Slashdot Mirror
Music Companies Convicted of Price Fixing Again
InspectorPraline writes "Providing more proof that the record industry is indeed a oligopoly, this article at the New York Times reports that two major record companies, Vivendi Universal and Warner Communications, have been convicted of price fixing by the FTC over a recording from 1998 of the Three Tenors. While Warner reached an agreement with the FTC about a year ago, Vivendi continues to deny wrongdoing and will, of course, appeal." The FTC's release is quite informative, describing the entire case.
Yay! So now they'll change their evil ways and become good corporate citizens, right?
*cough* yeah right *cough*
Took 4 years for one record, what about the thousands of other CDs that come out every year? Something tells me this is just gonna be a slap on the wrist that they'll recover from quite quickly.
In other news senators carrying large bags of money proposed changing the law and making it legal for music companies to DOS people accusing them of price fixing.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master"-Unknowen
It's keeps these evil corperations from screwing us over competely.
It's rediculous that these companies are permitted to do this at all. CD prices keep going up while manufacturing costs keep going down. Any common person can see that all the music labels and distributors are 100% guilty of price-fixing.
And that's why I don't bother to pay for CDs anymore. I would rather support my favorite artists directly by going to their shows, buying their merchandise or even buying the CDs direct from them. (Yes, the label and distributors still get their cut, but the artist gets a bigger cut than their usual pennies.)
Call me a thief and tell me I have no morals. I really give a shit what someone on Slashdot thinks of me. Really.
As the concert approached, the complaint alleged, Warner and PolyGram became concerned that the audio and video products resulting from the Paris concert would not be as original or as commercially appealing as the earlier Three Tenors releases. To reduce competition from these earlier releases, the companies allegedly adopted what they called a "moratorium" agreement. Through this agreement, the complaint alleged, PolyGram would not discount or advertise the 1990 Three Tenors album and video from August 1, 1998 through October 15, 1998 (the "moratorium period"); in return, Warner would not discount or advertise the 1994 Three Tenors album and video during the same interval.
I guess this is price fixing but what about all the CDs that are released. Aren't they all over-priced becuase of all the record companies working together to raise prices?
Ok, for all you Canuck Slashdotters, I've got a question...
Why is it that when I go into HMV, the average CD price is $33 CDN, and yet when I go to Sam The Record Man, the average price is only $17-20 CDN?
Has anyone heard why HMV has jacked the price up so high?
By now, no one is surpised by price fixing and record companies. Even my 60 year old mother, who buys about 12 CD's in a year, made a comment to me about how the cost of making CD's goes down, but the cost to consumers does not.
I just don't see how the FTC can not bring the hammer down on these companies. It is just plain obvious that they price fix.
Linux O Muerte!
Has anyone got this Three Tenors album in mp3 or ogg vorbis? I haven't heard it yet.
Bwahahahaha
ALright, let me first say that i don't approve of many of the actions of the record companies. But many people here go off about how the record companies abuse their control over the musicians, because the musicians don't get much money from the price of a single CD. This is all very true, the record companies do get the majority of the moeny from a CD sale, but they also spend loads of money on alot of these artists. I'm not sure of the exact price that it takes to put together a music video, but i imagine its in the millions, now the artists themselves sure as hell don't pay these costs. Also the record company has to promote songs and albums by paying radio stations and MTV to play them. Most popular musicians today owe all of their fame to a record company. It is these 'evil' companies which have talent scouts that go around searching for potential stars. I admit that there are a few very talented musicians that could make it big in the country by their skill alone, but these people are few and far between. For the most part it is the record companies that makes these people stars.
This post does focus largely on the company's efforts to promote big stars like Britney Speares, N'Sync, and other large pop stars. But it still applies to almost anyone artist who is picked up bya record label.
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
well according to this:
James P. Timony ordered a series of companies, all of which are subsidiaries of French corporation Vivendi Universal S.A., among other things to cease and desist from entering into "any combination, conspiracy, or agreement" - with producers or sellers at wholesale of audio or video products - to "fix, raise, or stabilize prices or price levels"
lol, unless "among other things" is a big whopping fine which, i seriously doubt since that would have been certainly mentioned...
this decision basically amounts to a "stop doing that" decision, yeah that oughta get their attention
ok, who's got a new password or a generator for this site...
Scum.
loply.com
The reason why this is important is spelled out in Jefferson's own writings:
How far are we going to let the copyrighters go? We need to remind people that copyright, like most laws in the US, is a balance between two forces, and the scale should not be tipped too far to one side.
Or perhaps I should have said, this was true. Because roughly two weeks ago (slightly after 1.1 alpha was released) a fix went in that caused a huge decrease in the amount of RAM Mozilla uses, particularly with quickstart enabled. Download a current nightly (or wait till 1.1 beta) and observe for yourself. We're talking a decrease to 6-10 MB max - even after having been running for an entire day. There are still some occasions where memory usage will increase steadily, but for general usage this has become a lot better.
You know, he's absolutely right. Did you read about how Kyle Broslofski's mother lead the USA to go to war with Canada because of the way the Terrance and Phillip movie caused their kids to start swearing?
Don't mess with Jews, man. They really run the place!
Say it loud, and say it proud. Ain't that shit the truth. Remember, with OpenSource software (free as in free clinic) you get what you paid for.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
I often wonder: Who doesn't appeal a decision that doesn't go their way? I mean, an appeal is basically the same thing as a childrens "Do Over" with more adult pretention...
Oh, I was thinking for a moment that it could have been important.
when are all the lovely people of this world going to wake up and realize that the only way to take back from the RIAA is basically piracy.
whine to the government all you want, but until some freak radioactive chemical is accidentally dumped on washington, causing every congressman to mutate into benevolent-o and slowly climb out of the back pockets of their contributors...NOTHING IS GOING TO COME OF IT!
sometimes you simply have to fight fire with fire.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
[i]Providing more proof that the record industry is indeed a oligopoly[/i] There's nothing wrong with oligopols, 90% of all things you buy come from Oligopol markets. The main property of these markets is that the products are differentiated in the eyes of the consumer.
Realese som good music instead of brainwashing people with BSB and Britney Bimbo and maybe we ll feel that the music is worth paying for. As of today most isnt worth the plastiv its printed on. Note, thats not the artists fault. Pink is a good example of that!
HTTP/1.1 400
That explains it! Every time I try to download a Metallica song, I instead get an endless loop of Celine Dion singing "Hava Nagila."
Im sure they will recover quite quickly, soon everything will be back to normal. The industry will soo go back and keep its head in the sand about digital music, and dragging whatever remaining artists are still signed to major labels to a slow and unheard of death. "If history repeats itself, how come nobody was bailing out the carriage industry when the internal combustion engine was invented?"
Slap on the wrist, slight embarrassment, wait 6 months, repeat.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
IS and argument for proof of price fixing. AS well as the cd "single" that costs a hell of a lot less then the cd, and still has the same massive hype and advertising attached.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Quoth Myselfthethoom:
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master"-Unknowen
It's actually a quote from a game, Alpha Centauri.
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last loose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
-- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "Librarian's Preface"
My
Limekiller
I've been told that in Japan the record companies have some kind of agreement with the government allowing them to fix prices, which is why Japanese CDs cost $30 and the American imports were about $15 or a little over (this was a few years ago, funny how CD prices have gone _up_ as the technology has gotten cheaper, neh?)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Personally, I try and compromise by only buying used CD's. This way, I can still support the little record store on the corner, and get the full and always complete CD that I want. I sometimes have to wait. Wait a very very long time (I recently bought an album I had been waiting to find used for two years) and in the meantime I listen to the downloaded version. I'm also willing to buy new CD's from labels that aren't the RIAA, but I haven't really gone looking for small, unheard of bands yet (there's still so much that I do know about already).
I have a bit of difficulty not going for the new bargain CD's that they sell at Tower or something. While these things don't really have the price gouging argument against them directly (hell, $7.99 is a great price for a CD even by used standards) the money will go towards gouging consumers in other ways. On the other hand, if they see that people will buy more at lower prices (an obvious fact that they have failed to grasp) then maybe they will lower other CD's to these prices, not just those in catalog that have already paid forthemselves and more.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Okay, as I understand it, the labels, afraid that the '98 performance was gonna suck, agreed to not advertise or discount CDs of the previous 2 concerts, so as not to take away from the fanfare of the most recent one. How is this wrong? It's not even like they got together and decided to make all their CDs more expensive. And even if they did, who cares? No one has a monopoly on selling music. It would just make more people take a closer look at independent releases. Besides, I thought price-fixing was reserved for markets that dealt with necessites, like the phone company or gasoline. You don't need CDs. In fact, they're very easy to go without.
I'm the last person to defend major labels' practices (see the RIAA song and wallpaper for proof), but I don't see anything wrong with what they did (or more accurately, didn't do). It's a free market, and they should have the right to choose whatever business model they want, no matter how crappy or unfair.
c-hack.com |
REMAINING U.S. CEOs MAKE A BREAK FOR IT
... I ripped it off from a forwarded email
Band of Roving Chief Executives Spotted Miles from Mexican Border
San Antonio, Texas(Reuters) - Unwilling to wait for their eventual indictments, the 10,000 remaining CEOs of public U.S. companies made a break for it yesterday, heading for the Mexican border, plundering towns and villages along the way, and writing the entire rampage off as a marketing expense.
"They came into my home, made me pay for my own TV, then double-booked the revenues," said Rachel Sanchez of Las Cruces, just north of El Paso. "Right in front of my daughters."
Calling themselves the CEOnistas, the chief executives were first spotted last night along the Rio Grande River near Quemado, where they bought each of the town's 320 residents by borrowing against pension fund gains. By late this morning, the CEOnistas had arbitrarily inflated Quemado's population to 960, and declared a 200 percent profit for the fiscal second quarter.
This morning, the outlaws bought the city of Waco, transferred its underperforming areas to a private partnership, and sent a bill to California for $4.5 billion.
Law enforcement officials and disgruntled shareholders riding posse were noticeably frustrated.
"First of all, they're very hard to find because they always stand behind their numbers, and the numbers keep shifting," said posse spokesman Dean Lewitt. "And every time we yell 'Stop in the name of the shareholders!', they refer us to investor relations. I've been on the phone all damn morning."
"YOU'LL NEVER AUDIT ME ALIVE!" they scream. The pursuers said they have had some success, however, by preying on a common executive weakness. "Last night we caught about 24 of them by disguising one of our female officers as a CNBC anchor," said U.S. Border Patrol spokesperson Janet Lewis. "It was like moths to a flame."
Also, teams of agents have been using high-powered listening devices to scan the plains for telltale sounds of the CEOnistas. "Most of the time we just hear leaves rustling or cattle flicking their tails," said Lewis, "but occasionally we'll pick up someone saying, 'I was totally out of the loop on that."
Among former and current CEOs apprehended with this method were Computer Associates' Sanjay Kumar, Adelphia's John Rigas, Enron's Ken Lay, Joseph Nacchio of Qwest, Joseph Berardino of Arthur Andersen, and every Global Crossing CEO since 1997. ImClone Systems' Sam Waksal and Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco were not allowed to join the CEOnistas as they have already been indicted.
So far, about 50 chief executives have been captured, including Martha Stewart, who was detained south of El Paso where she had cut through a barbed-wire fence at the Zaragosa border crossing off Highway 375. "She would have gotten away, but she was stopping motorists to ask for marzipan and food coloring so she could make edible snowman place settings, using the cut pieces of wire for the arms," said Border Patrol officer Jenette Cushing. "We put her in cell No. 7, because the morning sun really adds texture to the stucco walls."
While some stragglers are believed to have successfully crossed into Mexico, Cushing said the bulk of the CEOnistas have holed themselves up at the Alamo. "No, not the fort, the car rental place at the airport," she said. "They're rotating all the tires on the minivans and accounting for each change as a sale."
I take no credit for this
Most /.'ers are ignorant to scream evil when a cd price goes up. Yes cd MANUFACTURING prices have gone down, but making the property that is on the cd, costs far more than any of you probably realize. The time and effort, and of course money required to make the music on a cd is so high that the record companies have to protect what they have invested. Sure some of their practices are questionable, but who are you to say how a loan company an artist chose is doing wrong? No one forced the artist to sign a record contract, they did it because they couldn't pay the fees to make a cd themselves. I'm really dissappointed in the ignorance of such an esteemed "nerd" community.
The average price of a CD is $19. That's right, $19. And some Phish CD's were $26. Sale items marked $17. And there is no difference whether the CD you're looking for is 14 years old or 14 days. Nineteen Bucks.
They need to gargle sulphur in hell while their children are eaten by Rhinos. Long live musci sharing.
Two music companies that joined forces to sell recordings of the opera stars known as the Three Tenors illegally fixed prices, an administrative law judge ruled.
This is not a huge loss for anyone involved. No real impact will come of it. It sounds to me like a small slap on the wrist for two companies selling the same product at the same price as part of an agreed upon deal. Albums like this deal probably account for less than 1% of what is available on store shelves.
Move along...nothing to see here, or at least not what you are hoping to see.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
I have an argument against price fixing. How about CD's that cost less to make?
Wilco's new "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" album was recorded for some incredibly cheap sum, like a few thousand dollars. Yet it's sitting there with the same price tag at Best Buy as the huge manufactured pop albums. Add this to the fact that Wilco released the entire album on the internet themselves before the CD was released, and they've still already turned a profit on the thing.
Another example is the new Massive Attack DVD compilation of music videos. If you've seen this thing in stores, it's basically a clear plastic case with a boring looking DVD inside. That's it. No artwork or inserts. Nothing. The reason for this is that Massive wanted to keep the costs for the buyer as low as possible (they're giving profits to charity). You can go their website and download the artwork for yourself (you even have three choices of which artwork you want). But what happened when they talked to retailers? The retailers said that the DVD would be marked up to the same price as all the others on the shelves, even though it cost them a hell of a lot less to buy. The details are all on Massive Attack's site (I think in a newspost from 3d, although it might be in the forums).
Either way, there's a lot of price fixing and gouging going on, and no matter what steps are taken by the artists themselves, short of delivering the CD's directly to fans, they can't get the retail price down.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
When are you libertarian-types going to figure out that the biggest threat to your liberty is not the government, but corporations?
Ooooooooooooooooh well.
It's not terribly significant by itself, but it's great ammunition for the next time they sue anyone for copyright infringement, though...
"Your honor, the group of companies suing us has been convicted of conspiracy. That court put on them a cease and desist order which they are violating by bringing this suit. We're filing a countersuit, and move to dismiss their suit."
Saying that your opponents are preventing you from illegal price fixing is a little tricky.
Of course, these days the MPAA is much more of a problem than the RIAA, which seems to have largely killed their market.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Microsoft commits illegal actions and practically gets away with it, while if you copy software the BSA will get you.
If you swap MP3s you are going to jail for copyright violations, but price fixing by huge corporations is OK. I'm so glad the Justice Department has their priorities strait.
With the mass availability of pirated music and with almost 40 percent decline in CD sales, I dont blame them for trying stuff like this. I wish the government would just step out of this war.
Think about it. The more they pull this kind of price fixing crap, the economics of the problem state that people will find alternative means to enjoy the music therefore turning to mp3's(i dont know many people who feel morally obliged to buy cds.. i dont). Therefore record companies will shoot themselves in the foot and eventually start going out business until they realize they need a new profit scheme for music.
The only victim in this little casualtyless war is the poor people who feel obligated to buy cds due to their respect for the law. I feel sorry for em but think the goal of letting the freemarket economy destroy inefficient record companies is better for everyone.
But maybe i'm biased since I dont even like music that much
1 computer - $999
1 CD burner - $50
1 pair of headphones - $15
1 Portable mp3 player - $199
Ripping off the record companies - Priceless
for everything else, there's gnutella
So, the same companies that are lecturing us about how immoral it is to trade music, are price-fixing?
Yea, fuck that.
Fuck their moral bullshit.
Fuck their intellectual property.
Fuck them.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
What did they do, charge us the price for four tenors?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No one puts a gun to the head of the children and adults who buys BSB and Britney Spears and make the record companies their millions. If people are buying their manufactured music and they're making tons of cash, why would they stop?
Fox News tars every Arab with the same brush on a daily basis, and every Israeli it adorns with rose petals. I guess that's OK, though? Y'all can be racist, as long as it's a fashionable race, right?
--actually it's *both things* in one:
quotage from a famous fascist, benito mussolini:
"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism
as it is a merge of state and corporate power."
This is exactly what has happened today. It's the same deal. Nothing changes with these big buck fatcats, they just get smoother at faking out the rubes and sucking down stock investment money and getting their tame pols into elected office and appointed bureaucraciees. If the bribe didn't exist already they would invent it.
I am a Jew and he is basically correct. We are better businessmen.
...use the nice page http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html to preserve your privacy and fake your nytimes.com login.
Please, we're all nuts about privacy here, stop linking to nytimes.com (do you uh...yahoo!?) or at least do it through the faker.
Thank you.
Ok, enough with the 3 tenors jokes.
This is important because it gives the FTC a rock solid example of the kind price fixing scheme that is going on throughout the industry.
A few years ago, an FTC investigation found that the industry had set up contracts that prevented retailers from advertising CDs below a certain price level. Without competition, the price of CDs was kept artificially high.
To anyone who has been to a record store lately, it is obvious that whatever was done to correct this has made no difference. Prices continue to float upward, while the cost of making CDs goes down.
Meanwhile, the RIAA has poured money into campaign funds, buying votes to help them continue their abuse. Now every time I buy a CD to back up my data, I pay a tax to the artists^h^h^h^h^h^h^h record companies. The more we get disgusted and boycott them, the more statistics they claim to have showing they need more government protection.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Here is some food for thought. The Yids are ~2-3% of the American population, yet control 70-80% of the mass media. These Jews must have collectively practiced some heavy discrimination against gentiles to achieve such an overwhemling over representation.
First of all, it's true that the record companies spend a little money on artists, but not that much. The average advance is about $500,000. That money is split between all members of the group, their manager(s) and their lawyer(s). Then they have to rent studio time, the record company DOES NOT pay for that. Oh yeah, they they also have to pay for their own music video too (the record company picks up the tab but they take the cost out of artist's royalties. And as for promotion, the only thing the record companies do is bribe MTV to and the radio stations to play your song, every thing else is up to the artist. And what's more, they steal copyright ownership with their recording contracts.
Now, out of an $18 CD the local record store makes about $2 or $3, and the artist makes about $0.02, and they only get that AFTER the record company has recouped ALL of their expenses. A good portion of artists never see a fucking dime. Is that fair? Shure the record companies have taken a $500,000 gamble (maybe $1 million at most), but the artist is gambling their ENTIRE LIFE on this record. Remember that they had to quit their day jobs to write music full time and, if they fail, they'll have a tough time getting their jobs back.
And finaly, in regards to your "fame" comment, that is utter bullshit. They earned their fame by writing music that has enriched the lives of millions of people. With out the record companies, maybe they'd only reach thousands, but let's do the math. 1,000 * $18 = $18,000. Not too shaby. Now: (1,000,000 * $0.02) - $500,000[the advance] = -$480,000. That's right NEGATIVE FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. The artist is in debt to their record company after selling A MILLION RECORDS.
Still defend the record companies?
I thought that one of the things America prided itself on was that it was a perfect example of capitalism in action -- individuals and companies that succeed on their merits and markets where consumers benefit by fair and open competition.
Oh dear, how things are changing.
Now we have a few key players in a few industries (RIAA, MPAA) bribing the government to introduce *state-enforced* controls over markets and competition.
The rights that previously protected US citizens from the excesses and over zealous actions of large corporations are gradually being eroded as things such as "fair use" under copyright law is completely wiped by legislation such as the DMCA.
What's more, it becomes patently obvious that when industries such as the RIAA and MPAA conspire to defeat the principles of capitalism and free-market competition, the government seems interested only in slapping wrists on the one hand while handing them more power (via the DMCA) on the other.
Shouldn't citizens be asking -- why are we allowing big business to buy-off the government?
And, above all else, citizens should remember that governments are elected to SERVE and REPRESENT *all* citizens, not just those with big wallets.
Go talk to your elected representitive and tell him he's not getting your vote unless he shapes up and restores the USA to its former caplitalist glory!
OK, so the artist doesn't actualy owe that $480,000, but that still leaves them with nothing after selling a million copies of their CD.
for there to be any competition is for the artist to create the CD, and then sell it to several distributors for marketing. Then it becomes a commodity subject to market forces. Otherwise, it remains under control of a single record company.
What we need is to support more artists who are on their own label (Ani DiFranco, Christine Lavin, etc.) or who are on independent labels. The artists don't get shafted, and we get music at a better price.
I'd like to see more artists take stands like Tom Petty did. His "Hard Promises" album (back in the LP days) was going to be retailed at $9.98, while he wanted it retailed at $8.98. If it was going to be sold at $9.98, he was going to call it "The $8.98 album". The record company caved, and hence the title "Hard Promises."
DMCA - Chilling free speech since 1998.
"I guess this is price fixing but what about all the CDs that are released. Aren't they all over-priced becuase of all the record companies working together to raise prices?"
I think the logic is that for most CDs in theory, the retailers pay wholesale and they are free to discount off the suggested retail price, but in this case the companies colluded to prevent discounting and limit advertising of these old albums (not sure how they enforced with the retailers; article doesn't say).
The music industry is certainly a wacky bunch of madcap zanies. It pains me that eventually they and their kind are pretty much going to OWN your computer, everything you put on it, and your right to put anything on it that they don't own. We lived through a golden age (the 90's), but it's end is near.
As I remember the listening booths had two legal problems. First, some company had some sort of patent on them, and sued over it. Second, the RIAA / labels were in some hissy fit about getting royalties for people listening to their music--I believe that online music stores had the same problem...
Maybe someone that remembers better can fill you in on the specifics and give you links? ...trying the old Linux hacker's trick for getting results out of the community--submit a incomplete or buggy patch and hope the community gathers together to fix the problem. ;-)
Yes, I understand that record shop employees need to eat, but that doesn't mean that this should be happening. If the record only costs a couple thousand to make, then it can be sold overall at a lower price in order to recoup the expenses. You can still tack on the same cost for shipping and retail profit, and still have a lower cost because the entire manufacturing process is cheaper.
This is how other products work. Lower manufacturing costs lead to lower retail cost. In both examples, there is some kind of price fixing going on.
I never explicitly said that it was the record companies colluding, but it appears that it's the whole chain. Remember, the middleman is who gets hurt the most by people downloading music, and the middleman in this case is the record store. The fact is that both these examples demonstrate that something is going wrong and that collusion and price fixing is taking place.
Somehow I doubt that when Massive Attack's new album comes out, if they try to do the same thing, that the SRP will be any lower than the other CD's on the shelf, and as a result, neither will the actual price. So, once again, the consumers and the artists get the shaft.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
It's just like Micro$oft; get caught, even loose a trial, and as your "punishment" you promise not to do it again. Then, of course, it's business as usual. I've lost track of how many times M$ has done this. Pretty much the entire record industry, as their punishment two years ago when they were caught in predatory practices, agreed to stop doing what they were doing, which was going to lead to lower prices. See how much they have come down?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
If you don't like the RIAA, don't buy their stuff. There are a lot of really great bands on independent labels because of the economics of the music biz. They know they can make just as much or more money (and retain far more creative control) by being on a small label and touring. Shopping may not be quite as convenient because their music is often not carried by the big chain stores. It's worth the extra effort though because, unlike most of what the major labels put out, these bands don't suck.
Some great bands on indie labels include:
Sarge
All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors
Sarah Shannon (ex-singer from Velocity Girl)
The Dismemberment Plan
Future Loop Foundation
Helium
The Poster Children
Anna Waronker (former singer for That Dog)
Rainer Maria
Glade
The Jeyds
Some online places to shop for indie music include:
Insound.com
Parasol Records
Restless Records (Golden Palominos, They Might Be Giants, Flaming Lips, etc.)
Matador Records (Helium, Pizzicato Five, Bettie Serveert, etc.)
FuturePopShop.com
If you didn't hear about the penalties last time, thats because there weren't any. All the companies had to do was send out a form letter, not to price fix, and that was it. Slap on the wrist.
Of course now I see CDs are $20, WOW! Time to stay on them this time.
Heres the form letter they had to send out from the FTC (EMI version)
"Dear [Recipient]:
EMI announces several important changes in policy. All of these changes will be reflected in the new Policy Manual.
EMI has dropped its Minimum Advertised Price ("MAP") policy effective ____, 2000. Cooperative advertising and other promotional funds will not be conditioned upon the price at which EMI product is advertised or promoted. As many of you know, the Federal Trade Commission has conducted an investigation into EMI's MAP policy. To end the investigation expeditiously and to avoid disruption to the conduct of its business, EMI has voluntarily agreed, without admitting any violation of the law, to the entry of a Consent Agreement relating to MAP and other related matters.
EMI's customers can advertise and promote our products at any price they choose. EMI will not withhold cooperative advertising or other promotional funds on the basis of the price at which EMI product is advertised in the media or promoted in your stores. EMI may announce suggested retail prices, but retailers remain free to sell and advertise EMI product at any price they choose.
"
Jeffereson did not put anything into the Constitution. He was not even present at the convention, but was in Paris, as the U. S. envoy.
What's going on, boy wonder? Are you falling asleep on the job, or are you just busy earning some more merit badges?
Jeffereson did not put anything into the Constitution. He was not even present at the convention, but was in Paris, as the U. S. envoy.
Perhaps you need a history lesson, my friend. Jefferson and Madison (the "master builder" of the Constitution) communicated via letters while Jefferson was in Paris. It is widely agreed upon in academic circles that Jefferson had a great deal of input into the Constitution, despite his conspicuous absence from the actual Constitutional Convention.
grunt. Peer to peer bad. Price fixing good.
I have two replies to that. Take whichever one you want.
1.) There are six flags on the moon. All of them are ours. To paraphrase Eddie Izzard, "No flags, no moon rocks."
2.) There's a (silly) little UN treaty that says everything that isn't earth belongs to "everybody," essentially that you can take whatever raw materials you can get. Going back to the previous simplification, "No Saturn Vs, no moon rocks."
Mr. egg troll, my friend Jon Barrett and I are honoured by your tribute to our native country's ruler. We hope you live a life so happy and peacefull that you SPOOGE.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Agreed.
Pink is an amazing artist, as far as vocals go. However I get the impression that she wants to stick to the genera of music she's playing. If she would branch out it would be terrific. I've heard some of her folk stuff and it's terrific.
It's a shame more artists don't put this kind of thing out on their own.
"Providing more proof that the record industry is indeed a oligopoly"
Oligopoly's aren't illegal, or even uncommon, defined as a small group of companies that control the majority of a market. That definition defines a great many. Who cares?
not sure how they enforced with the retailers;
It's my understanding that they enforce this through their co-op advertising programs. "If you sell your product at $x, then we will pay y% of your cost of advertising. If you discount your product, then we won't pay anything."
This can be a pretty big stick when you're working on a small margin and have a large advertising requirement.
At least, this is what I've read in the past...
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
WTF mods? Don't you remember the South Park movie?
I can't steal from my old comment, Slashcode doesn't get that far back, the bastards, now I have to write with a few beers in me....
PE had a couple new tracks, and a lot of remixes, and they wnted to put it out. They called it Bring the Noise 2000, named after their track Bring the Noise which permanently changed the direction of hip-hop/rap. Def Jam (their label) didn't want to. So PE released it as MP3s on the net, the label gave them hella shit. I actually have a copy of that before they pulled it from the web (thank you GeoCities).
After this, PE left Def Jam (I think Def Scam was their wording) and put out an album called There's a Poison Going On, after they split from Def Jam/Columbia. They sold it from AtomicPop.com for $8 downloads, $10 if you bought the actual physical album, and that came with an autographed CD liner from Chuck D (I bought it to get the autograph). AtomicPop later imploded unfortunately, and I then see the exact same album at Virgin Megastore for $18.
Did Virgin give Chuck and Flava Flav an extra $10 per album? (They didn't sell autographed ones, so compare to $8-9 or so.) I doubt it. I'm pretty sure the price bump was just to get it in their normal, non-sale price structure, and give R. Branson a couple extra bucks. Many artists have fought with the industry to get a what they consider normal price. I think Tom Petty actually released an album named 8.99 (or something like it) to stop the labels from boosting the price past that. The way the labels structure it, groups get cash from touring, not from record/CD sales, so groups have little incentive to sell a lot.
Count how many elements a tape has:
You have two plastic half-shells, two reels each with a plastic piece to hold on to the tape, the tape itself which has the tape, an oxide layer deposited on it, and two leader segments added to it, the metal and spongy piece to force good tape-head contact, and possibly astenerws (though the cheaper tapes just snap on). Contrast this with CD, with only one part, nothing moving. And the CD costs more? Ummmmmm....
Very interesting
I see, so there is something hatemongering about saying that Jews control media/Hollywood, which, by any list of directors/CEOs, is evidently true?
Yes, in fact it is hatemongering. Your efforts to create paranoid or xenophobic feelings against Jews among other Slashdotters are blatantly obvious. Your original post is a perfect example this.
FYI, the majority of people who influence the entertainment industry are not Jewish. To name a few, there's Jack Valenti of the MPAA, who is Italian, Ted Turner of AOL Time Warner, who is Anglo-Saxon, Jean-Marie Messier of Vivendi Universal, who is French, Richard Parsons of AOL Time Warner, who is African-American, and many more.
You also linked to Natvan.com, a site that is anti-Semitic and "white" supremacist in nature. It sells "Ethnic Cleansing", a game where the objective is to kill AI bots representing ethnic stereotypes, including Jews. If you weren't hatemongering against Jews on this board, then you wouldnt have linked to Natvan or even mentioned "Jews control the media" in the first place.
It is my assumption that you are the same person responsible for the recent rash of "White Power", "China is Unchristian and Pagan", and other anti-government and anti-Semitic postings. From this, I can conclude that you are a hatemonger, attempt to encourage hatemongerering against non-"whites" and Jews on this board, and that you are most likely encouraged by a white supremacist group to do so. (Most likely the KKK).
Well, you can tell your group that most, if not all Slashdotters do not enjoy your electronic version of "night riding" and are not "receptive", as Natvan would call it, to your propaganda.
Find something else better to do than to post your racist filth here.
No, its just that Jews work extremly hard. So hard that they actually have a stereotype-that they're extemely smart, work very hard, and make a lot of money. And it's actually true, in most cases.
I seriously doubt Jews are or have practiced discrimination against "Gentiles" for financial gain. If that happened, wouldn't Hilary Rosen, spokeswoman of the RIAA, and a Jew, put the companies involved in the RIAA out of business? Well it hasnt happened.
Jews have been placed under more discrimination than the "gentiles" have...but wait, the "gentiles" were never actually discriminated against by the Jews. Think about Hitler, Ancient Rome's disruption of Jewish life, the exodus by the Spaniards...many facts...
They will 'own my computer' when they pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
And they will prevent me from keeping my own data when my neurons no longer fire (see 'cold, dead hands' reference above).
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
It looks like capatilism is just reaching it's inevitable climax, where by the market is controled by large multinationals, who buy up evrything in sight. that's what happens when you have 100 years or so of capatilism.
communist is (by the dictionary)
"A economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property."
or by the english dictionary
"social system based on public ownership of most property"
Nope-thats not wIt looks like capatilism is just reaching it's inevitable climax, where by the market is controled by large multinationals, who buy up evrything in sight. that's what happens when you have 100 years or so of capatilism.
communist is (by the dictionary)
"A economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property."
or by the english dictionary
"social system based on public ownership of most property"
Nope-thats not what the RIAA want!!!
capitalism(by the dictionary)
"An economic system based on private ownership of capital."
That's the baby,
Looks like ameriica is becomming full-cycle capitalist.hat the RIAA want!!!
capitalism(by the dictionary)
"An economic system based on private ownership of capital."
That's the baby,
Looks like america is becomming full-cycle capitalist.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
"the record industry is indeed a oligopoly" How ironic then, that they will be responsible for creating their own oligopsony. B-) (thanks to www.investorwords.com....) "These cornflakes need more Tabasco."
MXPX, a West Coast(U.S) pop/punk bands first album had a similar sticker, readin "if you paid more than $6.99 you got ripped off" What did Best Buy do?
Put the $9.99 sticker right over it.
oligopoly: a market situation in which each of a few producers affects but does not control the market
While you get credit for employing an obscure, seldom used word, price fixing implies a certain (read "large" in this case) amount of control, which the record companies do wield. They do more than simply affect the market. Since Vivendi Universal and Warner Communications had exclusive control of the Three Tenors recording in question, maybe you should have stuck to the good old fasioned word
monopoly: 1 : exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action 2 : exclusive possession or control 3 : a commodity controlled by one party 4 : one that has a monopoly
~sigh~ A fool and his big words are soon parted.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The thing about Jews which is interesting is that they are like a super-organism, i.e. a column of army ants or a flight of killer bees. Individually any given Jew is probably obnoxious, but perhaps not as sinister as one would be led to believe given their group behavior. This is like a killer bee, or termite, or army ant. An isolated individual insect of these species may be annoying but harmless. Yet as a group these insects, like the Jews, constitute a real threat. The best defense is a good offense. It is no wonder that Hitler saw fit to exterminate the Jew. I'm sure Hitler bore no animosity against any single individual Jew, but he realized that like a hive of dangerous insects, Jews as a whole should be exterminated.
It's also nice to see you're using examples of between 50 and 2000 years ago. While I am talking about here and now, you are harping on about times well before your birth, probably "educated" to you by your Zionist parents.
The incredibly arrogant and out-of-touch nature of your post has strengthened the point made in all parents. Congrats.
Rainbow's _Long Live Rock and Roll_ was released in 1978. When my casette tape finally expired two years ago, I went to buy a CD - and saw that it was being sold at the same FULL RETAIL.
This is an album that they are not advertising, and that they have not advertised since the creation of the CD format . . . the band is long since disbanded . . . so what money are the recouping, here? Yes, there are small royalty payments that must be made, but
Unfortunately, even though I have been voting by not spending my dollars, other people's voices have been overpowering my silence in the market.
*sigh*.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
The record companies don't have that much influence on who becomes a star or not when all is said and done, they just have the ability to put it on the shelves and see who buys what.
Payola
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)