According to the Wall Street Journal, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson took the opportunity, while speaking at an investor conference, to once again talk about the iPhone remaining on his network, and also touch on the iPad, problems in New York and San Francisco, variable pricing, and Apple’s new darling, the iPad.

• While Stephenson doesn’t seem to have insisted the iPhone would remain exclusive on AT&T, he does say the iPhone will remain an important part of their offerings for “quite some time”.
• He’s pleases with the steps AT&T is taking to address network problems and dropped calls in New York and San Francisco. “We’re hitting our metrics,” he said. “I feel really good about our path.” And call quality should improve by mid-2010.
• Stephenson claims AT&T is carrying half of US wireless traffic due to the amount of data use the iPhone generates. Carriers will have to eventually move to “variable pricing” so that heavy users are charged more and light users, less.
• AT&T is “not in a tremendous hurry” to roll-out their 4G network; it won’t be widely available, and there won’t be a good amount of products using it, until 2012

So if we mash that all together, even if the iPhone also pops up elsewhere, you’ll still be able to get it on an improved AT&T network with tiered pricing (perhaps similar to the iPad’s $15 for 256MB, $30 for unlimited) until LTE is wide spread in 2012 and the iPhone 4G replaces everything.

How’s that grab you?

Apple has just released yet another new pricing model onto the iTunes Music Store: D45s [iTunes link]– two songs for one lower price ($1.49 to $1.99).

Confession: I’m old enough to remember the original 45s, those lovable little vinyl (Google it!) records with a hit song on one side, and something ranging from awesome to ridiculous on the other.

Those days are gone, as are the days of $0.99 fixed pricing (though admittedly albums were alway a volume discounted exception), but Apple’s hoping the Digital 45s prove to be as popular as the record companies no doubt hope they’ll help move more music through the age old bundling scheme.

Apple Insider reports that D45s will be exclusive to iTunes only through July 27, at which point other digital music retailers will be able to offer them as well (which, until Amazon MP3 bothers to roll out internationally, means they’ll likely stay exclusive to iTunes in most countries outside the US and UK…)

So, if you’ve been dying to get your jukebox fix, 2009 style, head on over and drop the needle hit the buy now button…

We posted last month about how initial reports showed the then new $1.29 price point Big Music had convinced iTunes, Amazon, and other digital music retailers to adopt had caused pricier tunes to fall down the charts, how do things look now, some 4 weeks later?

The same if not worse-ish, according to the Register:

Billboard notes that after four weeks, both $1.29 and $0.99 songs have, as expected, experienced a decline in revenue, down 34.5 per cent and 29 per cent. But since $1.29 songs have a higher margin, the hike has raised more income than if the price had remained at 99 cents. How much? Billboard reckons $14,000 a week net. DMN confirms the trend but wonders if the net effect isn’t negative overall.

Has the long-tail truly come off the online music business? Will the record labels continue to try and squeeze more and more out of the bestselling hits? Do we care? I know I barely thought twice about hitting the buy-button on $0.99 DRM-free, 256-bit iTunes music. At $1.29, however, psychological barrier or not, I think more than twice.

Maybe Steve Jobs was right?

I bought a bunch of music on April 6th at $0.99 in advance of the April 7th variable price shift. (Unlike Amazon and Walmart, Apple pre-announced the new pricing back in January). Now much of the music I bought, including many old, no longer popular tracks, is listed at $1.29. Looking at those prices today, I admit they make me think twice about buying again. According to Billboard (based on Gizmodo), I’m not the only one feeling that way:

One day after the price jump, there were 40 $1.29 songs in the Top 100, and 60 at 99 cents. The $1.29 songs fell an average of 5.3 places, while 99 cent songs moved up 2.5 places on average. The total average chart drop of pricier songs since the prices went up is about three places.

Unfortunately, Big Music is still making more money total on less sales of higher priced tracks, so they may not care. Historically, they’ve shown zero foresight when it comes to pricing themselves to compete with “free” pirated music, which was the whole crux of Steve Jobs’ iTunes pitch to begin with. See Rolling Stone from 2003:

We don’t see how you convince people to stop being thieves, unless you can offer them a carrot — not just a stick. And the carrot is: We’re gonna offer you a better experience … and it’s only gonna cost you a dollar a song.

Also still unexplained is where all that $0.69 music is that we were told would more than make up for the price hike on the higher end.

What do you think? Will you buy less music at $1.29 than you would have at the old $0.99 price point? Or is $1.29 a fair, modern market price for your favorite tracks?