Amidst the public war of words over iTunes' fixed pricing, Hits Rumor Mill points out today that the second part of a statement by Universal Music Group's Doug Morris, which stated support for variable pricing, hasn't got the attention it deserves.

"A lot of people are calling for higher prices now, as you've read. But we have decided that, for the moment, we will stay with the current prices, but what we do want is the opportunity to have variable prices. The reason we are going to stay with the current prices is because we don't think there'd be enough traction yet at 4% or 5% of the business. And we do not want, by raising the prices, to take a chance to force people back to piracy. That's our position on the subject."

One has to wonder what the threshold is for UMG to make the switch to variable pricing. When digital sales reach 10%? Twenty? Or when they're in a better position to take on Apple in the court of public opinion?

Universal Music Group had an investor and analyst meeting yesterday in London. Reuters' headline trumpeted the company's vision: "Universal Music Vows It's Not The Same Old Song."

Worth checking out is slide 27 of its presentation which lists the US's top ten digital tracks for the week ending 9/4/05. UMG has six of the top ten. The top track is Kanye West's "Gold Digger" and it sold over 66,000 in its first week. Slide 28 shows "Gold Digger" is the top mastertone with over 44,000 in sales for the week ending 9/11/05. The company says it has sold over 25 million mastertones in the US in 2005.

Subscription revenue usually plays second fiddle to download revenue but the presentation offers some data. Slide 29 lists growth in subscribers. The total number of subscribers across all services -- Rhapsody, AOL, Yahoo!, Ruckus, Napster, et al -- is currently about 1,500,000.

Podcasting is addressed on slide 34. It says "UMG working to establish a licensing structure for podcasting."

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