TEDWARD, you are correct… I over generalized in an attampt to make a point. But w/out “government” interference, my point is valid. Even then its consumers job to keep the “bosses” in check. Consumers dictate price. PERIOD.

“Illegal downloads will not subside until the price comes down even more than iTunes is charging already.”
Illegal downloads will never subside. People aren’t prepared to wait months or years for a series to reach their country. Some stations are now are airing selected shows the same time the States do and prominently advertising it. It’s not going to help until all shows are simulcast and even then there are other issues.

Then there are the cases of shows not being released to DVD. Sometimes that’s because they haven’t aired it locally and sometimes there are rights issues. But the end consumer doesn’t care. We want something and if it isn’t available legally we wil resort to the only means available.

“We never asked to double the wholesale price for our TV shows. In fact, our negotiations were centered on our request for flexibility in wholesale pricing, including the ability to package shows together in ways that could make our content even more attractive for consumers”

Except they aren’t just talking about bundling the whole season together for a discount. Apple is stopping this in its tracks. Sure, it may start off innocent enough and just clutter up the search engine with multiple versions of the same episode.

But we all know it will devolve into:
Want the first episode of season 2 of Heroes? Well only if you buy it in a triple pack with other shows we’re sure you’ll love, According to Jim and Sex in the City. What’s that? The episode of Heroes happens to have a samurai in it? Well you’re not watching it unless you buy the movie The Last Samurai as well.

It’s still not the same as a lossless format. As I already said, for most pop stuff, it’s fine, even for me, but don’t actually say that’s it’s as good as the lossless data on a cd or dvd-a.

The costs you’re talking about are there regardless of how the distribution is done. Media companies have been ripping us off for decades. If you don’t feel that way, I’m not going to try to convince you of this here. How much they charge for tracks & albums as downloads is proof enough.

Apple doesn’t use the MP3 codec for audio they use the AAC format. But regardless the MP3 format when encoded at 192K is as good as CD quality audio. And if it is encoded from the source material and not converted from a CD then the audio quality can actually be better.

What actually would you want to pay for a song or album? Walmart runs their download service at .89 cents I believe. But at some point the companies involved have to make their money. Apple needs to get paid, The label needs to get paid, the producers need to get paid and the artists need to get paid.

Is that why gas prices are so low?

I don’t disagree with your statement completely, but I would adjust it to;

“Prices are set by consumer compliance / ignorance” more than anything else.

Mp3’s are not as good, quality-wise, as a lossless file. Not even close. That’s like saying the quality of a VHS copy of a film is as good as a Blu-Ray High Def film.

Perhaps for most pop-rock songs, mp3’s are fine for your car stereo or iPod headphones (mp3’s are good enough for me for everything except orchestral stuff), but they’re not even close to being as good as the raw data on cd’s.

After a few million downloads, the cost of bandwith is certainly noticable, but only a fraction of the cost of getting the actual cd’s/dvd’s to stores.

At 99 cents a song, for a whole album, I’d pay anywhere from 8 to 20 bucks for it. That’s a complete rip-off.

The audio quality is the same as you would get if you bought a CD, sometimes the albums are even cheaper and have more extras than the in store versions do as well.

As for the video downloads the quality is still not up to par with DVD releases but it is getting there. As for pricing, you also have to take into account that Apple is storing this all on their servers for download so I’m sure the overhead of such a popular online download only store is rather high and that would be why the prices are where they are.

Shane,

You do lose the packaging cover art, collectible extras, content extras and hard drive space (you make a backup of all your purchases and store it on an external hard drive or disc media just in case) and no I wouldn’t want to watch 300 on a 12 inch screen but you can take it with you, media bought from Apple with DRM is playable on five authorized computers, plus if you have Apple TV that can act as a television iPod and as long as you have what you want to watch on the ATV hard drive you can bring it wherever. Also, at least in my case iTunes TV downloads have turned me on to shows I probably wouldn’t have watched ever as $1.99 is an impulse buy for me and if something looks cool, $2 is a small price to pay if I like it.