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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.'"
tags: Internet | Spitzer | Digital Music | Probe |

U.K. Consumers' Association Calls for Probe into iTunes Pricing

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on September 15, 2004 - 4:29am.
London -- The U.K. Consumers' Association on Wednesday called on the Office of Fair Trading to open an investigation into the pricing of Apple's music download service iTunes. According to the Consumers' Association, iTunes is "ripping off" U.K. customers and possibly breaching EU competition rules by charging 120 euro cents for each track downloaded -- about 21 cents more than it costs to download a track in France or Germany. Apple defended its pricing scheme, comparing the situation with divergent prices for CDs in the U.S. and the U.K. The company said that prices should be compared with other music download services in the U.K., not on the Continent. "The underlying economic model in each country has an impact on how we price our track downloads," an Apple spokesperson said. "We believe the real comparison to be made is with the price of other track downloads in the U.K."
tags: iTunes | Probe | U.K. Consumers' Association |