{"id":92819,"date":"2009-12-21T18:32:51","date_gmt":"2009-12-21T23:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20091211\/1236517310.shtml"},"modified":"2009-12-21T18:32:51","modified_gmt":"2009-12-21T23:32:51","slug":"higher-itunes-prices-how-much-goes-to-the-artists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/92819","title":{"rendered":"Higher iTunes Prices? How Much Goes To The Artists?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, Apple finally agreed<\/a> to strong pressure from the major record labels to introduce variable pricing on iTunes — which officially would make some popular songs $1.29 and (in theory) also offer older, back catalog songs for $0.69. In reality, it’s pretty difficult to find<\/a> any of those $0.69 songs. However, as a musician, which would you prefer? Well, as Shocklee<\/a> alerts us, most musicians might not see any of that additional fee<\/a> (that report is a little misleading, though, in that it suggests — incorrectly — that all songs were driven up to $1.29). I have to admit that I’m a bit surprised by this, and wonder if it’s really accurate. The telling quote in the article is this one:<\/p>\n


\n“Artists receive fixed residuals for music sales based on individual contracts via their respective record companies,” says Max Clingerman, a music executive for MixJam Records who explains “the staggering price increases are not for the artist interest, rather intended for executive pockets.”
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While I’m sure the intention was very much for exec pockets, I was under the impression that most major label contracts included royalty rates based on retail price<\/i>. And while most signed musicians never recoup<\/a> their advance, and thus never see any royalties whatsoever (no matter what the price), I do wonder if it’s really true that musicians don’t get a larger cut of higher priced digital sales (at least in the fictional accounting systems the labels use).<\/p>\n

Of course, the larger point made by the article is almost certainly true. In increasing the price to $1.29, the demand for such songs has been driven down significantly, leading people to look for alternative sources for the same music.<\/p>\n

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Earlier this year, Apple finally agreed to strong pressure from the major record labels to introduce variable pricing on iTunes — which officially would make some popular songs $1.29 and (in theory) also offer older, back catalog songs for $0.69. In reality, it’s pretty difficult to find any of those $0.69 songs. However, as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}