Music prices up, sales down...

Music sales at the iTunes store have apparently been falling for the past year and it is interesting to speculate why this might be. One obvious reason is that we are still in the middle of a recession and many people are spending much less than they used to. We all need to cut back a bit and save money, so buying a bit less music might be the result. However, another reason is that the iTunes store used to have a flat fee for all music tracks, but that policy was abandoned last spring and some prices have risen.

Prices in the iTunes store don't vary much, but some tracks are more clearly expensive than others. Are people simply being put off by the higher prices? When you see two tracks next to each other and one is £0.79 and the other is £0.99 (UK prices), do you think twice about buying the more expensive one? I'm not sure. If you really want a track then 20p isn't that much more to pay.

The falling sales at the iTunes store could be a combination of the recession and higher prices rather than simply one or the other.

As I have pointed out before, there are still bargains to be found though and music is sold by the track and not the playing time. Popular music singles tend to be just over three minutes because that is the optimum length for them. If your musical tastes are wider though, there are still bargains to be had.

One of the artists I like is Rick Wakeman. Searching for 'Wakeman' at the iTunes store lists all his music. You can then click the Time heading in the results to order by track length. You'll see that tracks that range from  less than one minute to just under 10 minutes - all for the same price. So I can buy Catharine Howard at 9 minutes 52 seconds for the same price as an average three minute pop single. That's excellent value for money.

At the other extreme is The Ravine, which at 49 seconds is the same price as the 9:52 track. That's crazy! Surely the price of music should be related to its length? I'll continue to look for the bargains and buy the longest tracks I can find and ignore the short ones. They are just too expensive.