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Overly excitable music-business types are looking at Apple’s recent deal with HBO, where top-tier shows like The Sopranos are priced at $2.99 per episode on the iTunes Store (as opposed to The Wire‘s $1.99-a-pop price), as a sign that the company may someday embrace variable pricing, which would allow the music business to revitalize itself by charging the $2.99-a-song price that “4 Minutes” and “Touch My Body” so rightfully command. Thankfully, Anthony Bruno at Billboard splashes a bit of water on this notion by pointing out that the shows that HBO has placed on iTunes last quite a bit longer than three minutes and thirty seconds–which, one would think, might attract just a bit more money–and that most of the variants in price can be explained away by the shows’ relative lengths. Prediction: Some poor major-label act is going to be corralled into releasing a 10-minute debut single for the purposes of “testing the $2.99-a-song waters” within the next six months. [Billboard]

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