iTunes And Amazon Continue To Play “Name That Price”

noah | April 9, 2009 11:30 am

When the iTunes Store introduced variable pricing earlier this week, 60% of the songs in the store’s top 10 had their prices hiked by 30 cents; as of this writing, eight of those 10 tracks are now priced at $1.29, with Kid Cudi’s “Day N’ Nite” and Jamie Foxx’s “Blame It” seeing price increases over the past two days. (Thanks, America, for keeping the top 10 pretty much static so a fair comparison between then and now can be made!)

The $0.99-$1.29 split in iTunes’ Top 100 songs list is now a 50-50ish split; perhaps unsurprisingly, none of the top sellers have seen their prices slashed to 69 cents just yet. To show people that there are bargains to be had, however, iTunes has also launched a couple of genre-specific “Great Songs At Great Prices” playlists hawking songs that saw their prices go down, like Hole’s “Miss World” and George Michael’s “Monkey.”

Meanwhile, Amazon MP3 continues to tinker with its pricing structure; the bulk of its top-selling songs are still at 99 cents, although “Day N’ Nite” is only 89 cents there. Curiously, most of the top-selling songs who have had their prices raised are by artists who record for Sony Music subsidiaries—Britney Spears, Ciara, Kelly Clarkson, Beyonce. Makes you wonder just how long the labels are going to want to experiment, or if some labels are still a bit invested in helping Amazon slice away some of Apple’s market share.

Earlier: iTunes’ Variable Pricing Launch: By The Numbers Earlier: Amazon’s MP3 Pricing Plan: Looks Like They Went The “Pick Songs Out Of A Hat” Route

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