TunesPro Sells Legal 19 Cent Hit Song Downloads
(UPDATE 3) : Brenden Mulligan of ArtistData tells Hypebot that his sources say that TunesPro is NOT authorized by the labels (see other evidence in the comments section). On Friday afternoon the site appeared to be down, but over the weekend the site was back up again.
U.S. based TunesPro.com is selling 19 cent single track downloads and albums for $1.88-$2.78 from all the major labels; and they are doing it legally. "We have deals with all major labels and with lot of the independent ones," a TunesPro spokesperson told Hypebot, " and every day we get requests for more independent ones to get their stuff on the site".
"We lose 39 cents a song."
How does TunesPro price songs at 70 to 80 cents below iTunes and Amazon? They admit to losing $.39 a song. "But we think this will be good promotion instead of paying ridiculous advertising prices." Eventually the price will rise to $.79 a track in 2-3 months "once we spend our promotion budget."
Get ’em while they’re cheap, then abandon the service?
@Matt Kraatz – pretty much.
I can’t imagine any meaningful level of adoption will stay after raising prices to around normal levels, unless the user experience is amazing. That being said, I just signed up and purchased an album and the user experience was great, so if it’s $0.20 less per song than iTunes, it might work. But I feel like others have tried the “slightly less expensive than iTunes” model and it doesn’t work.
So, for 2-3 months, people have the opportunity to use this a TON for new, cheap music, and it should be a great alternative to stealing. But after that, who knows, especially with momentum building for models that MOG and Spotify are introducing.
Brenden
While this may attract customers in the short-term, I agree with Brenden that I’m not sure it will work in the long-term.
Namely, the company can’t keep selling songs at a discount unless they’re making money through other revenue streams. It’s just not smart business (or sustainable).
From a consumer perspective though, the short-term cost savings are great.
Agreed, though it does get them over the “I don’t want to create another account” hurdle which is a big reason most download retailers fail. iTunes is just too dang convenient.
Whether or not anyone sticks around after they jack up prices will depend on how they differentiate themselves from other retailers.
Bruce,
Manager using ArtistData.com just confirmed through his major label source that “TunesPro is NOT legally selling those tracks. being sold through a foreign country or something”
Are you hearing anything similar?
BTW – You guys should consider switching to Disqus .. I’m not able to get alerts when people reply to comments here ..
Brenden
http://www.twitter.com/bmull
@bmull Thanks. My contact was via email with the site itself…and they could not be telling the truth. Does anyone else know anything?
This is absolutely a foreign company – look at their header, and how they wrote what God-fearing Americans like you and I would call nineteen cents:
0,19$
Commas are used instead of periods to denote fractions of Euros. Editting fail!
Anyway, there’s probably no “promotions” budget, and @bmull, as is most often hte case with international major labels, hte left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, so the domestic business affairs office probably has no idea a) what their foreign counterparts have authorized or b) what is or isn’t legal in certain foreign territories.
…Lest we forget the lessons of allofmp3.com
TunesPro.com is now down.
Guess that answers that.
kicking myself now. I poked around a bit earlier but didn’t buy anything!
Hmm, hopefully somebody tries this again (legitimately). I always enjoy having some venture capital suckers subsidize my music addiction…
Am i the only one who just plain doesnt buy music anymore period?
Domain registration: Palestinian Territories.
Web server IP: Moscow, Russia.
Many Beatles albums listed.
“Legal” because they said so?
Personally, I think the site rocks. When I go buy music, I’m not in the habit of asking the cd store if they pay taxes. I only care about getting the music.
Besides the really low prices, the great thing about tunespro is that the site doesn’t have DRM in the music, so the quality of sound is excellent.
Incidentally – “American made” in reference to music generally refers to “taxes”, “royalties”, “lawsuits”, “bankrupt”, and “headaches”.
Face it, according to the official RIAA website, the RIAA controls over 95% of all published music that is manufactured or played over the airwaves. In most countries, that within itself is considered an illegal monopoly.
Last I checked http://Tunespro.com is up probably running from some jurisdiction that its legal.
Anyway, I’m not a lawyer, just a music lover 🙂
Yeah, but Mark, you are paying for nothing. It would be just the same if you torrented the songs you buy, it is not legal for you to buy the songs if you are in a country such as USA or UK. Just lettin you know
So what’s the last word on this ? Is this legal or is is a pirate site destined to collect credit cards numbers all over the world ?
LOL ! i just saw this , the domain name whois was deposited in Panama, now indicates Palestinian Territories, and the servers are in Moscow ! Very much a pirate site to me, can’t believe they are operating openly like this….
I read they where legal and bought some stuff. Then I discovered they carried the Beatles and figured they couldn’t be legal. Now I wish I hadn’t bough any of it. None of this money went to the artists. That’s the worst kind of piracy.
tunespro.com is an illegal download site for sure. We had never heard of them until today. Checked, and sure enough they are offering many of the albums from our small independent label without our authorization. We have no deal in place with them. Bottom line fact from first hand experience: The labels and artists get nothing from sales on tunespro.com.
So what is the final word on this? If it is illegal, then why so much hype on this? Surely it can just be shutdown quickly?
With the servers being in Russian you should look up allofmp3.com. They were running a similar service some time ago, they are now pretty much shut down. If I recall Russian law makes this legal because the music is ripped for you as you request it. I don’t know if any of the royalties do actually get to the artists.
Sheesh, that’s harsh! Do the artists have any major punch then to get this closed down i.e. Beatles etc work being available only here? Wonder if they do scam the credit card details? Wow. Thanks for the post. Cheers
this site is not legal. I have friends who distribute their albums for free on their website under a creative commons licence. tunespro sells these albums without paying the artists. They denied a request to remove these albums.
That is thieft, and violating the CC license of these albums.
I like this site and it’s working fine for me. AllofMP3 is still going strong under a new name and my balance all transferred over. The customer service has always been top notch as well.
I use the site quite frequently, and became a little confused to the legality recently when I was able to purchase the Drake “Thank Me Later” album a week before its official release…anyone have any perspective on this…?