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Music Industry Pays $67M Fine For Price Fixing

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the innocent-whistling dept.

Krelnik writes "Reuters is reporting that the music industry is paying a $67.4 Million settlement to end a lawsuit where they were accused of artificially inflating CD prices at retail. Yeah, P2P is causing their problems. Sure, sure it is. Here's the story at Reuters UK."

8 of 511 comments (clear)

  1. Out of curiosity... by Sheetrock · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I know that seems like an awful lot of money, but does it even approach the amount the industry gained through its unfair practices?

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    Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
    -- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.




  2. RIAA's next move? by ABetterMan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would expect their next move would be to work a bit faster with MS, and get DRM pushed out there. While looking through Windows Update, I noticed Windows MediaPlayer v7.1 has DRM - and you can't uncheck the box for it. If you want Media Player 7.1+, you have no choice but to install the DRM portion along with it, or not install the player at all. Perhaps MP v7.1 is non-reversable - once you install it, you can't downgrade. I dont know if that is the case, but I'm not particularly in the mood to be a guinea pig, at the moment.

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    Someone you trust is one of us.
    1. Re:RIAA's next move? by littlerubberfeet · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You could get a mac. I have had absolutly no problems with itunes.....AND you can digitize from an analogue input. So output on a standard CD player, then digitize........

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  3. this is good news by GoatPigSheep · · Score: 5, Interesting

    so where do I pick up my compensation check for getting screwed over for all these years?

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    GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
  4. And the money goes... by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...where?

    The music industry has been ripping us off (no news there) to the tune of $5 per CD.
    The have to pay up $67 mil + $75 mil to non-profit, etc.

    Who the hell gets that $67 mil? I want my cut!
    ~50 CD's over the last few years....where is my $250?

  5. Curiously enough... by Idarubicin · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ...I have noticed that the same CD's for sale in my native Canada selling for $18.95 are priced at about the same dollar amount south of the border.

    This would at first blush seem perfectly reasonable, until one notices that one United States dollar buys about $1.58 Canadian. That's right--CD's are typically about 50% more costly as soon as you go from Windsor to Detroit.

    Granted, I've noted a similar pricing trend with some other goods--groceries come to mind. But for non-perishables, the price disjoint is quite stunning.

    Is it price fixing? Or plain old-fashioned gouging? All I know is that for a ten-cent piece of plastic, that's quite a markup. Charge what the market will bear, and hope nobody notices that the neighbours are getting a 30+% discount. Does anybody know if there are any retailers taking advantage of this price difference? Buy Canadian, sell American, pocket the difference. (Whatever you do, don't write a post containing the phrase "3. Profit!!!")

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    ~Idarubicin
    1. Re:Curiously enough... by coupland · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually I'm Canadian too and found that in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., for a basic meal you can expect to pay about $10 CAD, $10 USD or 10 GBP respectively. Considering there are about 2.5 Canadian dollars to the British pound you see that in Britain a meal "costs" about 2.5 times as much. But this is mostly elementary since their pay cheques (not checks!) are also paid in British pounds so there's no discrepancy unless you're a tourist. It's not really a matter of price gouging, simply of exchange rates and inflation.

      What's more interesting is that a CD typically costs $20 to purchase yet a cassette tape costs around $10. Yet the cassette costs much more to make! (Cassettes are recorded, CDs are pressed on a high capacity assemply line.) This means that recording companies can turn a profit at $10 with higher cost of materials, so why the $%^@ do they charge us $20? This is the price fixing.

  6. Re:$480M vs $67M by leviramsey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Idiot.

    The RIAA did not make a cent off the price fixing, as that had no effect on wholesale prices. What the RIAA was doing was to say to the chain stores, "you can't advertise the new Britney CD at less than a certain amount over wholesale". Why was this done? To prevent the Wal-Marts and Best Buys of the world from monopolizing CD retailing and using their distribution might against the RIAA. It's in the RIAA's interest to keep as many non-chain and small chain stores around as possible, as it prevents WalMart from holding CDs for ransom (as in, "we won't buy the CD for our stores unless you sell it to us for $2 less than normal wholesale").

    The $480 million that consumers overpaid went to CD retailers, not the RIAA.