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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.'"
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.
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And the rest of the world has a right to say no to tacky corporations because there's quite enough tacky in the world already. I hope enough do say no that Sony gets the message loud and clear.
This article is assuming we shouldn't have been boycotting Sony already.
Silly people... why do they need so much time to learn?
Since when is it illegal to price your product to make as much of a profit as possible? (That's not what's generally meant by "price fixing," by the way.)
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
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
According to other sites that ran this story ages ago the pricing was done by an algorithm that detected the increase in sales and raised the price to maximise on those sales.
Plus it was stated that Apple only take 30% of iTunes revenue, SONY (and that other labels) set the prices.
Who knows?
Tagged: diesonydie
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
Maximizing profit != price fixing. Also increasing the price of a product when the artist dies is also not illegal. So you know, price fixing means you collude with some other party to only buy or sell a product at a fixed price through controlling supply and demand. There was no price fixing in this case.
Is there anyone here on Slashdot that's willing to admit they were the ones that uploaded a torrent of all of Whitney Houston's songs 30 minutes after hearing about Sony raising prices?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
If a company charges too much, they're guilty of "price gouging."
If they charge too little, they're guilty of "dumping."
If they charge the same as their competitors, they're guilty of "price fixing."
Welcome to the "free market."
Liberty in your lifetime
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.
You know, I'm getting a little sick and tired of all these self obsessed, narcissistic, machiavellian, amoral masses of motile human excrement turning the world into an ontological toilet. We live in a free society, but this lowest common denominator crap is just becoming a simple excuse to be free of social responsibility, dignity, compassion or accountability for one's own actions. True freedom implies taking responsibility for a complex world of interactions where the price of your freedom is responsibility for the freedom of those around you. All take and no give, is the beginning of a free-for-all that ends in a stinking dung heap where a workable society once stood. Maybe its time to teach ethics to our children so perhaps they avoid the stupid mistakes we're making?
One might suggest it's the people who wouldn't pay for Whitney Houston's music until after she died who were doing something "in bad taste". So much for supporting artists while they're sitll alive.
You have this exactly reversed, and the world would be a better place if you and more people in busnesses would recognize this. In economic theory, if consumers care how they are treated and whether businesses behave ethically, they punish corporations for doing the wrong thing, creating the economic incentive for corporations to behave ethically. The idea that corporations are mandated by capitalism to behave unethically in the pursuit of profits, even if behaving unethically is ultimately bad for profits, comes up all the time here on Slashdot and never makes any sense.
In this case this will be a public image nightmare for Sony. They spend millions and millions on advertising to try to improve their corporate image and make people think favorably of them, and this just cost them a ludicrous amount. They were already going to make a killing off Whitney Houston's death, with no downside. Now in an attempt to bump up short term cash-flow by some amount irrelevant to their bottom line, they are shooting themselves in the foot. They already have an image problem, but more people are going to understand this than a rootkit. If internal management is any goods, heads will roll over this decision, and if it isn't, it's one more sign Sony is doomed.
If you were a merciless investor, would seeing this news item make you think Sony stock has a bright future? If not, then it means it's bad for them and a mistake, that behaving unethically is moving them towards being a defunct corporation, not securing their economic future. That would be my bet.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
IF you are going to fight, don't use terms like:
" disney copyright"
"0.000001% of the profites showing up in the checkbook"
you sound like a loon, and won't be taken seriously. You can say it shouldn't matter, and you would be correct.But it DOES matter. And changing that is a different fight.
Johann Lau does not "sound like a loon", nor is he wrong. USA's Copyright Term Extension Act is known as Mickey Mouse Protection Act,for being notoriously pushed by Disney, whose main purpose was to avoid Disney's earlier work to go into public domain. And if you are trying to claim that Johann Lau is a loon for stating that fact then, before that, you must accuse Lawrence Lessig of being also a loon, and a bigger loon as wel, as he publicly made that very same assertion regarding Disney's copyright.
And regarding the percentage of profits that actually go to the artist, music industry insiders such as Steve Albini already already explained quite well how the music industry actually works.
So, you are either a Sony shill, trying to astroturf some damage control here on slashdot, or you are incredibly out of touch with reality, factually wrong on multiple accounts and simply an idiot.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.