Looks like these bad boys will be sticking around for a while yet

According to MediaMemo, it seems that Apple gave music publishers the ability to raise the price of their music on its iTunes service early last year, which resulted in some record labels bumping the prices of some songs upwards, while others took the opportunity to drop the prices of certain tracks. The overall result has been an interesting one.

It seems that, while sales of digital content from those publishers who opted to raise prices have continued to grow, they’ve grown significantly more slowly than before. Warner Music Group’s sales through iTunes have grown by around 8%, down from the usual 20% or so that it had managed through the same period last year.

While this is all very interesting from the point of view of the music industry, it has equally curious ramifications for the sale of books on iTunes, a business into which Apple will be moving with the introduction of its iPad tablet device. Given the fact that Apple has been fairly widely criticised for the fact that the price of ebooks has risen on Amazon (with many citing Apple’s price point as the reason Amazon’s prices were bumped), it seems as though that price point might not last.

Indeed, if publishers find that content simply doesn’t shift at the prices they’ve set (and it could well be the case that ebooks are hard to move at the $15ish that iTunes is expected to sell them at), then it seems likely that we’ll see some kind of price drop in an attempt to spur sales.

As our country manager, Aaron, is so fond of saying, “They can’t charge more than the market will tolerate,” which is basically a business way of saying, “If it’s too expensive, ain’t nobody goin’ pay for it…”

Looks like physical books could turn out to be cheaper...

Word comes from Gizmodo that more of Amazon’s “big six” publishers have been pushing prices up to the higher price point for “hardcover bestsellers,” which is an interesting term to use in an entirely data environment. After MacMillan’s move on Monday to see prices bumped to the $15 mark on certain titles, it seems that other publishers have come pouring in with similar requests to make of Amazon’s Kindle Store.

Indeed, it seems that those pushing for prices above Amazon’s once apparently set-in-stone $10 mark are now in the majority, which means that anyone buying new ebooks from Amazon could well find themselves paying more than they expected when they picked up their Kindle for just about any new book.

Of course, Amazon’s statement that it’s all about what the market will bear is a worthwhile one. If people simply refuse to buy ebooks in the same numbers as they had before then it seems likely that publishers could find themselves forced to lower prices on new releases or “hardcover bestsellers” in an attempt to sell in in higher volumes.

It’s certainly a strange arrangement though, to see digital content simply being bumped up to match the cost of physical content, especially given the fact that other non-book related services seem to be trending in the opposite direction. Indeed, Steam’s move to offer games at prices around the €2 mark for a limited time has seen absolutely massive sales, turning vast profit even on games that would normally cost closer to €20 and represent some fairly vast downloads. While we’re aware that they’re entirely different models, it does seem as though a low-cost high-volume sales model could work very well with books…

Still, if Apple is offering books at $15 a pop then it seems likely that publishers will push for Amazon to do the same. It’ll be interesting to see how well the Kindle stacks up to the iPad now that its cheaper books seem to be evaporating though. Could Apple have just killed the low-cost ebook?

Amazon has long been rumoured to be moving into the world of physical, brick and mortar shops, to supplement its income from its massively successful online shop. Moreover, with Microsoft having recently opened its own first shop, seeing massive success from the Microsoft Store, it seems that now could well be the time for typically digital companies to start boasting a physical presence… now though, Amazon has said that this is not the case.

Interestingly enough, the original report in the Sunday Times pointed to the rise in popularity of “click and collect” services, so the indication is that Amazon wouldn’t necessarily boast a service that was simply a bookshop, but one to which users could have a book delivered for collection, not entirely unlike our own Pick Up Point in Dublin (a service with which people seem generally to be quite pleased).

Regardless of Amazon’s response, it’s curious to see that the original report points to the relatively recent demise of Borders as one of the reasons Amazon might well be testing the water to see if the UK is ready for a bit of a push. Certainly, if Amazon isn’t considering a physical presence, then it has a very good reason for it, but for now we’d be very curious to hear just why.

For now, it seems, we’re destined to live in a world where Amazon is only accessible through displays.

Western Digitals Media Player is among the most popular.

This might be a little stinted, because of the fact that a lot of our customers tend to be quite technically minded, but we’re seeing a massive surge in the sales of media players and adaptors (like Western Digitials HDTV Media Player). Certainly they’ve grown to be among our most popular products, especially given the Irish fondness for external storage.

The fact is, a lot of us have an external drive knocking around that does nothing but media storage, and buying a media player that can adapt that drive into something you can plug directly into your TV (whether HD or otherwise) is an attractive offer. It’s long been the case that the Irish market is one in which external storage sells unusually well, so it seems only natural that people would want to capitalise on external drives with devices that make the move from formats like AVI to high-definition displays easier.

Moreover, it looks as though people are finally starting to get sick of the necessity to rebuy everything they’ve owned after every “format war” to determine what kind of media we’re all going to stick with. With digital content, the ability to keep backups and not clutter up shelving is a bigger bonus than many will account for, and while we don’t condone piracy, for those with massive archives of media (whether legal or not) there products like the Media Player certainly offer an irresistible allure.

Of course, the real question we have to ask now is whether or not Blu-Ray will be the last disc-based format for widespread dissemination of media. Certainly it seems as though digital distribution seems to be the way we’re going, but brick and mortar shops aren’t going to disappear. It seems very likely that physical media isn’t going to disappear anytime soon, but when it does, devices like the WD HD TV Media Player will likely have been the cause of its demise.