Introduction Models Pricing Catalog Genre DRM Software Trial Period Conclusion

Pricing

In Pay As You Go models, all the small tracks are 99 cents long. Longer tracks are $1.39 in MSN Music. iTMS, doesn't sell longer tracks. Small number of albums that are real albums (not mis-categorized one track albums) are $8.91 in MSN Music. In the case of one track albums, MSN Music sells them for the same price as the song. But iTMS, wants you to pay all of $9.99 for the psuedo album with just that one long track.

Service	Model	Price Per Track	Price - Long Tracks	Trial Period	Price per Month
iTunes Music Store	Pay As You Go	0.99	9.99	None	None
MSN Music	Pay As You Go	0.99	1.39	None	None
Rhapsody	Subscription	0.79	-	7 Days	9.95
Napster	Subscription / Pay As You Go	0.99	-	14 Days	14.95
MusicMatch	Subscription / Pay As You Go	0.99	-	7 Days	7.99
eMusic	Subscription	(0.25 or less)	(0.25 or less)	14 Days	9.99 (40 downloads) 14.99 (60 downloads) 19.99 (90 downloads)

iTMS - One Size Fits All ?

iTMS is built on the philosophy of uniformity. Whatever be the label or artist you get the same price of 99 cents per track, same number of CDs you can burn etc. This is an excellent strategy that helps customers. But iTMS has taken this to an extreme - they want to price all the tracks at 99 cents. But some tracks, esp. Hindustani tracks or even Carnatic RTPs, are quite long, most of them over 10 minutes long. So, what does iTMS do about them ? Can they give these tracks for 99 cents ... because at this rate, you get the full album for a couple of dollars.

iTMS wants you to buy the single track album for $9.99

iTMS does something very peculiar. They don't sell tracks longer than 10 minutes ! This is the most ridiculous thing about iTMS ... by being dogmatic about the 99 cents for all tracks policy and unwilling to let go of long tracks for that price, they have decided to not sell those long tracks at all ! What they want you to do is to buy the whole "album", with that one track for, you won't beleive it, $9.99 !! That is the price many time we pay for the whole physical CD. So, for all practical purposes, iTMS is not a viable choice for ICM.

Arch rival MSN Music, handles this in a better way. They charge $1.39 for each long track. eMusic does not differentiate between tracks ... you can down those many number of tracks that the subscription allows, irrespective of how long the tracks are. That is great for us ! You can get music of upto 20 CDs for just under $10 a month.

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