Slashdot Mirror
Attorney General Investigates Music Price Fixing
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian is reporting that the US Attorney General has launched an investigation into whether or not record labels are engaged in price fixing of music downloads. From the article: 'The department of justice inquiry centers on the activities of the four largest record labels: EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner Music. Subpoenas are believed to have been issued to all parties, with federal officials understood to be focusing on whether the companies have been colluding to keep the price of downloads artificially high.'"
Everyone is greedy to a point. Some are just able to carry their greed to the point of complete selfishness and totally ignore the high percentage of people who have a hard time just keeping a roof over their heads.
What the heck will it take? Evolution of the human species? I always think back to those old Star Trek episodes where they land on some planet where the inhabitants laugh kindly at Earth's culture because they have learned to live without greed, take care of everyone, and actually enjoy sex rather than codify it.
I don't know why I want to write this... mod at your leisure. But before you bite my head off, I want to make sure all the future commenters out there read this very key quote: Hopefully that will keep those crazy anti-Apple fanboys at bay.
I don't care about price fixing of music downloads. Look at price fixing of physical CDs instead. How can a music CD cost the same as a movie DVD? And while they're at it, make them use the true CDROM standard, without drm hacks.
They are 10 years late and investigating the wrong medium. I don't see anything wrong with 99 cents per song, my issues were the $21 for a CD with one decent song.
I do see something wrong with $0.99/song. I happen to like to get the entire album. I don't thing I've ever paid $21 for a CD. Maybe $17 at the most. But on average I'd say $14.-
So that bottoms out at about nearly the same price. What I don't understand is why the music industry believes that they can pocket all the money when selling a product that [1] is inferior in sound quality (unless iTunes sells lossless compression now, I've done a-b tests and I think most people will be able to hear the difference in quality on a high-end audio system) [2] is inferior in flexibility (original CDs didn't have any form of DRM) [3] is less complete (where's the booklet with lyrics?) [4] requires special software to purchase/playback and finally [5] costs them a LOT less to distribute.
The last one is really the kicker. I _know_ what distribution and production of media costs, and it's pretty clear that the music industry is behaving like a bunch of greedy bastards. If they are lucky they'll get 50% of what you pay for a CD after the cost of distribution, production and storage. Yet when they sell stuff online they want to pick up 100% of what normally goes to third parties. In other words, if I pay $10 for a CD, about half (or more) goes to the cost of media (CD, case & booklet), distribution, storage and retail cost. All this is pretty much replaced by a simple website and server, which will cost peanuts on a per-download basis. So the music industry wants to absorb all of the $5 or whatever that was saved by going online.
I guess that's fine with me. I won't download music illegaly. But I won't buy it either. If I _really_ want something, I'll get a CD. Give me reasonable prices for a reasonable product and we'll talk. Don't come bitching about sales going down and quit your fucking government manipulation.
The bands that are taking things in their own hands and realizing that recording and distributing online is something they can finance themselves should be applauded and supported in any way possible.