The RIAA will have a hearing tomorrow where they will decide on an important decision that could change the way we listen to our music. How, you ask? Well the RIAA wants to raise the current royalties price of music from 6.1¢ to a whopping 15¢. This change would cause distributors of digital music to raise their prices. Yes that also means iTunes your precious 99¢ songs would be raised, or would they?
Vice President of iTunes Eddy Cue released this statement to Fortune magazine, “If the [iTunes music store] was forced to absorb any increase in the … royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss – which is no alternative at all. Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably.” What does this mean? If the RIAA decides to allow this increase Apple just may shut down iTunes for good. The music part, that is.
I use iTunes for most of my music buying, mainly because I only use an iPod and it is so much faster to buy. I have tried Amazon, but the process is too lengthy and I have no need for DRM-free music, to be honest. I think if iTunes shuts down the amount of pirating and use of torrents to get music will increase heavily. A lot of people trust iTunes with their whole library and could suffer from the service shutting down. Please post your thoughts in the comments and/or forum.
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TAGS: Steve Jobs
