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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
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
you really have no idea what goes into the making of an album/video/star, do you?
1. Most videos don't cost that much...maybe a couple hundred grand for some extremely famous bands, shooting in to the millions only for videos done by people like Michael Jackson who usually fund a lot of it themselves.
2. Most bands flop. This is the reason the record labels buy in bulk when they're searching for talent. For every Britney Spears, there are 10-20 "chick" singers you never heard of because they didn't sell shit. Of course, if you actually get to make a second album, most of the procedes are spent paying the label back for the first one. 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. You need to start looking at companies like BMG, Geffen, and Sony as nothing more than gigantic venture capital groups for musicians. Except the "interest" rate they charge for their benevolence is basically usury!
btw - please back off the stream of consciousness style of posting next time. it's hard on the eyes, you know.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
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.
Actually, a lot of them do. why do you think groups like TLC were broke after so many hit songs. They got a little more than $1.00 per CD sold but they had to pay all of the expenses for videos, and their tours. The artists are still getting the shaft. And don't give me that crap about "The record company only get's one diamond for every 100 pieces of rock"...last time I checked, diamond producers were very very wealthy, and so are record labels. If the recording industry wasn't making an ass load of money, it wouldn't be the recording industry....it would the recording company because no one would want to do it.
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
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?)
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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.
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."
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!
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 $8.98 album". The record company caved, and hence the title "Hard Promises."
DMCA - Chilling free speech since 1998.
Yes, I understand that record shop employees need to eat, but that doesn't mean that this should be happening. If the record only costs a couple thousand to make, then it can be sold overall at a lower price in order to recoup the expenses. You can still tack on the same cost for shipping and retail profit, and still have a lower cost because the entire manufacturing process is cheaper.
This is how other products work. Lower manufacturing costs lead to lower retail cost. In both examples, there is some kind of price fixing going on.
I never explicitly said that it was the record companies colluding, but it appears that it's the whole chain. Remember, the middleman is who gets hurt the most by people downloading music, and the middleman in this case is the record store. The fact is that both these examples demonstrate that something is going wrong and that collusion and price fixing is taking place.
Somehow I doubt that when Massive Attack's new album comes out, if they try to do the same thing, that the SRP will be any lower than the other CD's on the shelf, and as a result, neither will the actual price. So, once again, the consumers and the artists get the shaft.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
It's just like Micro$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.
How is this wrong?
Price collusion is illegal. Plain and simple. The recording companies got together and decided not to reduce some older CDs so that the newer one wouldn't be competing against them for price. That is illegal. This is something that the recording companies do all the time.
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....