Mobile Music Downloads Pricing: What’s Fair?
There’s so many (legal) ways to get music downloaded onto your mobile device. Most of the major carriers over here in the ‘States have their own music service, with different pricing structures. All of them charge more for a tune downloaded straight to the mobile, and allow you to either copy that to your PC, or download a free copy for your PC. This is an incredibly convenient service, and something that I’ve done for a long while with Symella.
But what’s a fair premium for having instant access to the songs you want? What pricing is out there right now? Let’s take a look at the services across the carriers that are available now, and hopefully get an idea of what the industry deems "fair." How do you think it’ll stack up?
The most recent is Cingular’s announcement that they’ll be working with eMusic, and offer music downloads in a 5-pack for $7.50, billed to your account. Divide it out, you’re looking at $1.50 per track. If you head over to the eMusic website, after some digging you’ll find that for $9.99 from a PC, you get 30 tracks, making them $.33 per track. Mobile downloads, from that perspective, carry a hefty premium at $1.27/track. eMusic has a library of 2 million songs, and seems to be a hybrid subscription/purchase system, and I was unable to determine for sure if songs worked if you cancel your subscription they distribute their music DRM-free, so it works in any MP3 player, even after you cancel.
Verizon’s music store is doing pretty well with 1.9 million songs. VCAST Music Store offers mobile-purchases for $1.99, and users receive a copy for the phone immediately, and a copy to download to their PC at their leisure. Alternatively, users can simply purchase on the PC for $.99 and then transfer that track to their phone via data cable. Thus, the premium with Verizon’s VCAST is $1 per track.
Sprint’s music store offers users 2 options. The ala carte option is $2.50 per track downloaded directly to the handset. After some extensive searching, I discovered that the Sprint Music Store holds 1.4 million tracks, though I was unable to find desktop music prices. Users are able to download tracks for only $.99 directly to their handset, but that requires a $15/month Power Pack. Even still, there’s a hefty markup of either $15/month or ~$1.50/track premium for getting the goods instantaneously.
Currently in the US, those are your options if you want to get the tunes directly to your device. So it appears as though it’s an average of $1.25 per track premium to get it instantly. With iTunes’ popularity, most consumers are used to a per-track cost of $.99. Thus, a $1.25 premium seems a bit much, as it’s more than 100% of the regular cost. Personally, I would say that $1.50 for a music track directly to my handset is worth it, versus me waiting till I got home to download the track.
The biggest wildcard in the mobile music download formula is the cost of the actual data being transmitted. Sprint and Cingular both still charge regular data fees for downloading music, unless the subscriber is on a data plan already. Verizon, I believe, requires you to have a data plan to even get access to the music store.
So now let’s think about Nokia’s music store. It will launch, apparently, with roughly 1.6 million songs, a respectable amount compared to the other offerings. The question, however, is pricing. Personally, I would hope that Nokia would have the same $.99 per track from the PC as iTunes, and tack on a $.50 "convenience premium" for downloading it directly to your handset. However, some might point out that $.50 is a 50% premium, which seems a bit steep when you look at it like that.
What do you think is a fair premium for the convenience of instantly having the music available to you? Do you think there should be one at all? Would the network data costs to download a ~4MB be prohibitive to you?
Could you tell me how to use Symella.. I really can’t get the hang of it.
Email me if you can,
Thanks.
Your posts are great nowadays (better than before to be honest… they’re long, and worth the read)
Btw, again you’ve written a masterpiece
I never pay for a song.. haha. except for buying albums..
I like Symella i use it all the time.
I’ve been using eMusic for over a year (a normal account via the web, not that crappy over priced phone deal), and all the music is DRM free, so it won’t ‘expire’ if you cancel your subscription.
Ricky,
One question sticks out to me here. I can understand the justification of the networks for charging a premium (although nowhere near what they charge). They basically include the cost of the bandwidth in there. Now for Nokia, is there any reason why it would cost them more for us to get our tracks on the phone than it would through the PC? The only thing I can think of is the cost of developing the software, but that still has to be done on both platforms.
Matt Schneider
@wetwebwork - Thanks for the headsup, I will correct the post to reflect that.
@matt schneider - the networks charge you data, too, as far as I know. I know at least that AT&T does. For Nokia, it might just be taking advantage of a market precedence, that people here are used to paying a bit more for the mobile convenience. Or they may forgo the convenience premium and just charge the same all over. As a business person and a consumer, I personally dont think an extra $.50 is outrageous.