Why Apple Is More Expensive Than Amazon

Reg Braithwaite on why the music industry has a problem with the iTunes Store’s dominant position:

They want consumers using devices in proprietary silos like old-fashioned cell phones, where you pay for the track, you pay for the bits transferred over the air, and then you pay all over again when you want to use a few seconds of the track as a ring tone.

As soon as they can break this pesky iPod-iTMS-iPhone nonsense, the labels want to get back to dictating what you pay and how often you pay. The labels want to do business with people like Microsoft. Microsoft gets it: all the people who bought music using MSN music? They can buy it all over again at the Zune store.

★ Wednesday, 7 May 2008