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EMI Only Selling CDs To Mega-Chains From Now On
farrellj writes "According to Zeropaid, record company EMI has been notifying small music stores that they will no longer be able to buy EMI CDs from EMI, and will have to buy product from mega-chains like Walmart. Independent record store customers are some of the most loyal music buyers around. You are not going to find the back catalog, what used to be the staple of the music business, at your local Walmart. One wonders when the music business is going to run out of feet to shoot?"
I'm 15
What's a CD?
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
It's been years since they stopped wanting my business. It's about times these stores stopped getting special treatment. Customers are overrated anyway.
I'm obviously missing something here, how can this business model work when you're reducing your customer base? I realise that Walmart has the buying power but if they've paid for some sort of exclusivity deal then surely that adds expense back into their purchases unnecessarily?
They're out of feet, that was an EMI gonad.
EMI is one of the big four RIAA member labels, along with Sony, Universal, and Warner. I stopped buying their shite ages ago, and I don't really care if I'm not buying it from a little store or a big one.
Loose lips lose spit.
Is it even legal to only sell to certain customers and not others based on size of business?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Prosecuting file-sharers gives better revenue than selling music. No transportation/storage/etc.. overhead, Just some greedy lawyers to be paid.
From EMI's website:
New Music finds and develops new, exciting and successful music. Its record labels include Angel, Astralwerks, Blue Note, Capitol, Capitol Nashville, EMI Classics, EMI CMG, EMI Records, EMI Televisa Music, Manhattan, Mute, Parlophone and Virgin. Artists on EMI labels include Lily Allen, The Beatles, Beastie Boys, Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Doves, Gorillaz, Iron Maiden, Norah Jones, Massive Attack, Kylie Minogue, Katy Perry, Pink Floyd, Queen, Sir Simon Rattle, 30 Seconds To Mars, KT Tunstall, Keith Urban and Robbie Williams, as well as international artists such as Amaral (Spain), Camille (France), Empire of the Sun (Australia), Tiziano Ferro (Italy), Flex (Mexico), LaFee (Germany) and Utada Hikaru (Japan).
Catalogue maximises the value of EMI's historic and extensive music assets. Seminal albums in EMI Music's catalogue include Hunky Dory and Aladdin Sane (David Bowie), Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band (The Beatles), Pet Sounds (Beach Boys), A Rush Of Blood To The Head (Coldplay), Birth Of The Cool (Miles Davis), Come Away With Me (Norah Jones), Dark Side Of The Moon and The Wall (Pink Floyd), A Night At The Opera (Queen), OK Computer (Radiohead) and Songs For Swingin' Lovers (Frank Sinatra). EMI Music's Catalogue division also owns and runs the world-renowned recording studios Abbey Road in London and Capitol Studios in Los Angeles.
There's also this page, with a more complete listing of artists.
EMI's catalog includes some of the arguably best albums of all time, and some of the most popular current artists. I don't see any way how this will end well.
Goo goo g'joob.
Well, no. But you won't find the vast majority of that at specialist retailers either, they don't have the space. They would order it for you, but everyone knows its easier (and frequently cheaper) to get it from amazon or their ilk. The web retailer own that long-tail retail space, and that's not going to change.
Specialist records stores will have to survive solely on the quality of information and advice their staff can provide -- it's their only market advantage.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
... if it only wasn't for the customers.
This is the motto for the music industry these days. Do everything possible to minimize the number of customers you have to deal with, I can only assume they don't like having customers.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Now, when I look for music at my local store, I'll have a higher chance of accidentally finding a non-RIAA CD to take home. C'mon Sony, you go next. Make my store a better filter, it's annoying searching RIAA Radar for everything I want to buy.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
You accidentally a word.
It is motions like this which lead otherwise paying customers to pirate music that they just cannot find at big chains, as they are not 'Mainstream enough'. Well done EMI, you have just inadvertently promoted piracy.
You gotta think like a Music Executive to understand their logic.
Fixed Costs and shipping costs per CD shipped rise uncontrollably when sending it in small batches to mom-and-pop stores.
Their sale price is fixed. WHich means, EMI earns less from each CD shipped to corner store as its shipping costs eat up money.
Better way is to ship HUGE amounts to a few stores and ask the corner stores to buy their copies from them.
Of course it assumes that small shop owner still want to waste their time & money and drive to Walmart supercenters, negotiate a price with manager and come back with 100 CDs of latest Jessica Simpson singles.
LOL
That wastes two days: one day for shopping and one for sorting.
Who the hell wants to do that.
If i were a mom-and-pop shop owner, i would point my customers to allofmp3.com or some other seller of mp3 songs.
EMI's CEO has proved his tactical sense for next quarter results is strong, while his strategic business sense is as low as the IQ of his Turd.
Good luck EMI. You have given me one more reason to pirate.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
From the summary:
When faced with the shear numbers Wal-Mart brings to the table, does loyalty actually matter? That's the problem here. A thousand loyal indie store customers are trumped by a million disloyal Wal-Mart customers. This is a business about making money, not about keeping indie shops afloat.
Regardless of your answer to the above question, if I have 100 customers, and 90 of them buy my product through Wal-Mart and other large chains, I would concentrate on selling to the large chain stores. That number is just a guess, but I suspect it's fairly close. My guess is that EMI looked at their distribution costs versus the number of customers reached and decided, "These indie stores just aren't worth the distribution costs." I can't really blame them. It sucks, but I can't blame them. Distributing a physical product costs money, and what better way to cut down on distribution costs than to ship to your two or three largest customers and make the indie stores obtain your product from there, at their own expense.
From the article:
This is a rare case of the music industry--well, at least EMI--moving away from a business model we all know is outdated, and people are still complaining? And no, phasing out CD sales has nothing to do with illegal file sharing. There are better, cheaper, more convenient, DRM-free options out there, like iTunes and Amazon MP3. They aren't trying to push away their customers; they are trying to encourage people to either buy from stores with cheap distribution costs or buy from digital stores with even cheaper distribution costs.
I don't like the record industry, and I think the tactics they use are despicable. That said, it's stories like this that make me think they just can't win sometimes. The article makes it sound like EMI is a big mean company trying to crush indie competition, when in reality EMI is itself a business trying to keep costs down and phase out a wasteful distribution system. Give them a break.
Cue anti-RIAA downmods.... now.
-William Brendel
One stops are mid level distributors that carry product from multiple labels. Somewhere the person writing this article got very confused by what is going on here.
If you look at the article comments there is a guy there who is also pointing this out.
Not saying EMI isn't annoying as are most of the labels, but this article is seriously confused.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
I stopped buying EMI products the day the Harry Fox Agency accused me of being a criminal for putting my own work on the web.
Not only did I stop buying things from this company, I went from being an *avid* collector to them being *dead to me* and unlike some others, I never looked back.
At the same time, I started discovering independent music, *many* genres with artists who are far more interested in getting their message out than getting a 1/16th cent royalty from you. Many of these artists benefit from being discovered -- not by a record producer but by YOU, the person who might become a fan after listening, and who might actually attend a concert, not at a megastadium but at a club or a festival.
I don't really care what EMI does, or doesn't do. They are dead to me, and I do not believe in ghosts.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I'm inadvertently boycotting RIAA labels. Their hasn't really been an album released on a "big" label that has warranted my bandwidth or money in some time. I probably would buy something from them, if there was anything I wanted. Perhaps its my age, perhaps I have odd tastes, but I still haven't found anything new or interesting on a major label in some time. I manage to support a ton of small labels "accidentally" though.
So, here is my question, what has been released on a major RIAA label lately that has been worth listening to?
Most of the RIAA member labels are the McDonalds of music, they release passable crap, but never innovate or produce anything that smaller shops can't beat. As time goes on, most of the innovation comes from smaller labels, while the large ones pick up the watered down crap. This is in part that they shun controversial bands, or bands that cater to specific tastes. They only want the stuff bland enough to appeal to everyone.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
He didn't accidentally the verb, however. That's an important.
If your business was selling music CDs, you would really point your customers to a web site that competes with you and undercuts you on cost
When i don't have the product a customer wants, and there is no prospect of getting the product for him at a profit [for me], why would i want to go to the trouble of pointing that customer to Walmart or HMV store and thereby enable my competition to earn a profit at my cost.
Better that they too lose the money.
If i can't earn, why should i help my competitor to earn at my cost?
Care to explain?
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I understand your current position, even if I don't agree. However, I think there is something you are overlooking, which is the collateral damage to society brought about by RIAA attempting to stop those "folks who infringe on their copyrights".
Do you actually believe that 100% of the hundreds (or perhaps thousands, there is no real way to know how many) of people who are contacted by RIAA for paying a mere few thousand dollars to settle out-of-court are all guilty?
You do realize that even for someone who is actually innocent, settling out-of-court is the financially correct decision to make in these cases? I'd like to refer you to the blog of attorney Jennifer Granick, who represented Michael Lynn in "Ciscogate":
Even if you are innocent, a few grand isn't going to pay for much work from a lawyer who is good enough to go up against RIAA.
There is also the matter of how distorted and dysfunctional copyright law has become because of lobbying by RIAA. Do you actually believe that it helps society (or even the record companies themselves!) that the term of copyright is so enormously long? It looks to me to be the opposite, even for them. If the term were only something like 10 years, I think that new artists recycling of works which still had some cultural significance would actually generate more music, and more interesting music, for the industry to push. And I doubt that the 10 year limit would actually change the recording industry's income by very much, the vast majority of their sales are either new acts or to people who wouldn't bother to waste time/effort looking for the free copy as opposed to just clicking in iTunes/Amazon/or similar.
EMI were a wonderful company once. They were not a mere record label, they were a leading electronics company. They developed the UK's first transistor-based computer, but arguable even more important is they helped Hounsfield develop his CAT scanner. The first CT machine was no the Siemes/General electric stuff we see today, it was an EMI. EMI have developed a machine that will probably save more lives than any drug (bar anti-biotics), for a tiny price (per scan).
How the mighty have fallen.
Is this based on real data, or stuff you made up?
Looking at MS they have a P/E of 14.7, making their stock price low (20 is pretty normal). They have a 25% profit margin, cash way in excess of debt, and a 40% ROE. How is this "doing so poorly?" They are making tons of money, DESPITE the recession. They are not one of the tech companies in the red, and many are these days.
Yes, Apple is also doing great, however that doesn't mean MS is doing bad. They both can succeed, and are it seems.
Please let's try to keep facts straight here. "Doing bad," in the business world would mean that your company is having some real financial trouble. AMD is doing bad. They are losing money left and right, and were even before the downturn. Thus there is worry if they'll be able to stay in business. That is doing bad. Making a profit, and a healthy one at that, in a recession is not doing bad, that is doing great.
I actually don't want to talk about piracy (since neither side can understand each other), but inability to get hold of "your special interest" CDs force people to piracy, as I will show here.
I was on a education for 8 weeks and meet a person who truly was against piracy, really angry against pirates (of music, he didn't care at all about movies and so on) as he are a true music lover.
He spend his life devoted to listening to music, all he was talking about.
We had a great time arguing over the subject of piracy, me trying to explain why I do pirate music (I have bought nearly 500 CDs in my life too), as mostly because its an easy way to find new groups and so on, he protecting the music creators (and to some degree the record labels).
But the really interesting part is that at the end he confessed that, against all he really believe in, he had downloaded a album from the Internet the last day.
Why?
He had spent weeks trying to find a place where he could buy it and failed, except for a few $100 from US I think it was (we live in Sweden). And as far as I know it wasn't an old and rare out of print album, just a hard to find album.
What can we learn from this?
That my convenience level against my morals are favoring me to piracy a lot easier, not that I don't want to pay (I really do), but no one wants my money in the way I want (to buy) my music.
But also that, in my guess, EVERY ONE can consider piracy when it gets too hard or expensive (for them) to get hold on the music they want.
For example, for the teenage people 15 min and $20 is both too hard (yeah, they are used to a lot easier access to life then when I was there some 20 years ago) and too expensive.
And I do think the music industry is wrongly making this a battle instead of an opportunity.
Allofmp3.com might be cheaper, but it's still evil and charge too much for a simple copy that really doesn't cost anything. And they only share their income with Russian artists, so buying from there it isn't even an inefficient way to donate to your favourite artist.
I suggest the music stores start to sell other things than data-copying. Merchandise, tickets, social events (musicians coming there to talk), coffee, beer, guitar-lessons and so on. The entire CD-copying and iTunes industry that only copy small files can actually be replaced by a few band or fan-paid servers.
So everyone would be better off if we just stop wasting money on plastic pieces and over-expensive digital shops and instead spent the money on concerts and donations to the musicians and writers.
Agreed, I've read the original article, the summary here is seriously skewed, and most of the comments aren't reflecting what has really happened.
But I have to wonder about your claim this is not an excuse to pirate. As you point out, "the onestops don't have the depth of product"
So, if I want something that's 'in the deep abyssial trenches of the mighty product ocean', it's less and less likely to be available on a physical medium in my area. If they don't want to sell item X to me, I'm not a customer for it, from their point of view, not just mine.
Then, they want a high enough price for the non-physical version, at lower audio quality, without other support such as liner notes, album art, and preferably with DRM, they are effectively pricing that too to say "customers go away, we don't really want you".
Some of this makes a pretty good excuse to pirate, or at least a reason for the government to stay out of enforcement. Just like region encoding. If the distributer insists on there being region encoding, and then doesn't sell the product at all in certain regions, they've basically said they don't regard those people in those regions as even potential customers - so they can't have lost any sales, can they? Even if I grant all claims that the piracy is still both immoral and illegal, if there was zero market, the pirates did zero damages.
Where we may not see eye to eye on this is how completely this counts as a refusal by the companies to do business. A lot of people seem to think that offering digital versions at any price counts as still being interested in providing the goods to a potential customer. I don't think so. To make a bad car analogy, if gas sells for about $2.50 a gallon in your area, and you ran across a gas station that had some unusual gas formula that had some minor advantages and some major disadvantages to use, but they want $25.00 a gallon for it. I think most of us would drive past, saying "Well, they obviously don't want me as a customer", and some of us, like me, would add "... or anybody else either.". At some level, a bad enough price gouging counts as saying you have no intention of actually doing business at all, and if you're not actually in business, you've got some nerve demanding the government enforce the laws protecting your business.
Who is John Cabal?
Seeing as they are a bunch of snakes, I don't believe they had any feet with which to begin.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Deliberately posting as near the start of the discussion as possible to link to this comment which makes clear that this whole story is blatantly misleading and relies on misintepreting EMI's position.
From a post by 'chpthrlls' in the zeropaid thread via the linked comment: "First of all "One Stops" DOES NOT mean Wal-mart and Best Buy. A one stop is a distributor that buys from the labels and sells to retailers. Most indie stores get their product from one stops anyway."
Even before I'd read the correct explanation, I'd already realised that this didn't sound plausible, even for the death-wish record industry. My initial guess was that EMI were making them buy through their distributors (as normally happens anyway) and someone had- either through ignorance and/or a vested interest in their own position- misinterpreted this as the "story" that we were presented with.
I was right, and I'm neither a genius, nor work in the music industry.
If I spotted this, why did Wayne Rosso, ZeroPaid or Slashdot themselves not figure this out and spend five minutes checking the facts?
Oh yeah, I know. Never question it if it makes a good story, even when it's blatantly fishy to anyone with an ounce of common sense.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
It's a bit of an irony that they go for "loud". CDs have a superior dynamic range than LPs, yet going for "loud" wastes this.
The loudness race started in earnest with Sony's Discman and other portable CD players. A lot of these used a cheap op-amp to drive the headphones, and discs had to be loud in order to be heard over outdoor noise.
your pre-owned copies
I hate to be so pedantic, but can we all just go back to saying used instead of pre-owned?
For the last time, PIN Number and ATM Machine are redundancies!