Today Ars Technica is reporting that "Variable download pricing correlated with slower music sales." Remember a year ago when iTunes dropped DRM but allowed the greedy music execs to raise the prices of popular songs? Let's take a look at how that panned out.
Ars says:
As noted by MediaMemo, this slowdown in growth has all happened over the same period of time that the iTunes (and Amazon, and Walmart) pricing changes went into effect.
That's right, after iTunes (and Wal-Mart and Amazon digital downloads) pricing went up, sales went down.
There are a million ways to spin it, but that's the bottom line. The decline in sales just happened to coincide with the price increase.
Like iTunes and the greedy music industry, The City That Works™, Portland, raised it's parking rates about a year ago. I for one stopped going downtown for everything I wanted to do, so my net is that I'm paying Portland less money every year for parking. I wonder if anyone's done a study to see if the higher rates are actually producing higher revenue…
