TUNESPRO.COM OFFERS 19 CENT DOWNLOADS

iTunes has been repeatedly criticised for raising the prices of music downloads during a time when online music sales are on the rise. Single track downloads recently rose from 99c to $1.29 on iTunes which prompted competing music sites Amazon, Napster, & CDUniverse to also raise prices. Critics of the price rise hope this opens the door for newer sites to take precedent by lowering prices. Now comes TunesPro.com, a relatively new mp3 download site, that has overwhelmed sales expectations by taking a chunk of the market share simply by offering all individual songs for as little as 19c, with additional 10% discounts given to consumers who purchase full albums. "It simply doesn't make sense to buy music for $1.29 per song at iTunes.com when TunesPro is offering the same exact music for a fraction of the cost," says Jesse Kuzecki, a dance choreographer who often purchases music online via TunesPro. According to Slyck.com, a popular newgroup offering music news and reviews, "It's no secret by now that buying a CD single is soooo 2001. In an era where you can stuff 10,000 songs in a device the size of a paperclip it's hardly a revelation that CD single sales have tanked, while 2009 was a record year for digital single sales in the UK. And the BPI has the stats to back it up." claims Thomas Mennecke, chief editor of Slyck.com while explaining "The latest digital music sales in the UK paint the situation perfectly. In 2002, there were almost 144 million CD single sales with only about 44 million digital download sales. Those numbers have totally flipped in 2009 - there were only 1.9 million CD single sales, with an impressive 117.6 million digital download sales" Mike Chancy of Mp3.com forums reiterated his colleagues disapproval of the high costs by stating, "Consumers shouldn't have to win the lottery in an effort to finance the high music costs". According to Chancy, if sites similar to TunesPro gain popularity, iTunes and Napster will be forced to either lower prices or face losing their respective market share. We personally have not checked TunesPro.com to see the availability of tracks and artists, so we’ll leave it to you to let us know if it’s worth looking into.