AP:
"All five of the major music companies are discussing ways to boost the price of single-song downloads on hot releases – to anywhere from $1.25 to as much as $2.49. It isn’t clear how or when such a price hike would take place, and it could still be months away. Sales of such singles – prices have remained at 99 cents – still account for the majority of online music sales.
The industry is also mulling other ways to charge more for online singles. One option under consideration is bundling hit songs with less-desirable tracks. Another possibility is charging more for a single track if it is available online before the broader release of the entire album from which it is taken. There is also talk of lowering the price on some individual tracks from older albums.
[…] N.E.R.D’s “Fly or Die” is far from the only album that now costs significantly more to download from iTunes than to buy on CD. And many high-profile albums from two of the big five music companies, Sony Corp.’s Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Group PLC, are now priced on iTunes and its competitors well above the $9.99 norm."
This is too funny. Trying to maximize revenue per unit when your market is still tiny instead of working at growing it by orders of magnitude is about as dumb as it gets. Majors won’t try to reform themselves until they have two feet in the grave.