What an angry letter. They upped the quality of the music and charged a little more for it, there's nothing wrong with that. They charge what they think the market is willing to bear, not what it might be "truly worth." A Louis Vuitton bag costs a whole lot less to make than to sell, but prices will never go down, because that's what people are willing to pay.
If others join in to compete in the DRMless music wave, then at best we can hope it will drive the price down. That's competition at its best, an effort to capture the market by constantly producing something better OR cheaper (and not necessarily both). At the very least, you're getting something better.
It would have been lame if they had just removed the DRM and upped the price - but the fact that they also doubled the audio quality is probably a good-will move to give the user additional value for the cost. The new audio files will be 256kbps instead of the current 128kbps - most folks are forgetting this in their analysis of the pricing.
And seriously - I think I've been spoiled reading pg articles. It feels like this guy's yelling and spitting on you as you read it, blah.
Once they start giving the artist's a bigger cut of the prices then I'll start to care. Right now 35% is going towards Apple, and I'm sure EMI is seeing about 70% of each sale. I couldn't care less if EMI and Apple make more money off of their artists and consumers. The whole DRM thing was bound to fail anyways.
What I don't understand is why we treat artists like retards. They don't need to be saved from themselves and they enter into these deals more than willingly. Artists like to pretend that they are at the mercy of the labels whilst supporting the system.
The reason is because there was no other outlet that had the ability to make them rich and famous overnight. The major labels controlled all of the media outlets until the internet came along.
Nowadays hardly any band would choose a major label over a large independent. There is no benefits anymore. Anyone can reach that critical mass of users without having to use Rolling Stone or MTV.
The people that sign to major labels, for the most part, want to be rich and famous. They aren't trying to make a career out of their music but more a career out of themselves. If not then they would be playing a local club in New Hampshire on the weekends.
So, in my opinion, it's more about the artists being retards. They see that major labels are a fast track to millions of records being sold. They don't want to spend years in clubs to gain traction. They don't want to sell CDs out of their cars. They don't want to save up to produce their own record. They want to take the easy way out and have someone else do the work. It is their own fault for signing a major label contract that takes advantage of them. If they are incapable of seeing better outlets for their music then they deserve to deal with the horrible circumstances of being on a big label.
So for years people have begged for DRMless music, because they want it more than DRM'd music. If thats true then they'll pay more, competition with other DRMless sources will hopefully eventually drive down the price.
If others join in to compete in the DRMless music wave, then at best we can hope it will drive the price down. That's competition at its best, an effort to capture the market by constantly producing something better OR cheaper (and not necessarily both). At the very least, you're getting something better.