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HMV Canada Cuts Music CD Prices
umStefa notes a CBC story reporting that the largest music retailer in Canada, HMV, has slashed prices on CDs and is attributing the move to demand by customers for lower prices. The back catalog of popular artists will see price cuts of up to 33%; the cuts average 20% across the board. The Canadian version of the RIAA is spinning the news as being a direct result of music piracy.
Because, as we all know, customers who want CD's at a decent price are OBVIOUSLY pirates...
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
So in other words, if people keep pirating, then CDs will be cheaper. Sounds like a win-win to me.
is attributing the move to demand by customers for lower prices
Holy shit. In Canada, all consumers have to do is demand lower prices and they get them??
Piracy is a direct result of unreasonably priced music so I don't think they're going to garner a lot of sympathy.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
Couldn't possibly be because the music is crap, could it? Naaah...pirates!
Constitutionally Correct
The Canadian version of the RIAA is spinning the news as being a direct result of music piracy.
They can spin it however they want, but it's legal for Canadians to download music. It's part of the reason behind the tarifs we pay on storage media (as much as $25 on an iPod, for example). I'm paying for my right to download music, thank you. Now be sure to give my money to the artists and not line your own damn pockets.
We have seen in the past that if the prices on music are low enough (Allofmp3) then people will pay for them, ESPECIALLY if they are DRM free. When you sell DRM-burdened crap for exorbitant prices, however, for some reason no-one buys it, and gets DRM-free and cheap music off the internet. Supply and Demand.
Now, just keep dropping those prices HMV, and eventually your sales will start rising again. If you strip the DRM out, maybe you'll even become wildly profitable once again. The economy has some incredible possibilities doesn't it?
So when will CD prices dip below DVD prices?
Also, from TFA:
"A succession of Canadian governments have sat on their hands and done nothing," he said.
Excellent. That's the best kind of government. The type that doesn't make laws just to please some industry group.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Spinning the news as software piracy won't help their agenda - I'm quite sure no consumer is going to feel sympathy for the RIAA's loss of potential profits. If anything, it'll encourage piracy - CDs are already overpriced as it is.
Let's here it for music piracy, the only thing that's putting some competition into the market.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
If those price cuts are a result from piracy, then I'd say piracy does have some positive effect. And the artists it won't hurt either, as these albums are primarily from major labels, where artists get a certain amount per album sold (if anything at all), not a percentage of the selling price. So for the artists it may even be good: at a fixed commission per album sold, more albums sold will see their revenues increase. And we all know that a lower priced product will normally result in more sales.
Sounds like a win-win situation to me! Cheaper CD's for the music buyers, more income for the artists!
At least things work as they should somewhere. It finally dawned on them that "Hey, people don't always steal music, and when it's cheaper, they buy more."
It's quite sad that this has to be such a stunning revelation, actually.
It's a result of people not buying CDs because albums suck as a whole, they're overpriced, they can legally download through online shops for less and because CDs (especially older ones) are overpriced.... Yes the duplication was intended.
It is probably not the result of piracy but the result of the rising Canadian dollar (or the falling US dollar), meaning that the Canadian dollar is nearly at par with the US dollar, so people expect the prices to be nearly the same.
Somewhere in Bentonville, Arkansas, a Wal-Mart executive is deciding how to respond to this pricing move. When the decision is made, calls will go out to record companies, telling them what Wal-Mart is willing to pay. That's what really scares the RIAA.
The action to reduce the price of CDs actually brings the cost more in-line with what the true cost should be. For many years RIAA included marketing of a group was factored into the cost of the CD/Tape/Album.
Well, I call shenanigans on that. When is the last time you saw any marketing for any of the older groups? The only time they do anything is to pump up sales of re-masters or collections.
If they lowered the price to USD$8-10 a CD, I'd consider buying some of my old favorite groups. But for now, I have my XM and a steady supply of music that's free of bullshit-interruptions and asshat DJs. Spend USD$18 for a CD? No way, not even for a group I truly enjoy. That's pure and utter BS.
The reason prices are dropping isn't because people are pirating music, it's because people aren't willing to pay $20 for a Celine Dion CD. Hell, I wouldn't even pirate a Celine Dion CD.
This also just helps bring Canadian prices in line with American prices for the same products. We have always been getting ripped off and over the last year as the Canadain dollar has risen the prices have become more and more unreasonable.
Cheap Loverboy & Anne Murray CDs for everyone!
"A succession of Canadian governments have sat on their hands and done nothing,"
They have more important things to do, like dealing with REAL crime!
Not being Canadian I have no idea as to whether the CBC are supposedly unbiased or whatever. But this article shows a strong lean towards the opinion of the recording industry and less towards reporting the unbiased truth behind it (a problem also inherent in the BBC right now with their lack of strong leadership and swing to the left, but I digress). That less people are buying CDs because more and more people are choosing to legally download instead. I imagine the number of illegal downloads has remained reasonably constant over recent years and that mp3 player market penetration has reached such a level that the effects to the CD retail industry are only now becoming clear.
They've had bloated prices for years. Their markup, particularly on independent labels, has always been more than anyone else.
crazy dynamite monkey
When you buy a big name CD I don't think your paying for the CD/music, you're reimbursing the studio for all the money it spent on marketing so you could hear it on the radio, MTV, etc.
A lot of people complain and say they listen to indy artist, and while I can appreciate a good song. How do you find these artist? Everyone know's Gwen Stephanie, and whoever is on the top billboards, and they are there more or less because of the amount of money that was dumped into marketing.
As a long time shopper at HMV (10+ years now), I think this is great news. I think they've not only felt the blow from iTunes but also large on-line retailers like Amazon and Chapters. The Canadian stores regularly have much lower prices. Sometimes out of convenience, or wanting to listen to a CD right away, I'll go to HMV to buy the CD - I never minded. Retail space is the killer to this idea - but I wish they would have more 'sampling' booths for new music.
:) (I'd much rather support HMV than big box stores and Amazon to some extent).
Its also the sign of a struggling retalier for sales when their sales never end. HMV has basically had the same sale on the same CDs and DVDs for the better part of one year. The boxing day sales were only slightly better.
I must say I was disappointed when they discontinued the frequent shopper card (buy 10 CD get one free up to $25) a few years back. This is kind of the equivalent. I'd like to see something similar come back.
Anyhow, I'm going to my local store today.... hope the new prices are in effect!!
Yeah, I would never want to change the poverty and disastrous education system, the lack of health insurance for most people, the broken two-party political system, the prison system with highest rate of incarceration in the world, military profiteering and the $34 TRILLION debt load...
But it sure would be great if CDs cost less in the USA.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
A similar article in the Globe and Mail points out that the 18-24 year olds aren't listening to the latest pop chart toppers but are instead "tuning in to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin - the music of their parents' generation", which is the reason for the back-catalogue price drops.
In any case the article seems a bit more unbiased than the CBC/CRIA fud.
No, its not the dollar (though that will help a bit of course), but the cost of CDs has stayed somewhat high, while the cost of movies has dropped, DVDs are getting cheaper all the time, and video games seem to have hit a ceiling. That, in addition to HMV loosing its leadership position in music sales to Walmart, Future Shop and BestBuy, makes HMVs traditionally high prices seem rediculous. Why would I pay $13 for a CD at HMV, when I can get it at Best Buy for $10, and I can buy the concert DVD elsewhere for $18? HMV has had some good sales with their 2-for- or 3-for- sales, but the majority of CDs in their stores are sitting in the racks at regular sale prices much higher than anywhere else.
I don't find CDs particularly expensive. In the UK they're £10 (£8 if I could really be arsed to shop around) and I only buy 1 or 2 a month (with the next purchase being Athlete's latest effort on Monday).
Sure, downloads are cheaper but with the CD I can convert the songs into the format I want at the bit-rate I want, not the format and the bit-rate that Napster / iTunes / Tesco decides it should be at.
Summation 2
...or could this simply be a result of the recent devaluation of the US dollar in comparison to the Canadian one? I assume most artists are based in the US and paid in US dollars.
to actually expect that the fees collected will go to the artists.
OF COURSE THE ARTISTS GET NOTHING!
Lets review some definitions:
Slut: someone who does something for the love of it. (see also: Amateur [and its spelled right!])
Whore: someone who does something strictly for money.
Pimp: someone who tries to make whores into sluts by removing the profit motive. (see also: RIAA)
John: someone who pays through the nose for everything.
(The fuckin' you're getting isn't worth the fuckin' you're taking.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
"Other countries, including the U.S. and Britain, have been able to stem the tide of illegal downloading by updating laws and increasing enforcement, he said, but calls from the recording industry for updated copyright laws in Canada have gone unheeded."
It's always been my experience that CDs were way cheaper in the U.S. to begin with. Looks to me as if supply+demand has caught up finally. I doubt that any laws in the U.S. and U.K. have had much of an effect on downloading; I would argue that CDs have always been more affordable to the citizens of these countries.
I don't tend to buy many CDs because they are 3 times as much as I'm willing to pay in the first place. If I couldn't download music, I still wouldn't buy most CDs. Conversely, now that I can download music, I only buy CDs that I like. Downloading has had no effect on my purchasing of CDs.
"'A succession of Canadian governments have sat on their hands and done nothing,' he said."
WTF? Why do I have to pay a blank media tax? Who the f**k benefits from that?
The fact that the exchange rate has brought the currencies to near par is of course the main reason that they're having to change the prices....
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
Has anyone considered that, with the help of shifting scenes, the demise of hip hop, MySpace, internet sharing, etc. that people are starting to listen to good music that's outside of RIAA's domain? Most electronic music is artist direct, or their labels don't work with RIAA and the exploding hipster scene abhors RIAA. RIAA will continue to spin this as software piracy to the end, consumers will suffer, citizens will suffer from political policies and artists who are on board with RIAA will (deservedly) suffer.
spin it as piracy all they want, it's no where near as rampant as they claim (which has been proven time and again as a simple search on Slashdot will tell you). They've been saturating the market with canned music for a lot of years and shouldn't be wondering why sales have slowed. As has been pointed out recently, you can only sell people so much repetition. What the industry associations are frankly most pissed off about is that their lobbying efforts have failed in Canada, and they aren't going to make any ground in the long run so their only choice is to cut prices. The free market died a long time ago and was replaced by lobbying to restrict competition and consumer activism. Rather than adapt and improve their delivery models they would try to buy legislation to retain the level of their profits. If you look at the successful on-line stores like iTunes, they have all had derision heaped on them by the RIAA and their ilk. Oh Steve Jobs, you sell our music too cheap!!!
If a price goes up, or down, there are always two reasons, one is based on a market economy, and one is based on the use of force (government, generally, but sometimes mob pressure):
1. Supply and demand. These curves tend to meet at the equilibrium, which changes daily and is benefited by competition and technological changes, as well as market needs. Supply goes up, price goes down. Demand goes up, price goes up. We don't pay much for horse-shoers anymore, but it wasn't the result of bootleg horseshoers, it was just a lack of demand for a product or service.
2. Government-forced regulation. This is where competition is destroyed because of preferential treatment of elite parties. Copyright regulations have been so over-encroaching on the art market that consumers are now finding new ways to acquire their product. Black markets thrive on governments giving too many favors to their buddies. MP3 is the new crack, and I'm sure we'll see a War on Piracy soon enough. Think about the children.
The music industry, as a whole, is growing faster than ever. Never in all of history have we seen the sheer amount of new artists creating sometimes fantastic music. Not only that, but the popular artists are pricing themselves out of the market. As embarassing as it is to say, I bought my wife two tickets to Madonna's Chicago show and I think I dropped $400 for the two tickets (each). She loved it, but I'm sure a lot of fans were disturbed. Me? I scour MySpace for local bands with talent -- and I'm happy to pay $10 for a ticket and $20 for a T-shirt and CD. Local Chicago shows are PACKED lately, with hundreds of fans going out to dozens of bars/pubs on the same night to see different local bands. You can talk to the bands, learn their guitar tabs straight from them, and have a relationship with bands to entice them to continue their entertainment.
The market amazes me, because even with government-forced monopoly on distribution, the music gets out there, and it is many times better than the mass-produced, monopoly-enriched mainstream distribution media outlets.
I can't wait until indie music is illegal.
they all broke away form it wanting to allow free downloading of music so they can promote touring much as prince did in england (with wicked results ill add). NOW 1st we need to look at the CRIA. ......hrm FU thats a rip off.
A) its not run by a canadian
B) The jerk is an insulting idiot who thinks he is still in the USA and can push everyone around
C) the NDP party with help online helped defeat a mpaa supporter ( is any party really willing to get the boots to them ina minority govt)
D) Slashing prices...lets see 50 cent piece a plastic artist gets 50 cents old price 20$ new price 10$
E) to show how nice the guy is he basically insulted ALL OF CANADA. Calling us all thieving hillbillies of a sort. Funny i htought most americans thought we still lived in igloos.
F) NOW you had this softwood lumber deal that you owed us 5 billion and welched us to 4 billion now with interest on behlaf of canada i can say screw you again. IF you cant pay your bills we dont want to do business with you and that oil revenue can easily be sold to china.
Most businesses lower costs when no one wants stuff.
NOTE it was hollywood/riaa usa side that pushed for the cd tax and ipod tax so now people know and think ok then i can and will dl freely ( tax aside to them)
if you didnt have that youd actually have a small argument , now you got shit and can eat it all damn day.
I'm moving house, and I think once I unpack my stuff, the music CDs are staying in the boxes. If there was a decent service out there that sold DRM-free music and had a good catalogue, I'd be all over it. As it stands, I've been using cdon.com, since they usually have what I'm looking for, but WHY do I have to be burdened with that plastic trash when all I want is the music? It's just another extra inconvenience I have to put up with for actually paying for music. Oh well, maybe one day I'll be able to just send money to a performer and download the music however I please, whereever I please. Or maybe even just pay a flat monthly rate for a license to download anything I like, anywhere I like, without legal repercussions.
Yay for piracy!
Now, we just need to keep downloading torrents and DVDs will get cheaper, too!
*Nothing to do with the lack of demand for crap music, obviously.
For example...it would be really great if companies like Sony could allow their monopoly to print audio disks right in the store. It would solve the problem of inventory and distribution overnight. For that matter it could create a resurgence of sales and could be very secure from the dreaded "pirates".
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
any person who has been in hmv knows that they tend to WAY over price cds as it is. typically most new cds are 14.99 - 17.99 or so, back catalog stuff is over $20 per cd for the most part unless it's one of the 2 for $$ deals they have going on.
now this might not be too bad, however from info from a friend who worked there it is bad especially for the back catalog stuff, ie not in the bargin rack or the best seller rack. anything on the shelf is subject to the managers choice. there is a minimum price they have to charge for a cd but no maximum. the one store i know of the manager hated punk, metal and the like, the cds would be $25+ in the back catalog but she liked britney spears and the like and those cds would be $20 or so
if you want to test this out, go to multiple hmvs and see the price difference for one cd, i've seen it as much as $5 and the stores were a 10 mins walk away from one another.
The technology to pirate books has been around for a long time.
.02
Almost no one copies them, when you can buy a paperback for a reasonable price, it is not worth your time.
When CD prices and delivery get into the (for me) 3 to 5 dollar range, and the CD includes some nice pretty additional content like artwork, book, lyrics (OMG more possible infringement) poster or something not even thought of yet, no longer worth the trouble to download and record for me.
Price correctly, and piracy goes away. My business (auto parts) had had to cut prices dramatically, and the smart survive, sure the are a lot less high priced executives but we survive.
My
I'm absolutely certain that warts, sunspots, and smog are also the direct result of music piracy. And don't even get into cancer.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"The Canadian version of the RIAA is spinning the news as being a direct result of music piracy."
Um...Maybe it's just my tiny brain not fully digesting the ramifications of this, but by spinning it in such a way, aren't they sending the message that piracy = cheaper music?
Not that this is a bad thing, mind you, but I can't help but think the RIAA (and its international cronies) have been so busy cutting off noses that they've forgotten whose face they're supposed to be spiting.
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
It's worth noting that HMV is not Canadian owned, nor does the Henderson and the CRIA represent many Canadian labels.
In other words, this is yet another sleazy tactic by outsiders to "convince" the Canadian government to adjust copyright law in a way that wouldn't benefit the average Canadian.
Assholes.
c.
Log in or piss off.
Of course it's because of piracy.
People aren't buying CDs because the cost of them doesn't justify buying them when you can get them just as good online for free.
Drop the price down to $5-10 (cdn) and I'll start buying cds as often as I did before napster.
Really it all boils down to the fact that I can't afford the music I like these days. Free radio sucks (esp. in my area, Peterborough ON.) CDs are too expensive and satellite radio is another monthly fee I don't need.
I won't pay for cable, but I'll "steal" it if available due to cost vs content. I only want about 10 of the channels, but to pay for it gets me a ton of what I don't want.
Allow me the ability to choose the entertainment I ACTUALLY want and give it to me at a price that someone living paycheque to paycheque could afford (i.e. broken down to individual services as much as possible) and I'll stop pirating.
Just Google for podsafe music or Creative Commons licensed music.
I haven't needed to buy packaged crap (what I also call "trans-fat" or "hydrogenated" music,) for years.
You could also listen to some music podcasts (look in the iTunes music store.)
You can do yourself and the artists some good.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
This article from the Globe and Mail provides some more interesting insight into why they are doing this.
However it raises more questions. Like if younger people are buying more old Pink Floyd albums (errr... CDs), why is HMV charging $10 dollars more than newer CDs? After 30 years on the market you would think that 'Dark Side of the Moon' or the 'Led Zepplin' CDs had made their money and maybe could be reduced to the price of say, a CD produced in 2007?
And for those who don't know, HMV is the Canadian equivalent of, for example, the chain of Virgin record stores. In fact, HMV recently took over the Virgin location on the corner of Burrard and Robson in downtown Vancouver.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
It seems to me it's significantly harder to be a music pirate in Canada.
Graham Henderson from the CRIA says "Canada has the highest rate of illegal downloading in the world" . That claim seems a bit dubious. I'm not saying it's not possible. But it seems to me that Canadians can copy and download a *lot* of music for themselves without breaking a single law if they go about it properly, as their Copyright Act permits. I don't think the CRIA wants people to know that. So is it possible they're encouraging a bit of fear, uncertainty, and misinformation to be spread for their interests?
If it hasn't been spelled out by others posting here, I'm assuming people are aware that the Canadian Copyright Act specifically permits individuals to make a personal copy, for personal use, of a music recording owned by someone else. (Not so for movies.)
Just a reminder to our American readers, it is legal to share and download music in Canada and it is not piracy. This is a result of a the Canadian version of the RIAA's successful past pressuring of the government resulting in the imposition of a blank media tax. The proceeds are supposed go to the artists to compensate for loss revenues from sharing of music. As I understand it, the courts have deemed that sharing music via the internet is no different than copying a CD and giving it to a friend. Therefore since the record companies already accepted the tax as fair compensation for music sharing - they cannot ask for more. Someone more informed than I can provide the links and clarify the details but we download music here without worry.
But I don't.
I used to be a real record CD hound spending hours combing through the stacks. I used to go to big name concerts regularly. I no longer buy CDs (last I bought was over 10 years ago - some medieval music and some worldbeat) and when we go out it's to listen to small local pub bands, small chamber ensembles or choirs or dance to electronic music DJs. And I'm more likely to play music or sing karaoke than listen to it. A large part of this is just disillusionment with the entire big business music model. Spending a couple of hundred bucks to see Madonna or go to the Opera or listen to a warhorse symphony *again*, doesn't seem to make much sense when there are so many more enjoyable alternative musical experiences.
because we know the value of nothing.
It was not as bad in Canada when I lived there. At least we had health care.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
the lack of health insurance for most people
Hey, now, let's be fair, the number of Americans without health insurance is currently around 47 million, or 16% of the total population (though this doesn't account for this with insurance who are denied coverage). Hardly "most people".
I point this out only because a useful dialog about things like healthcare reform can't begin if people persist in exaggerating or outright lying in order to support their position (and that applies to either side).
This price drop has nothing to do with piracy or any other big bad boogeyman. HMV is lowering their prices because Universal has (finally) made an adjustment to the Canadian market to reflect the strong Canadian dollar and dropped prices across the board. This adjustment was to compensate for the fact that Canadian stores were paying about 15-20% more than their US counterparts due to prices that were set to 10 year old currency exchange rates. You'll see the same problem with books that print US and Canadian prices on them, with the current exchange rates, you're much better off paying in US dollars.
If you want to do the music industry and your ears a favour, boycott HMV, the RIAA, CRIA and the big 5 and buy from the indies and local indy stores.
<shameless plug>
http://www.canadacd.ca
</shameless plug>
the demand is no longer there for CDs, not becasue of piracy, but because of former Tape and LP owners converting their collections over to CD... I have well over 750 CDs that I have purchased that were once on other media. my collection in near completion, I dont buy at the rate I did previously, and with the garbage they are producing today, I dont see my collection growing that much more.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I notice that more youngsters are smoking bongs nowadays, and I always wondered why that was the case. This weekend just gone, it hit me.
..... At any rate, nobody complained that I was taking too long. I don't want to blow my own trumpet (you can blow Andy's Trumpet if you like, but be sure to wear a dress ..... stoner humour ..... just pretend to get the joke ..... you're going to end up giggling like a Japanese schoolgirl anyway) but I do consistently put together four- or five-star spliffs and if I spaced out for a moment, I was forgiven -- because I am the master at work, and because I had the power of life and death over the majority of the stash. I shrugged, continued rolling my Killer Kone (tm), popped in a Mark Three cardboard roach, gave the lighting end a twist and sparked it up.
..... there's no sleeve or cover, no physical product to hold in your hand and use to support your Rizlas while you skilfully apply dope and tobacco in the correct proportions. It's no wonder they're all into bongs, and regard spliffs as a quaint, old-fashioned way of getting stoned. I wouldn't really mind, but store-bought acrylic bongs are just one small step above hot knives. There's a certain spititual element in the whole ritual of roasting, crumbling, rolling, licking, tamping, twisting and lighting. Bongs are spoiling that, in exactly the same way that individually-wrapped hollow Jesus Biscuits with wine filling, available pre-blessed from a vending machine attached to the side of a juke box full of hymn CDs, would spoil Mass.
I was skinnin' up a d00b on the cover of one of my favourite LPs, as you do. In fact I had already stuck the Rizlas together and crumbled and loaded the gear without thinking what I was doing; only when I paused to select the correct amount of tobacco did I actually realise what I was doing. A minor revelation, like the way you only know you fell asleep when you get woken up
Later on I observed a mate skinning up on a CD box. Bit of a harder job and he only managed to produce a Piccolo, but who am I to argue with nice Thai stick (even if it wasn't actually on a stick).
But these modern kids, with their iPods and their digital downloads
"16% of the total population" without any kind of medical insurance is already way too much. I still can't believe why the US, who is able to pour billions in their military, and even in other country's military for god sake, can't put a basic free and universal medical insurance for its people.
"Hey, now, let's be fair, the number of Americans without health insurance is currently around 47 million, or 16% of the total population (though this doesn't account for this with insurance who are denied coverage). Hardly "most people"."
Interesting that the amount of people without health insurance in the US is greater than the entire population of Canada.... or the combined total populations of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Conneticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Utah.
Think about what you're saying - FOURTY SEVEN MILLION people have no health coverage. So what if that's only 16% of the population??? It's still 47 freakin MILLION people!!! 21 out of 50 states worth of people have NO health coverage whatsoever. How is this acceptable to ANYONE (other than those who already have health insurance and are smug bastards about it???
Got it. LEGAL. We pay a tax for the privilege. So this has nothing to do with illegal downloads. They are already getting their pound of flesh and the targeted price drops are still netting them a handsome profit. Geeze.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I'm another Canadian CD shopper that's pretty tight-fisted when the price gets much above $15.
I don't download music; I have ripped CDs I borrowed from the library, which by my reading of our copyright act is legal as church on Sunday - but the bulk of that was out-of-print Jazz albums you can't find in stores anyway.
The real piracy battleground is over the "most popular" pop music that sells a lot of units for a year or so, mostly to people under 30.
Part of the reason I started getting more interested in non-pop genres like Jazz, World, Reggae, electronic was that it was cheaper - even in stores like HMV. I can go in there and get one Avril Lavigne CD for $25 - or pick up Django Reinhart's Jazz, hits by Dean Martin, a Peter Tosh, and an "AfroBeat Collection" for a total of $30. All from the 2/$15 shelf two paces from Avril.
Sorry, Avril...
There's just a LOT of great music out there, and once you stop treating music as a status symbol that proves how up-to-the-minute you are, buying anything new & popular becomes an irrational decision. Wait a few years, and it'll not only be down to the 2/$30 shelf at least, the consensus will be in about how good the artist *really* was under the hype.
However, if HMV drops prices enough, I believe I'll find out what the heck Amy Winehouse is all about this year instead of 2010. One really should encourage moves like this.
Well growing up listening to the music of the 70's and 80's my musical taste tends to revolve around that period. Anythiny from Deep Purple,Zappa,U2 and Rush. In fact the last album I baught was Rush's snake and arrows. I'm also a musician and there is one thing that is very important to me when I buy an albun or listen to some new music. Can the performer actually do what they are doing?
Unfortunatly with the top 20 garbage that has been playing in the past 10 years it's all been over produced superficial artists who get promoted by the record leables because it;s their first album and they have a really bad contract. After the first or second album they get put asside and they bring in someone new to use and profit from.
The bands that keep making album after album and keep their fan base is rare these days, mostly flash in the pans.
So excuse me if I don't buy that new album from that faceless artist who the world will totally forget in 3 weeks.
I'll just wait for Peter Gabriel's new album.
Other countries, including the U.S. and Britain, have been able to stem the tide of illegal downloading by updating laws and increasing enforcement, he said, but calls from the recording industry for updated copyright laws in Canada have gone unheeded.
There is a simple reason for that: there is no illegal downloading in Canada. So we don't have a problem and we don't need to update our laws. The icing on the cake is that this is exactly what the music industry asked for when they pushed for a tax on blank media...of course that was before p2p was invented and they could make money from people who just used CDs for data storage. The justice is almost poetic.
I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, both you and the AC who responded, are completely missing my point. I never said 47 million uninsured was a-okay. I'm saying that, if you want to begin a debate on the subject, you have to put away the hyperbole, otherwise you'll just get ignored as an extremist. And yes, saying "most" Americans don't have healthcare *is* hyperbole.
Watch out for an avalanche of these:
/\/\US!c from CANADIAN $uper St0rs. Icred!ble Price$.
Buy Graet
Act now and get FREE Celine Dion DVD "The making of"
Capcha: 'beavers' the Canadian National animal (and emblem?).
Well, perhaps. It's a complicated subject and no doubt difficult to compare statistics given the differences in data and methods, but the median household income before taxes appears to be :
US - $48,201
UK - $56,000 (£28,000)
for 2005/2006. It would be interesting to compare them after taxes, and of course there's all sorts of confounding factors like purchasing power, but the salaries do seem to be lower in the US than in the UK, which is compensated by slightly lower prices (though given prices are quoted before tax there and not in the UK, it's difficult to compare directly). Median income after tax looks surprisingly high in the UK in that graph (around $52,000), and in the US ($40,843), given how much everyone moans about taxes. Interestingly the figure after tax is much closer to median income (because of benefits on the low end and higher tax on the high end perhaps?) for the UK than for the US. This doesn't include the shared health care etc in the UK of course.
It would probably be very healthy for a lot of governments to be forced to publish their figures in comparative tables with other countries - I'm sure it would smash a few myths about who spends or taxes the most, but good comparative data is hard to find.
Most people I know window shop at places like HMV, EB Games and then buy at Wal-Mart, you just can't beat the prices.
HMV has always been over priced, I've avoided it like the pluage for the past decade (Odd thats the same time mp3s starting popping up)
The last time I visited HMV (or any such store) was about 5 years ago. I was looking for the New Radicals CD, "So Maybe You've been brainwashed too".
It was $24.
$24 for a CD that was released in 1998, the group disbanded, sales probably close to nil.
So I went home and downloaded it in MonkeyAudio (big at the time).
Go fuck yourself music industry.
Thanks for correcting me. You should not have been moderated Off Topic.
You'd think we could at least lower CD prices for the 47 million Americans who have no health care. There are many artists whose songs are just as effective as a strong anesthesia.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
The brilliant minds at the RIAA, apparently whether Canadian or USAian, apparently know only one note -- It MUST be Piracy! Somebody at the big record companies (eg, their employer) ought to send some of these poor boys to class in basic economics. Back when I was a kid, the competition for my fixed entertainment dollars was split between LPs, movies at the theater, bowling, and a few other distractions. LPs were basically the only product I could take home (well, tapes, etc).
Today, the average teenager's similarly limited funds are split between PC games, games for gaming consoles (my son owns a PS2, an XBox360, a WII, and a Nintendo DS), DVDs, movies at the theater, rental DVDs, legal downloads, etc. It's also not a big surprise that the kids brought up on all of those choices have increasingly become a part of Big Music's key demographic.
And yet, Big Music doesn't understand this kind of competition (apparently, some retailers actually do), and can't grasp the simple fact that kids like mine rarely buy music of any kind. That doesn't mean they're stealing it, either, but rather, they buy games and play the radio or the PC in the background. If they buy a song, they'll get the one or two "decent" songs on iTunes, not the whole CD. They have very little first-hand knowledge of the "concept album" as we knew it... it's all random-play on the iPod (Kira) or the Sansa (Sean).
So, not understanding this, and not even really wanting to embrace the fact their very way of existence is being called to question, the one answer from the industry is always "must be the Pirates". I guess that's what they can sell to the stockholders and pretend to be addressing. They don't begin to have any answers for the real problems in their business....
-Dave Haynie
They have to lower already vastly inflated prices. I guess that means some no talent executives who do jack shit to actually produce the music and sit around with their thumbs up their holes all day might not be able to buy that extra jet, or home in the tropics. Truly a tragedy of world proportions.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Under Canadian copyright law, you cannot copy a CD and give your friend the copy.
You can loan your friend your purchased CD, and he can make a copy of that CD and keep the copy for his own personal use.
I don't know about elsewhere in Canada but here in Manitoba HMV generally charges about $35 a cd (sometimes before and sometimes after taxes) for any non special order or non import cd (I've seen Import labels on regular U.S. cd's) and of course somewhat more than that for import's etc. HMV prices are the main reason I got a computer - even now with a decent job I cannot afford to buy ANY new music. As much as I love to support the Arts - the music retail industry in Canada at least has made it impossible.
The Canadian RIAA blames piracy... So because of piracy, we get lower prices? I'm pretty sure the Canadian RIAA just encouraged piracy...
I think their piracy argument should be looked at recursivly. CD prices lead to piracy, which leads to new cd prices, which leads to less piracy, which leads to new cd prices...
as this aproaches infinity, we get a proper price, one which people will pay, for a cd.
gee almost sounds like a free market http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market
insight through the mind
Seriously, HMV is the most expensive retailer of music in Canada. I can't imagine why people don't like spending that extra couple of dollars for that extra special HMV bag to carry their purchase home in.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
> price cuts of up to 33%; the cuts average 20% across the board. The Canadian version of the RIAA is spinning the news as being a direct result of music piracy
They have a good point. Piracy works in favor of the consumer. Keep it up everyone!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The car angle is easy to understand. U.S. car dealers have much lower support and distribution costs, due to higher volume and higher population density. So they don't have to mark the cars up as much as a Canadian dealer would. You still have to pay GST and PST at the border, and may have to pay to bring the car up to Canadian specs (daytime running lights, metric speedometer, etc.). You can't generally bring in new cars, but can easily bring in used ones.
The other reason to import a car yourself is to get a model that was never sold in Canada in the first place. You can bring in just about anything, from anywhere, if it's over 15 years old. We have lots of Japanese imports in B.C., everything from Nissan Skylines to Mitsubishi Delicas. They're not cheap (my Delica is clearing Customs and getting its daytime running lights as I write this), but if that's what you want, there is no other way to get it.
...laura
Oh no, not this again. I'll try to be even more concise this time:
Canada has a blank media levy to recover piracy losses.
Canada has fair use rights.
Done.
The two have NOTHING to do with one another. In Canada, we can share music in a certain set of legal ways because, and read carefully, In Canada, we can share music in a certain set of legal ways. Period. You have the levy over here. You have our fair use rights over there. Please stop posting as if the two are related.
Even things like paperback books are more in Canada. Example of one book, USD price is like $15 and Canadian price is $20
If the industry survive, they made too much money.... If they dont, they didn't asdapted well, their problem.... Me happy!
Tomorrow is another day...
Wow 47 million...that is more people than we have in Canada total.
I can't imagine not having our public health system.
Hey calm down, if the two aren't linked just say so and tell us why or why not.
The 1997 addendum to the Canadian Copyright Act that defines the blank media tax also explicitly allows private copying of music. Now, I admit that I was probably wrong in what the courts decided that downloading is legal because of the tax. It may be true that this clarification adds nothing that did not already exist as part of fair use laws and no explicit linkage is given between the rights to private copying of music and the tax. But c'mon, to say that the two have NOTHING to do with each other is also a reach. The clarification for private copying of music definitely came in the same amendment as the imposition of the tax and it's not a stretch to surmise that this was due to some sort of compromise.
Do they actually do this? If it doesn't say "digitally remastered!" or anything on it?
I should probably insert a snide comment about remastering for cell phone ring tones.