Stephen Withers
Monday, 14 January 2008 12:47
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
You will see some real bargains at Amazon, though. Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road costs $US16.99 at the iTunes Store, but it's a snip at just $US7.99 at Amazon.
Indeed, for all the albums we checked, Amazon at least matched iTunes' price, and often undercut it by anything from one to several dollars. Among recent releases, Lupe Fiasco's The Cool costs $US10.99 at the iTunes Store and only $US8.99 at Amazon.
Whether this is significant or not depends on where you stand on the 'MP3s killed the album' controversy.
If you think people still buy albums, then consumers benefit from Amazon's lower prices.
But if you're in the camp that says buyers typically cherry-pick their favourite tracks (except for those rare 'all killer, no filler' albums), then lower album prices can be seen as a way of trying to tempt more people to buy the entire work instead.
Buy five songs from The Cool at Amazon, and you're over half-way to the cost of the album. Do the same at iTunes, and you're a little more than a third of the way there, so you're less likely to spring the extra cash even though you didn't really want the whole album.
Call me cynical, but I can't help feeling this is about maximising revenue for Amazon and the record labels rather than helping the customer.
And once people get used to the idea of downloaded songs at variable prices, don't be surprised if new releases start to cost more, not less, than older tracks.
