seventy cents are paid royalties, including $0.09 royalty for the writers. (leaving $0.61 for the record companies although they probably have other payees.)

Of the $0.29 that Apple takes, most of this is spent on running the itunes store, bandwidth, servers etc. leaving about $0.05 profit. (ie approx. $0.24 to run the store) In support of this estimate, Apple basically stated that if they were to be on the hook for an additional $0.06 royalty increase, they wouldn't be making any money and would consider shutting the store.

Now there's news that the record companies are willing to have someone other than Apple sell tunes for considerably less. (the record companies have done this with others, such as Amazon but not less than $0.89 per track IIRC).

So $0.66 per track - (assume $0.24 for Sony to run their operation assuming no profit) - ($0.09 for royalty) = $0.33 that the record company is getting, before they pay any other payees they're liable to.

In the end, the record companies are receiving at most $0.61 from Apple (probably significantly less)and $0.33 (again probably significantly less) through Sony for the same track, yet they're willing to make this deal ! Seems to me that the record companies have a lot of margin they can absorb ! Hopefully people will remember this the next time people want to renegotiate.

It also makes me wonder why some artists like Neil Young, Kid Rock etc. criticize Apple for songs on itunes not paying the artists enough. Seems to me they should be directing their ire at the record companies given this excess margin they are holding. (And frankly with the artist making the music and companies like Apple, Amazon etc. distributing it, what exactly are the music companies contributing to the process, other than getting in the way ?)

Jon

Nice explaination of breaking down the costs of Itunes and where the money is going. I just have one concern of saying that Apple is only getting $.05 of profit per song. I would think it would be higher than that. I do understand that it is a trade secret of Apple of the charge break down, but only a 5% markup for their product wouldn't make any sense. Just proof that an album is $10 for about 15 songs just shows that there is alot of room for profit. But I'm glad(although I dislike Apple products) that somebody is standing up to the Music industry.

Down with the RIAA!

The 5% markup does seem low, but that's what I've seen.

Remember, Apple itself has said that they're not in the music selling business to make money off the music, they're in it to drive sales of ipods, which they've done quite well at.

Jon

FilthyRichmond.com

So do you only get 15 songs a month for the $10? I guess you could use it for a single cheaper album from sony or univ. but you get a much better deal at eMusic. Last i checked you got 25 songs for $10, and 75 songs if you paid $20 a month.

eMusic has the same non rollover issues.

Why the heck would you pay when you can get it for free? I dont get it? LOL

www.anonweb.eu.tc

emusic comes out to 1.50 a song and their song library is lame...

apple is making way more than a nickle..

Nuff said.

What an odd business model for songs. I can buy a pack of 15 songs for $10 BUT. . . if I don't use my 15 songs they're gone just like Verizon cell minutes. Or. . . I could just buy my songs from Amazon for $0.99 and get them DRM free without risk of losing value. Sure iTunes "claims" to have DRM free iTunes Plus songs but song for song in the catalog between Amazon.com and iTunes I have found about a 3:1 ratio of available songs. As to you stupid artists too good to release DRM free music, I'm spending my money on your competitors and you can watch your Billboard position free-fall.

The services that offer subscriptions or all-you-can-download so far all encode their music with DRM. And once you no longer subscribe, poof! all your music is useless. That's the difference with this Sony service. Personally, awhile back I decided to never pay money again for music locked up with DRM crap, so I stopped buying from iTunes and started buying only mp3s online. The record industry fought it, but they finally got the message - see how Amazon and Walmart have been selling mp3 online for awhile now. Apple was supposed to start selling DRM-free music, but still in their .m4p AAC format. Good move, but it still won't play in anything but an iPod. My car plays mp3 but not AAC.

I like that it's mp3 format. And JPS hit the nail on the head - if they can sell it for $0.66 a song, their case for forcing Apple to pay more than $0.99 is pretty weak. (Walmart also sells $0.89 a song!) Personally, I won't join because I don't buy enough music to make a subscription worth it, but it's another step in the right direction.

And yes, we all know we can steal music and get it for free. The point is that if the music industry will finally treat us fairly, we will buy their product. Spend more time making a good business model and less time criminalizing the people who want your product.

is that this service is drm free, and you own the music you purchase. its not renting it like oh rhaspody where if your service eds your music does as well. what i hate about apple is the 5 computer cap they allow.

...has songs for about $0.20 and albums for about $2.00 or less. Cheap and legal - just the way I likes it!