Spitzer Sets Sights on Digital Music

New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer has begun a “preliminary investigation” into whether record labels are colluding to set prices for digital music downloads. I don’t know whether this is based on any evidence, or just Spitzer seeing smoke, assuming a fire, and going after another scalp.
In any case, the music industry, which settled a previous price-fixing charge, should be careful. There have been a number of posts on this blog about the music industry trying to shoot itself in the foot, pricing-wise, and I guess we can call this another one. For folks in other industries, it’s generally not a good idea to publicly pressure downstream channel partners to alter pricing strategies, especially in ways that could be perceived to be against the consumers’ interest.