Quite a Bright Light

Wow! Doubling your prices overnight: how many real businesses could pull this off, without losing more than half of their customers? And that’s exactly what MP3Fiesta did. I’m sure I will check out the competition again, once I’m through my current balance.

It’s not that I’m against increasing prices. I guess inflation hits everybody. But the inflation has been nowhere near 100% last year, not even in Russia I would think. And I am aware that even with their prices doubled, the songs are still dead cheap. But at least, they could have had the politeness to warn their users, they have our email adresses. I wouldn’t have cared if the price of single songs would have gone up with 1 cent (still a respectable 10%), but when you decide to double you prices, I guess there are some basic levels of customer care you provide (even though thinking about customer care would probably automatically exclude doubling prices). You let your users know that such a change is at hands.

They probably feared a rush on their servers if they told their users of their plans. And true enough, some people would try and download as much as possible before the change was implemented. But issuing the warning sufficiently early enough would have spread out the server load. And maybe they thought about people that would quickly buy everything on their wishlist, people that now are forced to finish their wishlist at a much higher price. But I don’t think it works this way: I think a lot of those people will just buy less from their wishlist (I’m sure I will!).

I am sure there are people now who think that people who download from services as MP3fiesta and friends deserve no better. Fair enough. I, myself, have always hated everything which smelled like DRM, and have avoided Itunes as the plague. And even now they start selling DRM-free songs, I still don’t think it fair when a downloaded mp3 album costs almost as much as an album you buy in your everyday cd store (and if you wait for two years, the real life album - with booklet - is probably cheaper than the downloaded version).

That’s why I like services as Magnatune. They provide a direct link between performer and audience, resulting in much cheaper music for the buyers, and much more profit for the artists. Everybody happy! (Except for the big bosses of the music industry of course, they’ll have to do with a Rolls or two less…)