Will Amazon's Music Service Embrace Variable Pricing?

In a recent statement related to his company's investment in Aimee Street (a new artist site that utilizes dynamic pricing), Amazon SVP of Business Development Jeff Blackburn said allowing customers to directly influence song pricing “is an interesting and novel approach to selling digital music.”

With Amazon due to launch its own download store this year some are speculating that dynamic pricing will be part of the equation. 

We can't imagine that labels - major or indie - are anywhere near being ready to adopt such a radical pricing plan or that current recording contracts would allow it. But everything we know leads us to believe that Amazon's new music service will embrace variable pricing in a big way just as the company has in every other are of e-commerce. 

Variable pricing - up and down - is something that labels have demanded of iTunes from the start and long overdue.