You Can Trust Our Reviews
Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
Buying Guide: Everyone Wants a Piece of Apple Pie (But No One Knows How to Make It)
Contents
- Buying Guide: Headphones That Rock
- Earphone/Headphone Terminology
- Grado GS1000
- Ultimate Ears triple.fi 10 Pro
- Etymotic ER6i
- Sennheiser PMX-100
- Bose QuietComfort 3
- Sennheiser CX-300
- Shure SE210
- Logitech FreePulse Wireless Headphones
- Creative Zen Aurvana
- Bose In-Ear Headphones
- Everyone Wants a Piece of Apple Pie (But No One Knows How to Make It)
Yes, I know, I just finished telling you how important headphones are and that MP3 quality is all vanilla. But the other key ingredient is music: How good it sounds, what you're listening to, where you can get it, and how much you pay. Those last two bits are, apparently, bones of contention for a nervous industry. In fact, some think Apple is making a mess of the whole thing.
Digital music pricing was a hot topic at the recent 2007 Digital Music Forum East, in New York City. On a panel entitled "Device & Format Wars: Who Will Be the Winners & the Losers?," with reps from Click and Buy, Zing, and Microsoft's Zune division, there were only two dissenters from the view that Apple is hurting everyone with its low prices.
Apple makes its money from iPod sales, "Made for iPod" licensing, and computers; it chooses to offer music at a low price. Apple's plan is simple: People will buy our machines only if we give them a cheap way to use them. Let's charge more for machines and less for content. And then Apple makes lots of money, which makes competitors sad.
How can all songs be worth 99 cents?, moaned the aggrieved chorus at the Digital Music Forum. We want to charge more for new songs and less for old, but if we do, people will buy just the 99 cent Mariah Carey and not our $2.50 Mariah Carey! Apple's cornered the market!
There, there, competitors. Let's take a step back and think.
Apple created the very business space you're trying to compete in by making the iPod ubiquitous. The company had no unfair advantages: Apple just came up with a better product and an affordable way to load it. Whining about pricing is like creating an expansion team, then bitching about the game's rules once the season starts. Nobody's forcing you to compete! You invited yourself!
When music is 99 cents per song, it's the hardware that's pricey. But people are willing to pay, as iPod sales obviously attest. Why not recognize Apple's successful strategy and mimic it? That's how just about every other industry works: The best business model wins, and everyone adapts. If it's a larger share of the public's spending money you seek, here's a surefire way not to get it: Mess with a pricing standard that finally has people listening to music again.