PARIS, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs in Paris Tuesday charged "greedy" record companies are pushing for an increase in the price of legal music downloads.
Jobs said from the Apple Expo that studios were pressuring for a price increase at its iTunes Internet music store -- even though they were making a bigger profit with the downloads than they did via CD sales, the BBC reported Tuesday.
"So if they want to raise the prices it just means they're getting a little greedy," he said.
U.S. iTunes users pay 99 cents per song while prices are higher in Japan and Europe.
Job warned the music industry consumers "think the price is really good where it is," adding any drastic increases could send music fans back to illegal downloading of copyright material.
"We're trying to compete with piracy, we're trying to pull people away from piracy and say 'you can buy these songs legally for a fair price,'" he said. "But if the price goes up a lot, they'll go back to piracy. Then everybody loses."
