Not Quite Right

Link: http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=13702&hed=Bronfman+Fires+Back+at+Apple

How utterly fucking obtuse can one group of people be?

$0.99 ought to be the highest price, not the lowest. Since the average CD now comes with about 15 tracks, at $0.99/track that works out to $14.85 - roughly two dollars less than the price of a CD in stores in the US, but absent the physical disk, the liner notes, and the artwork. Quite expensive, really, but still with some reflection of the things that you're not getting.
If RIAA get their way and Britney's latest garbage is priced at, say, $1.25/track, suddenly that 15 track CD will cost you $18.75, which is at least the same price as the CD if not more expensive. In addition to that, you don't get any of the benefits of purchasing the CD.

The marginal cost of distribution of tracks on iTunes, for the music cartel, is precisely zero. They send one master source to iTunes, probably digital master tracks used to produce the master CD, and thus ends their responsibility. They don't have to do anything beyond cashing the royalty cheques. iTunes take responsibility for storage, distribution and billing. The gross per-track profit will be vastly higher than for a physical CD, and doubtless the RIAA members are getting a similar percentage to their take on CDs. But that's not enough, and now they want to order the goose to lay larger eggs, despite the fact that the eggs it's currently laying are of an optimum size and produce far better returns than the eggs their other geese lay - it's also likely that the market for golden eggs will diminish if their price-to-purchase increase.

They're greedy morons, nothing less. I hope that shotgun they're aiming at their feet is loaded with SCIMTR rounds!