Slashdot Mirror
Sony Raises Price of Whitney Houston's Music 30 Minutes After Death
First time accepted submitter M.Nunez writes "Just 30 minutes after Whitney Houston died, Sony Music raised the price of Houston's greatest hits album, 'Ultimate Collection,' on iTunes and Amazon. Many technologists, including chairman of the NY Tech Meetup Andrew Rasiej, suggests that Sony should be boycotted for the move. In a tweet, Rasiej wrote, 'Geez Sony raised price on Whitney Houston's music 30 min after death was announced. #FAIL...We should boycott Sony.'"
Bunch of f-ing assholes.
Tacky? Sure. Taking advantage of the situation? Yup. But they have a right to make money for their product.
When an artists dies, many people rush right out to purchase that artist's work. It's as if people think they suddenly won't be able to get it again now that the artist is dead.
I'm excited about the Whitney Houston drug-inspired trance remix album that Sony will come up with next.
There should be an investigation for price manipulation for that. They sue people for "copying" music for several hundred times the digital price, yet they pull dick moves like this and expect people to just ignore it as a normal matter of business. If there was going to be a run on resources, like in the production of CDs, I could see increasing the price to help open up a new line or two to produce more to compensate, but its digital. There's ONE master. They produce NOTHING, just data. Outside of bandwidth considerations, there's no significant additional cost to them over what's already being used.
If it results in a Sony boycott, I'm fine with whatever reason you come up with.
It was actually a gesture of sympathy to Whitney Houston's dependents. Since copyright lasts forever now, long after the death of the artist, they raised the price of the music so her estate will receive larger royalty checks for awhile.
... i kid of course. We all know Sony and the other RIAA members never _actually_ pay out royalties to artists.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
My guess is that you could buy any of her albums on Ebay for a fraction of what they cost from Sony.
They did it to Miles Davis. They would do it to their own moms.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... the CD's and mp3's aren't going anywhere. There's probably lots of stock in the used market, too.
They are running a business and trying to make money. It's the same reason that I don't "support" their products. I don't care about Sony because they don't care about me. Also, If I wanted those albums, I'd torrent. She's dead anyway.
if I were them...her true fans would already have her albums.
I've been boycotting them for years, starting with their rootkits on CDs, which should have been charged as a criminal act.
Remember the Alamo, and God Bless Texas...
But logical. Fact is, I bet they earned more money from her death in these past few days than perhaps all last year alone. From a business perspective, you would be stupid not to raise the price. Bad PR yada yada yada. Give it a week and the bitching will stop and sales will increase. Money talks.
Oh look. Shiny!
Life is not for the lazy.
You already hate Sony. Sony already hates you. You're not Sony's primary audience. Sony's primary audience won't notice things like this.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
This article is assuming we shouldn't have been boycotting Sony already.
Silly people... why do they need so much time to learn?
Is there anyone here on Slashdot that's willing to admit they own a Whitney Houston song?
#DeleteChrome
That the music industry was evil.
http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/
When the source is open, the possibilities are endless.
I'm sure they were just doing their part to prevent iTunes and Amazon from crashing under heavy load.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If a lot of people want a singer's song after they die, then of coarse a company will raise the price. I have seen people get mad at sony, and I tell them simply to not buy the songs then. Don't boycott sony, just buy the songs somewhere else.
But, to be fair, this seems to have been a simple mistake by a single employee, and was quickly corrected. Linking through to the NYT article:
"the changes - which were in effect only on the British version of iTunes, and were reversed Sunday evening...the price increase was the result of an error by a Sony employee in Britain, and that the company gave no orders for prices to be raised on Ms. Houston's music."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I do not understand the outrage. Sony is a for-profit venture and saw the opportunity to increase profits. Of course, if they were a person, that would be despicable, but they are not.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
With all the damage they've been doing to their reputation the invisible hand is surely about to come down, hard.
They probably paid her bodyguard to hold her head underwater.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
With music there are only two choices:
1) Monopolistic pricing
2) Zero price point
The equilibrium price isn't an option, and most people value the product far less than its cost.
Price still seems to be $0.00 on The Pirate Bay...
Liberty in your lifetime
We knew long before this that Sony is a piece of crap.
Rootkits on CD's.
Removing Linux support from the PS3.
I'm already boycotting Sony.
I'm just surprised they merely raised prices, instead of coming up with a creepily innovative way to try to force people who'd bought the music before the hike to pay the increased price retroactively. I'm guessing they thought about it long and hard, but either (a) looked at the numbers and decided there wasn't enough potential profit to justify the backlash, so save the maneuver for a more popular artist's death, or (b) their legal department managed to get it through the decision-makers' heads that there are limits to the things a company is allowed to do to its customers, much as they might wish otherwise.
If I was a major shareholder at Sony, I would have done the exact same thing. And you would have too. I don't know what the big deal is about.
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/sony-says-price-of-2-whitney-houston-albums-was-raised-by-mistake/
According to the NYTimes the price raising was a mistake that only affected the UK Itunes store and nothing else. So of all the retailers and online shops only one was affected, Itunes, and only one region, the UK. If SONY wanted to capitalize on her death they likely would have raised prices across the board and just not the UK Itunes shop.
This probably was an error. Someone assigned to managing SONY's UK Itunes account royally fucked up by changing the price. And now it is basically a PR disaster because even though it likely was an accident SONY looks absolutely retarded. Someone will lose his or her job over this for sure.
Sadly I'm sure that some sneering fuck CEO from the RIAA or MAFIAA or SONY or whatever is sitting on his throne thinking of ways to capitalize on Whitney Houston's death without taking a major PR hit. They see her death as basically an opportunity for a lot of profit and a great time to line their pockets.
Where's all this sudden assumption that copyright holders should be benign entities come from? Sony are only charging what they can for providing a service that no-one else (legally in many countries) can provide.
Either:
a) The political system in the country in which you live is badly broken but the general public don't see, don't agree, or don't care enough to bring about change. In this case I say don't blame the player, blame the game. If Sony can realise more profit this way then fair play to them. If people think this is a horrible thing to do then they will crash and burn but I agree with Sony in predicting that most people will happily pay more.
or much worse
b) The general public in your country understand what's going on but actually think copyright law is a good thing; brainwashed or not they all deserved to be fucked good and hard and I applaud Sony for doing the fucking.
Having said that, the only time I took action to fund Sony in any way was when I asked for a playstation game for my birthday when I was 15. To make amends for this I created the "1389 Sony Playstation Roms" torrent and uploaded over 7TiB of data over the course of a year.
It's so cute to see all the free market people out arguing in favor of Root-Kit Sony.
She can't produce any new songs now, so the ones already out there are worth more.
Finally we can see that mythical scarcity of digital goods, that they are always talking about! For IP to work out, you have to die first.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=385761004783784&set=a.150692631623957.27577.100000496634796&type=1&ref=nf
And the market conditions determine what the price is. Sure you would pay more for food during natural disasters. This is a common theme on reddit "That big company did that, those assholes, how could they?"
If you are so pissed off about it, wait until the storm passes away and buy it then. Grow up and have a little bit of patience.
You will never have experience until after you needed it.
What about people who illegally downloaded her music after she died? Are they depriving Whitney of more money or no longer depriving her of money?
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Sorry but Sony is Right...
Dead People cannot sing or create new musics.
So Sony should milk all it can!
Live Long Sony
It's supply and demand. Sony wants to make money. Raising the price will only make more money if demand goes up. If demand goes up, but the price does not, there will be a shortage. Economic laws apply to everything. Whitney Houston's Music is no different.
Sony is a profit-oriented corporation
Their mission is to make profit
Whitney Houston's death was a chance for Sony to make more money, so they took it
I really can't blame Sony for doing such a thing, even when it's kind of bad taste
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
No to price gouging
http://megatokyo.com/strip/33
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
If people are willing to pay more, why wouldn't they charge more? The market value sets the price. Period. If you don't want to pay the higher price, well, don't buy the stuff. What's the big deal? It's just business.
In addition, Sony put in some new DRM trojan that will delete all your Bobby Brown mp3s.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
I'm not an economist and I was fortunate enough to stay in computer science and not transfer to business school so please explain how increased demand for a good that is digital results in increased supply. There is no added cost for Sony to reproduce the digital album once it's on iTunes so why is it acceptable to increase the price of an existing song (or any song)? Isn't this a prime example of price gouging? If the demand for a product increases suddenly and it costs you more to produce additional products then by all means raise the price. If the product is collecting dust on the shelf and in response to some external factor you blantantly scratch out the old price and add texa$ to it then that makes you a greedy @$$hole.
So why is it considered tasteless/evil for the price of an artists work to raise after death?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
boycott Sony. I have never been a fan of Whitney Houston or her music. It is clear that this is just another shitty move by Sony to try to cash in...this time profiting by a person's death. I didn't think I could dislike Sony any worse than I did...Sony has proven me wrong on that count.
...those who are buying her music after her death are equally parasitic and not really deserving of any breaks.
I fail to see how buying her music shortly after her death is parasitic.
If you really want to support an artist, support the artist when he or she is still alive
What good would it do for Whitney Houston if you go out and buy tons of Whitney Houston CDs after she is dead?
I mean, she's already dead, no matter how much royalty generates from your purchase of her songs / CD won't do her any more good
Just like those who pays hundreds of millions for paintings painted by dead painters.
Who's benefiting?
The painters who are already long dead?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Demand goes up, price goes up? If I had the rights to Whitney Houston's music, you can be for damn sure that I'd be jacking up the price so I could bank more cash.
Since when does anyone pay for music?
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
Who the fuck cares what some random twit thinks? Why is this in an article summary. Are you going to start posting random *internet* peoples opinions as validation points for your crappy summaries now?
Or maybe make the summaries just opinion.
May i be the first to welcome jon katzish journalism back once agian... Time flows like a river, and history repeats!
-
Ah so this is how they're planning to recover their $1.2 billion operating loss, genius heh
They were quick to look out for the well-being of Whitney Houston's bereaved family, by maximizing the royalties to her estate. Recognizing that her loved ones should benefit from their share of the artist's work, and that no further work is forthcoming, they risked the possibility of being called money grubbers, just to help out this family.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
This includes everything blu-shit.
I get the feeling it was "Man, Whitney Houston albums are selling terribly let's lower prices and maybe someone might actually buy one." then, "Holy, she died. Maybe people will be silly and buy her albums now for some reason, let's raise prices a little."
When they announced the "new lower* prices on downloads!" based on the popularity of music, I kinda wondered how long it would take a company to get nailed for something like this.
IF you recall when they announced this new variable price model, All tracks were $.99. They said they would lower the cost of "most" (yeah right) tracks as low as $.69. Also some tracks would stay the same, and a few hot/trending tracks would increase "slightly" to $1.29 (since when was 29% "slightly"?)
Most artists see a spike in purchases postmortem as fans reminisce and realize they dont have their fave tracks and now want to listen to them due to the increased publicity. As I recall when Jackson died, the week following his death, he sold millions of tracks. Im actually surprised nobody did this price spike at that time. (maybe it was before the variable pricing model? I dont recall.)
I actually wondered to myself how long it would take a label to take one of those low to original priced artist tracks and bump them to premium since they knew the purchases would spike?
I guess we now know....
It makes you wonder... was there a Bravia TV in the room at time of death?
Many technologists, including chairman of the NY Tech Meetup Andrew Rasiej, suggests that Sony should be boycotted for the move. In a tweet, Rasiej wrote, 'Geez Sony raised price on Whitney Houston's music 30 min after death was announced. #FAIL...We should boycott Sony.'
Wtf does this have to do with "technologism?" There are plenty of things wrong with Sony. This is hardly one of them.
Hitler hates pedophiles.
Sony should AT LEAST refund the difference for the people who bought her albums after the prices went off. Issuing an apology without a refund is sorta douchebaggie.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Then there was the CD I bought that installed a rootkit on my PC. I had to jump through hoops to get rid of that.
And now another dick move. Frankly, Sony used to be a good an innovative company. The Walkman. The Trinitron TV. They were known for high quality products. Now they are scum. I've had enough of their attempts to lock me into proprietary formats.I have deliberately avoided anything from Sony for at least five years. They won't get ANY of my business any more.They aren't the company they once were.
If Sony raises the price 30min BEFORE WH's death, now that would be news.
I've more than been aware of Sony's activities. For the most part I know they suck for what they do, but they are a for profit public company and expect some idiot anti-consumer crap. Especially with share-holder pressure, but this is beyond acceptable. To try and profit off someone's death is sickeningly unacceptable.
I officially bought my last Sony product if I can help it. /goodbye-Sony
If what you say is true, why does copyright exists beyond the artist's life?
Well, it's the politicians who re-wrote the copyright laws, after receiving $$$ from the PACs representing the "copyright owners", aka, the corporations
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
sounds like a good coput to me. How convenient that it was a "rogue employee" that just happened to raise the prices of a singer who died only 30 minutes earlier... im sorry, I simply dont believe it. If it was someone other than sony, I MIGHT believe it, but coming from sony, after the past mistakes, I simply cannot believe that excuse. They got called out for doing something dickish, and they are tyring to save face.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Of course Sony tried to maximize their profits before Whitney Houston passed away as well. It was just that then the demand pattern was different and the optimal price was lower.
Most people seem generally OK with the notion that companies set prices to maximize their profits. It is only in those special situations where supply- or demand- side events causes the profit-maximizing price to shift upward that there are cries of greed, manipulation, etc. The old price sets a mental frame as to what is "normal" or "fair" and the new price becomes "abnormal" and "unfair".
I'm sure Sony can claim they use an automated algorithm, and the price is based on demand.
For all I know, that might be the case.
...until after the assassin had completed the job.
Hey, it's Sony. So why are you surprised?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Demand suddenly skyrocketed! You all saw it!
I didn't buy a sandwich today to support the restaurant owner
You may not think that the act of buying a sandwich today means anything, but the following people, if they are decent enough, ought to thank you for it:
1. The restaurant owner
2. The bread maker employed by the restaurant owner
3. The flour maker
4. The wheat planter
5. The city/state/federal government which profited from the taxes paid by the above individuals
The above only talks about one specific ingredient. There are others, like egg, mayonnaise, ham, lettuce, sesame seed, etc ...
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
that art is more valuable after the artist's death!
i don't game often but when i do it's strictly with nintendo. sony is a peice of shit and microsoft has always been an asshole. nintendo may release the same three games for 30 years but at least they never tried to fuck my ass.
All that amoral corporate bullshit goes right out the window when it's a downloaded song. Suddenly those corps want to have giant discussions about ethics.
Sony is one of those giant goliaths
Sony can do anything, even things that are totally unethical, as long as it remains legal nobody can do shit against Sony
On the other hand, citizens, aka human beings like you and me, are teeny tiny davids
We are nothing, in the eyes of giants like Sony, and their MAFIAA goons
If they want to squash us, they can
They can squash us with or without any excuse
They can change the rules in the middle of the game, and there is nothing we, the teeny tiny davids, can do anything about
They can call us pirates, they can close down our sites, they got all the help from FBI, CIA and every-other-law-enforcement-agency that are for hired
Us? Nothing
We are worse than ants
At least the ants can bite back
We can't
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Eeww. Just... Eeew.
Is there any chance this was an automated response due to the album/tracks moving up the long tail quickly? I would think it sensible to do this to capitalize quickly on unforeseen resurgences in popularity of old standards.
So, what exactly is wrong about this?
It's their product, they price it. You had plenty of time to buy her music before, why is it so important to listen to it RIGHT NOW now that she is dead?
It is a fantastic opportunity to make a lot of money, and not ONE of you could honestly say you wouldn't do the same thing in their position.
people where outrage and companies, and the price went back down. The time for boycot is over./
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why would anyone in their right mind actually pay those scammers in the first place.
I don't know if it's possible to do two boycotts against the same company simultaneously. If so, you would one do it?
I worked this out: First go fire up torrents of all the Sony artists you can find and download every Sony .mp3 on the net. Then, once you are done, go delete all the .mp3s and do the whole thing again. There you have just "Stolen" their entire catalog twice. That will show the corporate bastards that the Intarweb is not to be trifled with!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
...and that's a big reason our future will be spent bowing to corporate, rather than robotic, overlords. Avoiding bad taste is exactly why whichever Sony drone was responsible for this decision shouldn't have hit enter, and another reason to avoid supporting the "profit at any cost" philosophy practiced by Sony and supported by your "Insightful" post.
If profit is a corporation's only barometer, why should we care about Foxconn's employees, or is the latest Ask Slashdot merely a shill for stocks to devalue?
Same thing happens with paintings: when the artist dies the supply dries up and the price goes up.
Along with brands like Pioneer back in the '70s and '80s, they helped make decent hi-fi gear affordable. With the Walkman they launched the entire portable audio market, and they co-invented the CD. Their Trinitron TVs and monitors were well-respected, and they were a major player in developing the portable camcorder market as well.
Then in 1987 they acquired CBS Records, and in 1989 they acquired Columbia Pictures; this started them down the road to becoming a "content" company. It's been all downhill ever since. Quality of their hardware declined sharply; the last piece of Sony electronics I bought was a Digital-8 camcorder around 7 years ago, and it sucked. Debacles like the CD rootkit incident, the controversial change in stance over 3rd party code on the PS3, and the PSN security breach have now become the norm.
In my lifetime the Sony brand has transformed itself from something I actively sought out, to something akin to a warning label. It's a damn shame; I now go out of my way to avoid their products.
RIP Sony, you are dead to me.
when life (or the end of a life) gives you lemons, make lemonade
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Heaven forbid a company that lost money last year try to use simple economics to attempt to maximize profit!
OK Sony have added +1 to their boycott level, bringing their Douchebag Boycott level to +5. I'm already boycotting them for:
+1 piss-poor customer service in their stores
+1 piss-poor service for their laptop repair
+1 CD rootkit issue
+1 removing the "Other OS" option on the PS3 (ok I never even bought a PS3 but it was a douche move)
Essentially, Sony's douchery have demanded I revise the scale for boycott actions. The +4 level they held previously caused me to
- live Phony free
- defriend on facebook or unfollow anyone with anything good to say about Phony in a status update.
- actively discourage friends/family from purchasing Sony products
- persuade a neighbour to purchase a new TV of brand other than Sony so I did not have to stare at the Phony logo when watching TV when visiting
Ideas for additional sanctions for this new +5 boycott? Currently under consideration: building Rube Goldberg like devices to cause "accidental damage" to any Phony device owned by friends, colleages and acquaintences.
What....too soon?
I see two problems, neither of which are limited to TPB
shady ad servers can dump crapware onto your PC.
AdBlockPlus for the win.
As for crapware disguised as desirable content:
http://thepiratebay.se/about
"The Pirate Bay only removes torrents if the name isn't in accordance with the content. One must know what is being downloaded."
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
It is all for the protection of young, emerging artists.
-- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
> We all know Sony and the other RIAA members never _actually_ pay out royalties to artists.
She didn't own her own music, so she wasn't getting any money from anything but singing, anyhow. Nor will any of her relatives.
Pity I can't start boycotting Sony. I mean, I never stopped. Ever since the rootkit I've never had a reason to stop. If it had only been the rootkit, I might have forgotten about it or something, but they just keep reminding me that I can't trust them.
FTA: "Apple and Sony originally declined to comment, but Sony later answered to the outcries from fans around the world including those in Australia and Great Britain. 'Whitney Houston product was mistakenly mispriced on the U.K. iTunes store on Sunday,' Sony said in a statement according to the New York Times. 'When discovered, the mistake was immediately corrected. We apologize for any offense caused.' " So the price was changed in one of their storefronts and was later corrected. I don't like Sony one bit but I think by now they would know when not to do stupid stuff like this on purpose.
Availability of Whitney Houston discographies on torrent sites also rose 30 minutes after her death.
Free market at work - if demand increases, you can raise the price. That's how it works. We love the free market, don't we?
Come on, americans! Where's the cries that any outrage over this is socialism? We wouldn't want to interfere with the magic of the free market, right? It's as important as free speech!
Just like our politicians sell out to the highest bidder...
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Supply and Demand? Embrace the Free Market? Isnt this type of capitalism the reason Americans live and die (and kill others) for? So why blame Sony for being a good learner, and playing the game?
Some guy hears about it and calls someone, possibly waking or disturbing that person, that person makes the decision that gets someone to make the increase within the thirty minute window. It's business; how long were they supposed to wait?
While it may be the job of a company, as an entity, to make money, the company is made of individuals
Individuals? People? Does not compute!
A modern company isn't made of individuals, it's made of systems, procedures and algorithms. The most likely explanation is that some algorithm somewhere automatically makes popular items full-price and drops prices when they're not selling well. Demand went up, price went up. There's no active "decision" in there, just an automated process.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I never cared for urban yodeling anyway.
Crazy thought, but maybe they'll start killing artists now they see it is profitable... on the other hand, a lot of artists already died before their time.. hm..
So boycott a company for raising prices as demand goes up? Isn't that standard practice? Yes I understand there trying to make more money off someone who had passed away. But didn't the same thing happen right after Micheal Jackson? This happens after anyone passes away, this time around though 'boycott' is the new thing to do...
I should have expected to find you holding RIAA's leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.
The owners are Japanese. They could not care less about American culture. She is a product for them, just like any user of theirs.
I love the king, I love the president, I love Sony.
This is all about supply and demand. The demand for Whitney was at a high, so the price went up. The supply was the same, and likely limited due to previously low demands...
Why was this noise posted in the first place?
The article summary makes it sound like this is a Slashdot front page retweet of some guy named "Rasiej"
Man, have the mighty fallen.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I thought we were all boycotting Sony after the Geohot abuse anyway?
I know I am. It's a shame - they make good e-readers and I would have bought one otherwise.
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
is hurting the music industry . . .
The problem with economic theory is that it is based on a _perfect_ world. It's just handwaved that, uh, well, it works close enough in the real world.
Among the assumptions that are necessary to have most of that shiny-happy outcome for everything -- and I mean, really, necessary, as once you have a margin of error, real world starts to happen -- are such gems as:
- many manufacturers of perfectly homogenous and fungible products. Which works well if you're buying orange juice, but less well when your brand of pneumonia is only sensitive to the latest patented antibiotic.
- zero (or negligible) entry and exit barriers. This is in fact needed both for the previous one, as well as to prevent collusion. In a market where it costs nothing to enter or to exit if it didn't work, you can't form a cartel to regulate the price of bread, because someone else will then start making bread anyway and undercut you. This assumption is increasingly false in the real world, with entry barriers in some domains being in the many billions range. No, really, try starting a CPU manufacturing company.
- perfectly informed buyers. To have any chance that the market punishes behaviours X, Y and Z, or even rewards fine differences in quality, basically all (or the vast majority) of buyers must know that stuff. Again, this is not only getting to be very false, but most corporations actively work through marketing and PR to make sure that you care more about their beer making you cool than whether beer X actually tastes better than beer Y.
- perfectly rational everyone, including buyers and sellers. Which already is false in the case discussed here. Perfectly rational buyers would buy her music because the genuinely like them more than some other music, not just because they heard she died.
- no externalities. An assumption which may be mostly correct for music, but is also something that produced barely breathable smog and other problem at the times it was basically true.
- perfectly elastic supply and demand mechanics. Which sadly was only really true up to the start of the 20'th century. The Great Depression arguably happened when we ran into a domain where things started to be inelastic.
Etc.
What I'm getting at is that while this kind of thing makes for a great BS libertarian rhetoric, it is very much divorced from reality. In the perfect world used in such economic theory, monopolies are impossible, in the real world they are a fact of life. In the perfect world used in such economic theory, collusion isn't viable, in the real world there are real cases where for example a bunch of big pharma companies agreed to not undercut each other. In that ideal world you couldn't make money by recommending that other people invest in the same imploding dot-com that you're selling your shares in, because buyers would already be informed, but in the real world it actually happened. Etc.
If you were a really merciless investor, you'd also know that, and factor it in. E.g., you'd know that if you make ten millions and then have to pay a million to PR to whitewash your image, then, meh, being an asshole actually paid.
And in the end, that's the real difference between those who actually know how to abuse an imperfect market, and idealist nerds who think the world works like in perfect-world BS propaganda.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Somebody had suggested "Operation Obituary". As I recall, it went something like this; "Download, copy, pirate and and all music from artist that have died, because the RIAA constantly portrays the poor artist that do not get their fair share when it is copied. Since dead artist will not get anything (estate is not the same)".
The FAIL is all you stupid people who NOW want to buy the collection because she's dead, why did you not buy it when she was alive?
IDIOTS
Sony, I guess you haven\t learned your lesson, you greedy mofos, well I guess this is where Anonymous
would get my gratitude to really f*ck you up again, and this time even worse then the first.
Now if I could only find a way to contact them and give them a green light to go ahead.....
while pointing at a sony poster > .....ANONYMOUS......KILL!
Simple economics people. If demand increases (which it obviously did) and supply remains the same (which it did--think about it before you disagree), then price goes up. Period. Amazon and buy.com (to name two) do this all the time. They constantly adjust their prices based on demand. Remember how gas prices shot up on 9/11/01? Same thing.
Another person commented the fault was not with Sony, but with people who suddenly had to have Whitney Houston's music, even though they didn't care about it before she died. Again, economics shows this hypothesis to be accurate.
In a free market society, producers will charge whatever the market will bear. If, 30 minutes after her death, the market will bear a 25% increase in the price of her albums on iTunes, then that's what the price will be. When the backlash over the price increase means the market will no longer bear the higher prices, then the price comes down, and not a moment before.
Website exploits Whitney Houstons death by running story about Sony who are also exploiting Whitney Houstons death
Maybe all of their artists should be under contract to wear heart monitors. When they report 0, Sony can programmatically raise the artist's catalog prices. Please sign here: _____________
Sony: Demand just skyrocketed, you all saw it!
Copyright now violates the premise of promoting the useful arts and sciences. Here is my logic:
Copyright provides framework to generate huge amounts of money
Huge amounts of money provide opportunity for lavish living
Benefactors of copyright spend copious money on drugs legal and illegal
Artists and copyright benefactors die of overdoses and cannot generate new content
Don't believe me? --> Michael Jackson, River Phoenix, Janis Joplin, Whitney Houston, Heath Ledger, Brittany Murphy, Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse, Chris Farley, Judy Garland, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix...
"Paint a Vulgar Picture" as written by Johnny Marr, Steven Patrick Morrissey
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
Holy crap! That sounds like my kids. Corporations are just entitled, spoiled children.
Good work Sony, that is something that Apple would have done had they owned it ;-) Supply and Demand has been around forever. I will now go out and buy MORE Sony products.
Just another great example of an Illuminati ritual sacrifice... Here's a link for more details...
Scroll down about a 1/3 of the page... This guy even talks about Sony hiking prices.
http://divinecosmos.com/start-here/davids-blog/1026-financial-tyranny-final
At the record company meeting
On their hands - a dead star
And oh, the plans they weave
And oh, the sickening greed
Paint A Vulgar Picture -- The Smiths
I swear the execs at Sony are trying very hard to destroy all of their business. As if I needed another reason to not purchase Sony, this ultimate slimeball opportunistic power move has sealed the deal.
Sony nevers get a penny from me ever again. Will not watch their movies, will not buy their music. Any artist who signs with them will be boycotted. Anything and everythihg to do woth sony is now on boycott. Join in, let these low life slimeballs know that this crap was the final straw. Absolutely disgusting.
Disclaimer: I've been boycotting Sony products sine the 80s when they screwed me over on my first CD player, and refused to honor a $50 coupon for free music because I was "outside the continental US".
Let's not pretend there's some evil plot to profit off of Whitney's death when it would easily be attributed to something much simpler. Without additional evidence you can't jump to the conclusion that it wasn't just an automated price increase based upon the increased demand. That hardly takes any human intervention. Now we can all pile on and hate them for a lot of things, but the price rise isn't enough in this case. Even if they withdraw the increase, I'm certain many of you will still be claiming that they only did so under pressure...it's a no win situation for them now.
Just another day in Paradise
I'd be more freaked out if they raised the price 30 minutes *before* she died.
didnt bother me any.. I saw the prices jacked so i downloaded all that for free for that very reason. Yet another reason why the movie and music industries are bloodsucking vampires. boycott the industries, download everything. And another thing. thousands of people die everyday. many more useful to society than a crackhead musician. People see someone on TV or hear their music and regardless of how F'd up that person is, and they have to have some kind of sympathy like they lost a close friend. Wake up people, there are American Soldiers dying all the time whilst engaging in combat, thousands of miles away from their home and families for less than 30,000 dollars a year, And they can't even get a small article on page 50 of any newspaper. And, you're mourning an overpaid crackhead that you didn't even know....
What a load of crap. Taking advantage of increased irrational demand isn't a problem. It's following market trends, and that's good business. The smart people that are interested in her music will simply wait a while before buying, allowing prices to go back to normal. Nothing wrong with capitalizing on people who are 1) willing to pay more or 2) have so little self-control that they can't wait.
Skip Franklin
It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black. -- despair.com
Very well...
What about the poor schlub who works for himself. He repairs roofs, cars, computers, or builds homes on spec. He draws no corporate salary and he can't demand the recipient of his labor and their children and their children's children pay him in perpetuity for his effort. If he is unsuccessful in his business acumen, he will end up with nothing. Your "simple stuff" makes the assumption that copyright delivers a inalienable and incontrovertible right to an income (for successful works) forever (for all intents and purposes).
I never advocated that there should be no copyright. My argument is that copyright is unworkable, untenable, and illegitimate in the eyes of the public when extended to such extreme lengths. Life plus seventy years could extend copyright to 130 years or more under the right circumstances. That is unconscionable for a country that has only existed for a little over 200 years..
The copyright compromise is that the public domain and humanity is enriched by offering the author or artist the carrot of a limited monopoly. This compromise has been hijacked by big media and left nothing but crumbs for the rest of us. There is no argument that can ever justify the unbridled robbery that the public domain has suffered at the hands the last three copyright law amendments and the corporate lackeys that voted for it.
This is pretty simple stuff, really....
>Sony
>Music
>Buy
AAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
http://www.dula.tv/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/fag-buys-music.gif