Music Download Pricing Lawsuits Pending?

larry bagina writes "New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has subpoenaed Warner Music Group, apparently looking into allegations of price fixing with Sony/BMG, EMI, and Vivendi, and apparently more subpoenas are in the pipeline. 'As part of an industrywide investigation concerning pricing of digital music downloads, we received a subpoena from Atty. Gen. Spitzer's office as disclosed in our public filings. We are cooperating fully with the inquiry.'"

Comments

Well, there is price fixing . . .

[crimguy]

at the online music stores. My thought is that the music companies want this investigation, because they in fact want to sell music for more money, but are being prevented from doing so by yahoo, itms, etc. So, Spitzer might be working for them this time.

Re:Well, there is price fixing . . .

[twitter]

the music companies want this investigation, because they in fact want to sell music for more money

If they get together, say so, agree on a price structure and then find ways to exclude competitors, they have committed a crime. This is what price fixing and anti-competitive practices are all about. Everyone pays so a select few can profit. Artists and others who would make a living in the industry pay more than anyone else.

It's obvious that such a crime has been and continues to be committed. The cost of an electronic copy of costs more than the same with delivered by physical media. In a free market music can be had for a song. Those that would compete are locked out of traditional broadcast and physical distribution. They are also harassed at every point possible by lawsuits and bogus laws which make operations difficult and expensive. The world's three big music publishers seek to impose all the restrictions of physical media and 100 year old broadcast technology law onto the internet because they won't exist without them. The ultimate crime are laws seeking to "close the analog hole". It's nice to see some of the smaller crimes looked into, but a review of "price fixing" misses the big picture.

Spitzer might be working for them this time.

That depends on how deep he goes.

Re:why warner

[wfberg]

As the concert date approached, both companies became concerned that the new products would be neither as original nor as commercially appealing as products already available to consumers. In an effort to shield the new products from competition, Warner and PolyGram agreed not to discount and not to advertise certain of their catalog products for a limited period of time, the complaint says

So they decided not to advertise about previous releases?Well,dont many companies do this?Only here,seems both of them decided together.& what competition are they talking about,when they own the rights.?


1. Had there been actual competition, instead of a oligopoly of a few major labels, a decision to market older products less wouldn't have given the Three Tenors any competitive advantage, seeing as how 100 other record labels wouldn't hold back on the promotion.

2. The record companies screwed all other artists that weren't the Three Tenors.

3. Copyright is a (prohibition) right granted under the theory that allowing creators to benefit of their works stimulated them to make more works. If artists didn't get properly compensated, the reasoning goes, we would all be stuck with the same old tripe. In this case, the record companies clearly intended to delude the consumer into thinking, yes, the same old Three Tenor tripe is all that's out there to buy.
4. Pooling two companies' promotion clout allowed them to come on top of the Three Tenor deal. Had they not colluded, they would have taken a loss, to the benefit of their competitors, and the market (the invisible hand should smack down on crappy business, should it not). Competitors that (hypothetically) would play fair wouldn't be able to recoup bad investments in the same way, they'd be SOL - cf. Standard Oil's pricedumping.

So, they screwed the artists, the consumers, competitors, and the Constitution. Not a bad run.