Blackmoor Vituperative

SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) – You’d think Steve Jobs would be the hero of the music industry, after a year in which online music sales almost tripled to $1.1 billion. But no. The record labels are again pressuring Apple (Research) to raise prices at the iTunes Music Store from 99 cents a song. Apple and the labels are renegotiating deals struck when its music store launched three years ago, and a key issue is variable pricing — the right to charge more for singles from a hot band, and less for music from lesser-known acts. But charging more could backfire, since pirated music is still widely available to consumers on file-sharing networks, Needham & Co. analyst Charlie Wolf told the Associated Press: “[Customers] have an alternative — they can get it for free.”

(from CNN Money, iTunes faces music price hikes)