Since the
launch of iTunes three years ago, their music library and sales have been climbing non-stop since that time, however one thing that has remained fixed is the 99 cent song price. The same fixed price policy can also be said with many other music download stores. Consumers are gradually getting tired of the music labels help keeping the download price fixed, which can now be clearly seen after Warner Music Group has been named in 14 class-action lawsuits, alleged with conspiracy among record labels to fix prices for music downloads.
New York's attorney general has been investigating this situation among the major music labels, particularly since price fixing violates antitrust laws. The record labels have already ran into legal issue several years ago for CD price fixing in which they had to
compensate 3.5 million customers who complained. Just recently, Apple succeeded in keeping its 99 cent price policy after renewing its contracts with its music labels, despite strong pressure to try and introduce variable track pricing.
Despite
the issues with fixing pricing on downloads, Warner Music Group's digital download sales continues to grow with $90 million in sales for the first quarter alone. This works out at around a three-fold increase over the same period last year and accounts for about 11% of the label's total revenue. Despite rising digital download sales, Warner has still faced a net loss of $7 million. Thanks to heystoopid for letting us know about the following news:
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"The company intends to defend against these lawsuits vigorously," Warner Music said in its quarterly statement filed Friday. The accusations come three months after Eliott Spitzer, New York's attorney general, began investigating whether several of the big music companies agreed to fix download prices. Such an agreement would violate antitrust laws. Warner Music reported in its filing that it expects the 14 lawsuits to be consolidated into one. |
It looks like that even though Apple has managed to keep its 99 cent pricing after renewing contracts with the music labels, the outcome of these lawsuits could cause that to change. For example, even Apple itself could be breaching antitrust laws for constantly fixing its song price at 99 cent, particularly since they have succeeded in keeping this price since their launch three years ago.
heystoopid added: Warner is attempting to steamroller all class action lawsuits into one, thus allowing the legal eagles able assistants/aides to pick the eyes for inconsistencies typo's and minor errors and mistakes! Nice company! Oh well, who want's to buy DRM'd Digital movie and audio files anyway, although, if they do get the DMCA Digital Rights extension on super steroids passed, you will ultimately have no choice in the matter! Choices, are not looking good on any side of the fence!
Source: c|net News
