Premium-Priced Songs Slip in iTunes Top 100 Chart Rankings

The iTunes Store’s recently-implemented variable pricing plan has had an interesting-albeit-predictable effect: cheaper songs are moving up the Top 100 chart while songs priced at the new $1.29 point are sliding. In less than two weeks, the average Top 100 ranked song priced at $1.29 has slid 7 chart positions.



Regardless of media saturation, marketing and other factors that contribute to a song or album’s success, price affects an immediate impact in the digital marketplace that subverts the logic that informed the development of variable pricing model in the first place. If record labels can no longer rely on media saturation and marketing to, in essence, buy a position for select songs, then how will “premium” pricing be applied in the future?

Though most press releases avoided the topic of continued price reevaluation and inflation, if price can have such an immediate impact on sales and, subsequently, chart ranking, it is possible that song price could be inflated—or deflated—instantly.

The trend should be a sign to an increasingly-desperate music industry that their variable pricing model is A.) counter-intuitive, B.) unfair and, above all, C.) absolutely ridiculous given the economy at large and widespread availability of these songs in their free-albeit-illegal form.

The honest few that, either out of guilt or concerns over sound quality, purchase digital music via iTunes shouldn’t be milked even more. As several studies have shown, the majority of Americans don’t perceive of file-sharing as illegal or wrong. In fact, considering the traffic to P2P sites like Pirate Bay, it has become a normal everyday practice for many, many people.

So, hopefully the music industry will take this as a lesson learned and restore the simple, flat-price model. More likely, though, this will happen but at a higher price. Instead of $0.99 being the standard, $1.29 will replace it, permanently, or until the next inevitable price hike.

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