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Apple clashed with kids-caught-in-conflict charity War Child last week when it chose to go its own way on album pricing.The iTunes Music Store initially sold the new War Child album, Help: A Life in the Day, for two pounds less than the price demanded by the charity. When the organisation made its displeasure known, the online store was forced to withdraw the record for almost a day while it corrected the error."They'd 'racked' it at the wrong price," Julian Carrera of War Child told The Register. A happy ending then, but a potentially embarrassing mistake. It would be more forgiveable if ITMS didn't have 'previous form': it famously refused to sell the re-recorded Do they know it's Christmas? single at the Band Aid-demanded price, until someone in its PR department pointed out that refusing to help starving Africans, or to stock the current number one single, might not win over prospective custom
The gloves are off in the battle between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and the music industry over the price of downloaded songs. On Thursday, one of the music industry’s highest-profile executives responded publicly to Mr. Jobs’ charges, made earlier in the week, that they were “greedy” when they requested a price hike for downloaded songs. At an investors’ conference in New York, Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. said the price of downloaded songs should vary depending on the popularity of the songs and the artists. He called Apple’s across-the-board $0.99-per-song charge unfair. “There’s no content that I know of that does not have variable pricing,” said Mr. Bronfman at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia investor conference. “Not all songs are created equal—not all time periods are created equal. We want, and will insist upon having, variable pricing.”
"This is one battle the recording industry need to win to keep credibility"
Music managers will today wade into the row over online royalties with the claim that bands and solo artists are being unfairly squeezed in the digital era. The Music Managers Forum is unhappy that artists typically receive a royalty of 4.5p on every 79p track sold on Apple’s iTunes, a proportion of less than 6 per cent. On a £2.99 single, the performer’s royalty is 35p, or 12 per cent. Jazz Summers, the manager of the Snow Patrol, and chairman of the Music Managers Forum, said: “Sale prices and royalties have gradually been eroded to the point where an artist needs to sell in excess of 1.5 million units before they can show a profit, after paying for recording time and tour support.”
