Still More RIAA News

We just did an article about the RIAA's mendacity with statistics, and here come some more: first, someone has gone to the trouble to deconstruct their income figures over the past few years, showing that the RIAA's lack of investment in new releases is in itself sufficient to explain any dropping sales, and second, this website concerning the music industry settling a price-fixing lawsuit, which I believe is this one, filed two years ago.

Comments

Re:many perspectives

[Deagol]

As for markup, we rarely think about it as we happily pay for it. Next time you see a box of Wheaties, ask yourself how much the wheat cost. Probably less than a raw CD. Now look at that pretty and informative 4-color box it comes in. Which costs more? Then look around at the supermarket. How much does it cost to run? A lot. What does this have to do with the price of wheat? Nothing, but it has a heck of a lot to do with the price of Wheaties.

For perspective... a 50-lb bag of organic, hard, winter red wheat (Red Chief brand) will run you about $11 (more, of course, if you need it shipped to you). That's maybe 4 boxes of Wheaties?

My family has a hand-crank grain mill. So that 50-lb bag will give my family of four 4-to-6 months of bread, tortillas, pasta, cereal (nothing liked craked wheat and honey on a cold December morning!), cream of wheat, pancakes, etc (anything you make primarily with flour). Note, we haven't found a way to make flake cereals yet, so no Wheaties for us yet.

Think of the retail prices on all of those products (sold usually in roughly 1-to-2 lb portions). Now think how much cheaper the bulk, wholesale price of wheat goes for (anyone know the commodity price of a bushel of wheat these days?). Scary to think how much money is being made, all for the sake of a little convenience.

Of course the wheat thing doesn't apply to music production, but we consumers always pay an obscene mark-up.