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So, yeah. I thought it was a prank at first, but it’s not! Microsoft will actually pay $1 to Universal for every Zune they sell. But unlike some who think that they’re doing it just to screw with Apple, I think what Mr. Gruber wrote here is the actual reason.
Microsoft is used to being the company which twists others arms, and is known to have made more than one cunning moves to gain market share for its products. This trend is so deep set, that when it’s actually Microsoft’s arm that’s being twisted, we don’t see it. Here, Universal is acting the bully. They see that Microsoft is in no position to bargain with them, and they impose a $1 per Zune as a payment to “offset the revenue lost due to music piracy”.

WHAT?? John Paczkowski raises a great question in his article here.

This is nothing more than sheer asshattery from the Universal, and other music label execs.

As Warner Music chief Edgar Bronfman Jr. said :

We are selling our songs through iPod, but we don’t have a share of iPod’s revenue. We want to share in those revenue streams. We have to get out of the mindset that our content has promotional value only. We have to keep thinking how we are going to monetize our product for our shareholders.

The music execs are really out for getting a chunk off of music players’ sales, and this deal of Universal and Microsoft just goes to show that these labels are out to get as much revenue off as idiotic reasons as possible!

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 12th, 2006 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Crapbag. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.