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Best Buy Backs CD Copy Impairment
borkus writes: "Chief Operating Officer Allen Lenzmeier of Best Buy, Co, owner of Best Buy Stores and Musicland said that his company would support industry efforts at copyright protection, though he didn't specify any particular technology. Although Best Buy stores sell MP3 players, CD-Burners and tape decks, they aquired Musicland in 2001. According to the article, the 10% decrease in music sales in 2001 was caused mostly by Internet file swapping. As a major retailer of both electronics AND music, Best Buy could have a huge impact on the future format of music player hardware as well as software."
Okay.. I'm going to say something snarly here. Have they actually given serious thought to the possibility that the reason sales are down is because the fanatical followers of bubblegum pop have started to grow up?
Probably not.
This is a supply/demand issue. It's quite possible that the listening audience demand has dropped because the supply is drek.
BestBuy was just eliminating a competitor when they bought Musicland. They were already one of the largest sellers of cd's in 2001. The real issue behind this is that BestBuy owns a record label (can't remember the name, Red Line Records?) and as such they are indirectly member of the RIAA.
The RIAA, BestBuy and others continue to make two, essential false assumptions about the music industry.
- The decline in sales has nothing to do with the content being produced by the music industry.
Sorry, try again. Many, many people who download songs end up buying the albums, however there is a severe lack of anything new or remotely innovative in popular music, right now. Record companies are STILL placing all their bets on Teen Pop, Metal, Rap and a stunning number of bands who have decided to get Eddie Vedder impersonators as their vocalists. Sure, there are a few exceptions, but really, the catagories I mentioned are the sum total of 99.9% of the music industry right now.
If people don't buy CDs, the record company mentality goes, it must be because of something wrong with the customer. They are unwilling to admit that they have alltogether tightened the reigns on the industry to the point where it is being choked. Radio playlists across the country are exactly the same, paid for by corprate moolah (indirectly, of course) and some DJs are not even permitted to play ANY songs of their own choosinig.
MTV has descended to the point where you get one, single video show per day and that's it. (if you are lucky)
TRL is a pressure cooker for sales. Videos are premiered on the show and since that is for many the only exposure to videos they have, they simply vote for the video they have been spoonfed. The result is a never-changing block of videos that are fed to the masses in a trickle so the minimum amount of variety can be used to gain the maximum amount of exposure for an "artist". This extremly tightly focused enviornment is used to force an artist on as many impressionable people as once, and give them few other musical options.
Now, for the second false assumption:
- That BestBuy, and any company that supports such measures will ever receive my business again.
I've spent thousands upon thousands at particular stores or products by particualr companies over many years. However, their business practices mean that my disposible income will cease to flow into their cash registers.
And I'm not alone.
The music industry has shown their utter contempt for me and I see no reason to give them a dime of my money any longer. I would like to support the artists I like, but even buying a CD now means risking buying crippled media. It doesn't matter WHY I would want to use a non-copy prevented CD, I'm sure it would surprise them that I would be doing nothing remotely illegal, just keeping one CD in the car and a couple of MP3s in my playlist.
But they don't care, and therefore, neither do I.
There are countless others like me now, and there are more all the time. I really hope the record industry likes what they've done.
You reap what you sow, and believe me, the record company better count it's blessings that a 10% drop in sales is all they have to deal with right now.
It's going to get much worse, and their strong-arm tactics are the only reason why.
Nobody wants to offer this service because the record companies make more money doing what they do now: namely, packaging one or two hit songs onto an $18 disc and convincing consumers to buy two or more per month. Do the math and you'll see why they don't like the idea of a $10 or even $20 subscription-- at least, one that gives you a large number of new releases that don't expire.
The problem is, for them to make money selling CDs online, they'd have to charge much higher prices than what you propose, just to keep their revenue flat. People don't want to pay what the record companies would have to charge, especially with all of the free alternatives out there.
What we're seeing is a classic example of executive punting. Whether they realize it or not, the label executives have put their business on a course of nearly guaranteed disaster. Their customers will hate them, those affected by draconian copyright legislation will hate them, and in the end it will all fail. However, no executive wants to be the guy who embraced online music at a reasonable price, and consequently reduced earnings by 30-50% over the golden-goose CD model. They'd never work again. (I've heard various industry professionals acknowledge the gist of this argument in private, though few yet acknowledge the contention that sharing-prevention efforts are doomed to failure.)
In other words, any exec who does the long-term intelligent thing for the industry, namely putting its long-term survival over short-term profits, would be destroying his or her career. So it won't happen, and the idiots will get high-paying jobs elsewhere while the recording industry suffers the fallout of those short-sighted decisions.