We need more customers - let's raise prices!

Apple intends to increase the price of "hit singles and selected classic tracks" from $0.99 to $1.29 as of April 7th.

So here's the deal. The music industry, still hurting from declining CD sales, figures that the best way to get more money from online digital music sales is to increase their price.

Jim Guerinot, who manages such bands as Nine Inch Nails, No Doubt and Offspring, said the industry's pricing was moving in the wrong direction if it hoped to compete with still rampant music piracy. "Wouldn't it make sense to try to price it cheaper instead of squeezing the handful of people who are still willing to pay for music?"

It's not all bad news though. Apple will also cut the price of select songs to $0.69.

I have always felt that a music album in its entirety is worth at most $10 in uncompressed mode (such as on a music CD), which puts the worth (not counting any bias toward the more popular songs on an album) of a song at around $1 each. Convert those songs into the lower quality posers that are mp3 files, and I'd value a song at $0.50 each.