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Spitzer's Probe of Digital Music Price-Fixing to Include Online Services

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on January 4, 2006 - 7:45am.
San Francisco - The digital music price-fixing probe recently launched by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer will also targeting digital music services, in addition to the already confirmed subpoenas sent to major record labels, CNET News.com reported. "Everybody expects to be contacted, and some already have been," Jonathan Potter, executive director of the Digital Media Association, which represents Yahoo, Apple, AOL and others, told News.com. Yahoo, Napster and Apple declined comment for the story. Spitzer is reportedly looking into the wholesale prices that labels charge music services per song, which are around 75 cents per track; the industry standard pricing at online stores is 99 cents per track. Some labels have expressed the desire to have more a more variable pricing structure for digital music, charging more for top hits and less for less popular catalog tracks. The New York Attorney General has also in the past gone after the music industry for radio payola, while the FTC settled CD price-fixing charges with the labels. "This may simply be a shot across the bow," attorney Michael Graham told News.com. "Spitzer may be saying, 'Guys, we've caught you twice before, and we know you would never try it a third time, but we're going to make sure.'"
http://tinyurl.com/96twn (CNET)
tags: Internet | Spitzer | Digital Music | Probe |



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