Replies to post #487 on Apple Inc (AAPL)

[roni]

They also pay a subscription fee on Real's service of about $10 a month.

Pricing pressure, yeah right. Of course, iTMS is not available for 95% of computer users.

Ron

[Bill Palmer]

regarding digital music price drops:

That 79 cents per song is not just 79 cents per song, It's in addition the the monthly subscription fees. In other words, you pay extra to burn a (single?) copy of the music you're renting.

I'd venture that the recent uptick in Rhapsody's sales has little to do with the price cut, and a lot more to do with the fact that the iTunes Music Store has brought the idea of paying for digital music fully into the public's consciousness. Rhapsody is merely benefitting from the fact that iTunes hasn't been released for Windows yet. Heck, the price cut is more indicative of the amount of business Rhapsody expects to lose to Windows-iTunes, than anything else.

Note that Rhapsody bragged about a 100% increase in sales, yet declined to mention what that increase amounted to. My guess is that's it's a really small percentage of the five million tracks that Apple has sold (not rented). Perhaps even a single-digit percentage. We won't know for sure until Rhapsody releases some real numbers...or goes out of business.

[WmZ]

langostino: your usual math skills were asleep here.

With the $10 per month nut, at a 20¢ "savings" per song, it takes these lucky Rhapsodic types only 50 songs a month to break even and start reaping the benefits of this "pricing pressure".

It will be fortunate for Rhapsody if their subscribers are so busy downloading and ripping that they won't notice that rather high threshold of "bargain" consumption, or alternatively, too mesmerized by the music to notice they've been had.

WmZ