Steve Jobs responds to music industry pricing pressure

As a follow up to our earlier story, Apple CEO, Steve Jobs has responded to major label pressure to institute tiered pricing for their popular download service. Jobs insisted that the 99¢ price would be maintained, telling Reuters:

If they want to raise the prices, it means that they are getting greedy, If the price goes up, they (consumers) will go back to piracy and everybody loses,

As originally reported, the music industry would prefer a tiered pricing scheme where songs are priced based on "popularity" so a popular new track like Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" could sell for as much as $1.49 while a catalog song would concievably be priced lower than the current 99¢ price.

Many have criticized this mixed price model, attributing much of Apple's success to the simplicity of a single tier of pricing. Not all the major labels wish to see a change to tiered pricing, with Universal supporting the flat-rate model, and EMI wishing to avoid problems. Not surprisingly, the firms complaining most vociferously include Sony/BMG which has it's own download service which has failed to ignite the interest of consumers.

Other independent digital download services like Audio Lunchbox use a flat-rate model, while Downloadpunk.com seems committed to a tiered pricing system.

The iTunes catalog encompasses most major and independent labels including Fat, Epitaph, Vagrant, Hopeless, Fearless, Trustkill, Ferret, Thick and many others.