Apple Launches Lower-Priced Indie Albums, Week After UMG Contract Fracas
Apple sure knows how to sneak one through: just as Universal Music Group refused to sign a long-term contract with it over iTunes sales (with disagreement on, among other things, album and song pricing), Apple has quietly launched lower prices for full indie-music albums. These albums, what it calls “Next Big Thing”, retail for $5.99 and $6.99, lower than the flat-rate $9.99 that Apple has insisted on since the beginning. The 40-odd albums are from indie artists such as Peter, Bjorn, & John, The Kooks and others.
Also read this related story on the UMG-Apple dust-up: “Universal Refutes Apple’s iTunes Negotiations Claim”
Jul 6, 2007 12:49 AM ET
Posted In: Entertainment, Music, Companies, Apple
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Comments (3)
Jul 6, 2007 12:00 PM
Universal has had sub-$9.99 albums at iTunes for quite a while. (I recall seeing a PJ Harvey album at a low price a year or two ago.)
A few weeks ago (before the whole contract hub-bub) I ran across a web page from Universal’s catalog division that showed a group of catalog tiltes (U2, Weezer, Coltrane, Def Leppard, Nirvana) priced at $7.99 at iTunes.
http://missing.ilovethatsong.com/
So UMG already has low-priced albums at iTunes. The difference seems to be that UMG does not have a dedicated and branded section of the iTunes store to promote those albums.
Jul 7, 2007 8:59 PM
Two things
1) “Next Big Thing” is a promotion that runs for a single month, like they did for Black Music Month a bit. It is heavily promoted on their home page and mentioned in their mult-million-subscriber newsletter, I’d hardly call it either under-the-radar or a response to anything universal did.
2) Peter Bjorn and John are on SonyBMG
Jul 24, 2007 12:51 AM
I checked out that link: http://missing.ilovethatsong.com
Pretty addicting game and nice use of album covers!
Worth checking out…