Do you pay for your concert tickets?
Art may be a concept, but most art is in fixed form. People buy paintings; people even buy prints that only look like the original paintings, or books containing such prints. People buy sculptures and copies of sculptures. People buy photographs and photographic prints. Why not buy recorded music?
A store that just used flat mark-ups might not do as well as one with higher mark-ups in general but lower mark-ups, or even mark-downs, on popular staples. People would go to the store which had mark-downs for the stuff that was marked down, but likely would buy some expensive stuff there as well.
Surely a store that prominently advertises "Rollbacks" is not using a flat price mark-up!
Some of the stores I go to have value cards. Here's how they handle it:
When there is a lower price for people with value cards and a higher price for people without them, the store covers the area on the shelf listing the normal higher price with a large card giving the lower price (for people with value cards) in huge numbers.
People with value cards know what they'll pay immediately and will be attracted to the sale items.
People without value cards can look under the big card to find the real price.
People without value cards who don't read the big card carefully will get a shock at the check-out counter. The store might still get a few sales from people who only meant to pay $3 for milk but find themselves paying $5--which is better than no sales at all. After all, if those shoppers intended to visit that store regularly, they'd probably have value cards.
Good idea, but it only works if many people have that idea. One metro area I'm familiar with has very few local independent grocery stores, and almost no general-purpose ones. It wasn't always that way: it took a couple of decades. As more people entered the system, fewer people could keep the local stores going. The stores just closed one by one.
Of course, that metro area has several related local grocery chains. Do they count?
I think he meant the worst value for that class of food.
The candy is in two sections, the checkouts and an in-store shelf; the checkout candy will usually be a "worse value" than the in-store candy, and the candy that's easily visible will be a "worse value" than the candy that's buried in the skinny shelves below eye level.
Cookies have their own section for the most part, but the "worst values" will be at eye level. Below eye-level, there are no cookies--only crackers.
Ice cream will have its own section in the freezer section, but the "worst value" will be at eye level, and the ice cream in the upright freezers will be "worse values" than the ice cream in the chest freezers. Of course, with ice cream, paying more can be good because that sometimes means better quality.
I have almost never seen action figures anywhere but eye-level--either the shopper's or the child's.
Surely Best Buy doesn't force you to use credit in the credit line?
Most grocery stores have express lanes for n items or less. Sometimes they're faster, sometimes they're slower (no conveyer belt & too many people with less than n items), and these days they're often self-serve. But nobody has ever stopped me from using a normal aisle for less than n items, even when the express lane is open.
Hmmm... I may want to examine this phenomenon if I can. Admittedly, a lot of the stuff I get at Wal*Mart isn't available at other local stores at all: either it's one of their store brands, or it's the only store in my area to routinely stock whatever item of whatever brand it is. (There's a difference.) But I might want to investigate differences in the items that I can get elsewhere.
I thought their nutella came in a different size jar from everyone else's...
I shop at a lot of stores that do this. Warehouse stores do it as a matter of course--after all, who else sells bulk items in bulk?
Dollar stores use that trick too. Snack cakes that come in ten-packs at normal stores (or even Wal*Marts) come in eight-packs at dollar stores. This was annoying back when ten-packs were priced at $1.09 ($0.99 on sale).
Not quite.
One example was a store that had a line of paintbrushes and was selling too many of the cheapest paintbrushes. Solution for store? Discontinue the cheapest paintbrush, since the customers tend to buy the paintbrushes at the same time as the paint and therefore won't shop around.
This benefits no one but the store.
Advice for Wal*Mart shoppers:
Never buy produce or fresh bakery goods at a Wal*Mart. The premium at the true grocery stores often corresponds to the produce & bakery goods actually being better quality.
Also, since you actually have a choice, try to memorize the routine sale prices at your other local stores. Sales tend to be cyclical. Wal*Mart has lower prices on the most popular items; for more obscure stuff they can go higher because those items are harder to find elsewhere, or fewer people are looking for them. I learned this when trying to buy a rare iron syrup (which could've had a proof number).
Wal*Mart is a good place to shop for low prices, but other places have different selection, and it's a good idea to give at least token support to its competition.
Reread that Wiki article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya
The idea behind al-Taqiyya is, many radical Muslims pretend to be moderates or non-Muslims to protect themselves from persecution. Some suspect Koran support for this idea.
The difficulty with this idea is, it makes it difficult to impossible to be sure that any given person is a moderate Muslim. If there's no smoke, maybe the fire is carefully hidden. If you start thinking that way, the War on Islam seems natural.
I suspect that the War on Islam, should we attempt to fight it, is unconstitutional: separation of church and state does include mosques. It might also start a bad precedent.
We listen to music because the right music improves the quality of life. It's the same reason we keep flowers, eat gourmet food, or play favorite videogames.
Okay. This is how it goes, more or less.
There was this scientist working at, and on, a microwave installation back when the only manmade microwaves came from giant radar-shaped dishes. He had a chocolate bar in his jacket pocket.
The chocolate melted even though he hadn't felt any heat. (We will note that this happened long ago, back when chocolate bars were wrapped in paper.)
This gave him an idea for a practical use for microwaves.
About twenty years later, the first microwave ovens were sold.
Some American stations play mostly songs from the 1960s and 1970s. Or else 1970s and 1980s.
When one company owns half the radio stations in the city, which happens a lot in America, it makes sense that not all those stations have the same format. So, you get one or two "oldies" stations, several stations that play a mix of "oldies" and contemporary music in various genres, and several all-contemporary stations (in various genres) that advertise themselves as being hip.
The labels know they aren't going to win the older generations over to much of the newer music. They can live with it if they must. They did in the '60s...
So? I hear lossless sounds better than lossy, so the extra $0.30-$1.00 might be worth it.
They are giving you no DRM--fewer unneccesary restrictions, and no more incentive to pirate simply to format-shift. They are (if you are right) giving you a higher quality format than Fairplay AAC or the DRMed WMPs. They are paying the composers of the work, and maybe will even pay the artists if the artists are lucky. They will do it on iTunes, with most of the artists they have. That should be worth something.
The US chains have had a harder time staying relevant. Didn't you hear that Tower Records went bankrupt? That was one of the biggest.
The only music chain I see advertised much now is FYE.
Or do chain bookstores with music departments count?
When ordinary people protest, they chant slogans and carry signs. Listen to their slogans, read their signs, and you'll get a general idea of what they're trying to protest.
If it's not clear what a group is protesting, it probably isn't a protest--it's just a riot.
US journalists get targeted because that's sometimes the only way to catch the attention of other US journalists. US journalists rarely go deep into international affairs even when it involves very important or very helpless foreigners, and rarely print it where everyone can see; but when it involves one of their own, they consider it big news and treat it accordingly. We are talking about a school of journalism that routinely writes articles about how the media is handling things--when they are the media.
People buy from iTunes because they have iTunes software and because it can be faster and easier than hunting down a CD in a store or on Amazon.com--especially if all you want is one song, and you're not sure what album it's from. It's all for convenience.
There is still a distribution chain with iTunes. iTunes does not sign artists (yet), and it is not run by any labels. Therefore, it is distributing music from various labels, both major & indie. And the labels are themselves distribution mechanisms. We're not talking about music directly off some musician's webpage, unfortunately.
The major labels take a percentage of the price of an album or single. If they gouge at $0.99 and they gouge at $1.29, then they will gouge at $0.25. The less you pay at list, the less the artist will get paid. So we've a tricky economic problem here until someone stops the labels from gouging artists.
And that, my fellow slashdotters, is why we must never underestimate Microsoft.
Keep an eye on the terms of service, BTW. Apple's iTunes did allow songs to be directly converted from Fairplay AAC to stripped mp3 once. It no longer permits it so directly.
You did hear that EMI surrendered?
That's right. EMI is going to release as much of its back catalog as possible to the music services, inc. iTunes, without DRM.
I know, you'll believe it when you see it. But they've already released a few trax without DRM here and there.
Slashdot Mirror
Esperanto might be better. It's got a better vocabulary.
Do you pay for your concert tickets?
Art may be a concept, but most art is in fixed form. People buy paintings; people even buy prints that only look like the original paintings, or books containing such prints. People buy sculptures and copies of sculptures. People buy photographs and photographic prints. Why not buy recorded music?
A store that just used flat mark-ups might not do as well as one with higher mark-ups in general but lower mark-ups, or even mark-downs, on popular staples. People would go to the store which had mark-downs for the stuff that was marked down, but likely would buy some expensive stuff there as well.
Surely a store that prominently advertises "Rollbacks" is not using a flat price mark-up!
Some of the stores I go to have value cards. Here's how they handle it:
When there is a lower price for people with value cards and a higher price for people without them, the store covers the area on the shelf listing the normal higher price with a large card giving the lower price (for people with value cards) in huge numbers.
People with value cards know what they'll pay immediately and will be attracted to the sale items.
People without value cards can look under the big card to find the real price.
People without value cards who don't read the big card carefully will get a shock at the check-out counter. The store might still get a few sales from people who only meant to pay $3 for milk but find themselves paying $5--which is better than no sales at all. After all, if those shoppers intended to visit that store regularly, they'd probably have value cards.
Good idea, but it only works if many people have that idea. One metro area I'm familiar with has very few local independent grocery stores, and almost no general-purpose ones. It wasn't always that way: it took a couple of decades. As more people entered the system, fewer people could keep the local stores going. The stores just closed one by one.
Of course, that metro area has several related local grocery chains. Do they count?
I think he meant the worst value for that class of food.
The candy is in two sections, the checkouts and an in-store shelf; the checkout candy will usually be a "worse value" than the in-store candy, and the candy that's easily visible will be a "worse value" than the candy that's buried in the skinny shelves below eye level.
Cookies have their own section for the most part, but the "worst values" will be at eye level. Below eye-level, there are no cookies--only crackers.
Ice cream will have its own section in the freezer section, but the "worst value" will be at eye level, and the ice cream in the upright freezers will be "worse values" than the ice cream in the chest freezers. Of course, with ice cream, paying more can be good because that sometimes means better quality.
I have almost never seen action figures anywhere but eye-level--either the shopper's or the child's.
Surely Best Buy doesn't force you to use credit in the credit line?
Most grocery stores have express lanes for n items or less. Sometimes they're faster, sometimes they're slower (no conveyer belt & too many people with less than n items), and these days they're often self-serve. But nobody has ever stopped me from using a normal aisle for less than n items, even when the express lane is open.
Come to think of it, bottled water is often $4 a gallon...
Hmmm... I may want to examine this phenomenon if I can. Admittedly, a lot of the stuff I get at Wal*Mart isn't available at other local stores at all: either it's one of their store brands, or it's the only store in my area to routinely stock whatever item of whatever brand it is. (There's a difference.) But I might want to investigate differences in the items that I can get elsewhere.
I thought their nutella came in a different size jar from everyone else's...
I shop at a lot of stores that do this. Warehouse stores do it as a matter of course--after all, who else sells bulk items in bulk?
Dollar stores use that trick too. Snack cakes that come in ten-packs at normal stores (or even Wal*Marts) come in eight-packs at dollar stores. This was annoying back when ten-packs were priced at $1.09 ($0.99 on sale).
Okay. You're probably right. Now, if corporations would reintroduce the fine art of thinking beyond the next four fiscal quarters...
Not quite.
One example was a store that had a line of paintbrushes and was selling too many of the cheapest paintbrushes. Solution for store? Discontinue the cheapest paintbrush, since the customers tend to buy the paintbrushes at the same time as the paint and therefore won't shop around.
This benefits no one but the store.
Advice for Wal*Mart shoppers:
Never buy produce or fresh bakery goods at a Wal*Mart. The premium at the true grocery stores often corresponds to the produce & bakery goods actually being better quality.
Also, since you actually have a choice, try to memorize the routine sale prices at your other local stores. Sales tend to be cyclical. Wal*Mart has lower prices on the most popular items; for more obscure stuff they can go higher because those items are harder to find elsewhere, or fewer people are looking for them. I learned this when trying to buy a rare iron syrup (which could've had a proof number).
Wal*Mart is a good place to shop for low prices, but other places have different selection, and it's a good idea to give at least token support to its competition.
Reread that Wiki article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya
The idea behind al-Taqiyya is, many radical Muslims pretend to be moderates or non-Muslims to protect themselves from persecution. Some suspect Koran support for this idea.
The difficulty with this idea is, it makes it difficult to impossible to be sure that any given person is a moderate Muslim. If there's no smoke, maybe the fire is carefully hidden. If you start thinking that way, the War on Islam seems natural.
I suspect that the War on Islam, should we attempt to fight it, is unconstitutional: separation of church and state does include mosques. It might also start a bad precedent.
We listen to music because the right music improves the quality of life. It's the same reason we keep flowers, eat gourmet food, or play favorite videogames.
Which second-rate pop band? The Dave Clark Five? 98 Degrees? Hanson? Grand Funk Railroad? Strawberry Alarm Clock? Cliff Richard and the Shadows?
Okay. This is how it goes, more or less.
There was this scientist working at, and on, a microwave installation back when the only manmade microwaves came from giant radar-shaped dishes. He had a chocolate bar in his jacket pocket.
The chocolate melted even though he hadn't felt any heat. (We will note that this happened long ago, back when chocolate bars were wrapped in paper.)
This gave him an idea for a practical use for microwaves.
About twenty years later, the first microwave ovens were sold.
I understand that there are four Starbucks stores that have kiosks.
BTW, is Hear Music an RIAA label, or is it indie?
Some American stations play mostly songs from the 1960s and 1970s. Or else 1970s and 1980s.
When one company owns half the radio stations in the city, which happens a lot in America, it makes sense that not all those stations have the same format. So, you get one or two "oldies" stations, several stations that play a mix of "oldies" and contemporary music in various genres, and several all-contemporary stations (in various genres) that advertise themselves as being hip.
The labels know they aren't going to win the older generations over to much of the newer music. They can live with it if they must. They did in the '60s...
So? I hear lossless sounds better than lossy, so the extra $0.30-$1.00 might be worth it.
They are giving you no DRM--fewer unneccesary restrictions, and no more incentive to pirate simply to format-shift. They are (if you are right) giving you a higher quality format than Fairplay AAC or the DRMed WMPs. They are paying the composers of the work, and maybe will even pay the artists if the artists are lucky. They will do it on iTunes, with most of the artists they have. That should be worth something.
The US chains have had a harder time staying relevant. Didn't you hear that Tower Records went bankrupt? That was one of the biggest.
The only music chain I see advertised much now is FYE.
Or do chain bookstores with music departments count?
Ouch! That would damage both sides!
Or do you propose disposable snipers?
When ordinary people protest, they chant slogans and carry signs. Listen to their slogans, read their signs, and you'll get a general idea of what they're trying to protest.
If it's not clear what a group is protesting, it probably isn't a protest--it's just a riot.
US journalists get targeted because that's sometimes the only way to catch the attention of other US journalists. US journalists rarely go deep into international affairs even when it involves very important or very helpless foreigners, and rarely print it where everyone can see; but when it involves one of their own, they consider it big news and treat it accordingly. We are talking about a school of journalism that routinely writes articles about how the media is handling things--when they are the media.
People buy from iTunes because they have iTunes software and because it can be faster and easier than hunting down a CD in a store or on Amazon.com--especially if all you want is one song, and you're not sure what album it's from. It's all for convenience.
There is still a distribution chain with iTunes. iTunes does not sign artists (yet), and it is not run by any labels. Therefore, it is distributing music from various labels, both major & indie. And the labels are themselves distribution mechanisms. We're not talking about music directly off some musician's webpage, unfortunately.
The major labels take a percentage of the price of an album or single. If they gouge at $0.99 and they gouge at $1.29, then they will gouge at $0.25. The less you pay at list, the less the artist will get paid. So we've a tricky economic problem here until someone stops the labels from gouging artists.
And that, my fellow slashdotters, is why we must never underestimate Microsoft.
Keep an eye on the terms of service, BTW. Apple's iTunes did allow songs to be directly converted from Fairplay AAC to stripped mp3 once. It no longer permits it so directly.
You did hear that EMI surrendered?
That's right. EMI is going to release as much of its back catalog as possible to the music services, inc. iTunes, without DRM.
I know, you'll believe it when you see it. But they've already released a few trax without DRM here and there.