Apple And Amazon At War Over Lady Gaga?
How can an album be sold for 99cts and $12 at the same time? I don’t understand the price of digital music anymore. So many people tried to download Lady Gaga’s 'Born This Way’ for only 99cts that the Amazon site crashed… the servers were not able to keep up with the demand. But that was a premiere, a new album that cheap! And everyone’s perception of an album value is changing.
It is back at $6.99 on the Amazon download store now, but it is still a deal compared to iTunes.
So is this war? Is this a way for Amazon to beat Apple? But as for any war, there will be some casualties, and one of them is the value of music, art.
Could you call me a thief if I had downloaded this album illegally? A thief for 99cts? It’s becoming ridiculous. I have downloaded a few albums from Amazon for the promotional price of $3.99 and I naturally thought it was awesome, but it is getting closer and closer to… free, and who doesn’t like free? I have to wonder, will all digital music be free in the future? Radiohead already offered their ‘In Rainbows’ album for free, and billions of songs are downloaded each month via BitTorrent, illegally, and one day, the industry may realize that they can no longer charge people for digital recorded music.
Meanwhile, about 250,000 to 350,000 copies of ‘Born this way’ were sold (the 2 online stores combined) in the first 24 hours, more than most albums will be able to sell in a year. But how much exactly get Lady Gaga from a 99cts download?
Lady Gaga’s album was Amazon’s machine gun to bite the Apple, but the gun derailed a tiny bit as people got pissed off because of the failed downloads. However, it was one way to get people used even more to the idea of cheap, very cheap music.
