Hey You,

I know alot guys out there will have their own answers to this, so here you go, here's the real answer to this, coming from someone who was store manager of two record shops ( DJ Records, Dave's Basements Records ) and work at Real Groovy. The record industry is fucked because the way they say it, they are facing perfect storm ( Low Sales, Small Margins, Rising Decrease In International Selling Acts Etc. ). Because they can't get anyone buying their stuff anymore they're taking it out fans because they know the fans are the only ones left that will buy their shit and that's bullshit. That's why they keep putting out the same cd with more and more stuff on it, i.e Who's Next ( First Regular Cd, Then Special Cd with Bonus Tracks, Then a Cd With Bonus Tracks and Australian Only Bonus Disc, Then The Deluxe Edition Etc ) . They know when all you have left is the fans, they know the only way to make money is to milk them till it turns to cheese ( Who Next Deluxe Edition Now With A Free Hat, Shirt And Scarf ! ). So they slowly start put out more and more of the same stuff and they more and more keep prices up cos they know the fans would still pay $32.95 for Abbey Road, $36.95 for The Beatles Again ( - Hey Jude E.P ), $49.95 for The Beatles ( White Album ). It so doesn't matter to them if the regular guy on the street can't afford them, they are not ones that they are making most money off of, it's the fans, and as long as they have us, they have there jobs and it's just not fair ! You would think they would put prices down to encourage more and more people back into music but that's not how it works ! It's not about music anymore, it's business, it's about money and monthly quarters ! What they are doing is short term answer for long term problem and until those people running the place change I don't ever see Beatles Cd costing less Britney Spears Cd, because dude, the entire record industry is killing itself to live...

you see the problem in Sri Lanka?

what if i bought the Beatles CD and grabbed Britneys off a torrent? I could then wait till Britney was on the cover of the Womans Day and buy that from Real Groovy.

ha

i'm interested in the distinction between people who buy pirated stuff
and people who download it
to me it seems like two different kinds of things
and i think have the strong arm of the law on their side does these companies no favours

i'd extend that to compilations and greatest hits too.

i recently grabbed a mothership of a torrent, as far as i'm concerned i already owned it.

probably more than twice over too.

Hey Yeah,

You're right limegreen, this isn't new thing, this goes back to the early eighties when music first started to suck and people stopped being so keen on it ( same as now with this shit eighties revival trend that's happening, Arctic Monkeys, The Mint Chicks , Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah, Die Die Die, there is just way way too many Huey Lewis And The News bands out there, there are way way too many kids singing " It's hip to be square " out there... ). The Cd saved the record industry in eighties because everybody that had bought albums during their lives became convince to buy them all back on cd through clever marketing ( It never scratches, it never get stains, get them on cd today ... ) . By the late ninties that trend continue until suddenly almost everybody had started to buy back album collection on cd. In early naughties albums sell started dip badly ( this was before napster, ipod, pirate bay ) and everything else that has happen since then hasn't helped with fact its fucked up dying world we live in ! Cd was originally the only way to store mp3 type music, now you can all do this on home computer dude, and so the concept of cd is offically dead concept. There is no denying that. What I do deny is that makes mostly cds dead format when hunter and gathers of our human nature simply states people will always what something to show off there stuff in, but yeah, take it with another dead concept we all share, books...

Music that is timeless holds its value compared with fad music that dates very quickly, new generations of fans keep buying Beatles cds so it holds its price and they know they can ask premium dollar for it, it was alway music snobs who owned a Beatles white album record :) and the price has stuck.. the biggest bands of each decade re-release best of cd every 8 years or so like the eagles,led zep... Now if Bach and Beethoven and most of the orchestral giants had copyright of their music, it would command premium dollar instead of the warehouse 2.99 bargain bin job it has. I remember on news seeing Cliff Richard complaining that he is outliving the 50 year copyright expiry date on his early hit singles and wanted it extended to 100 years or so, made me laugh..

"Music that is timeless holds its value compared with fad music that dates very quickly"

yeah, with the topic heading i wasn't so much questioning why the beatles command the price they do as to how those majors can justify charging the same price for newbies and i don't feel britney is down the bottom of that pile either. like wine, you cover that i guess with 'bargain bins'. but i still feel pricing a new release celine dion the same as a classic like rubber soul is an insult to rubber soul.

when those companies whinge about 'killing' the industry all i really see is us as consumers killing those majors for giving untold great artists and consumers a raw deal. and i resent them all the more for the fact that instead of making any moves to make their prices more competitive they've used legal systems as their bully boys. with that kind of business acumen they deserve apocalypse now.

good example would be bill gates and his two tiered price systems for windows in developing countries. but then i've never heard of any microsoft employee being driven so nuts they changed their name to a symbol.

for alopecia; glue

There's a lot of error and misinformation going on here...

Manamana - no, you don't own it. These tracks have been remastered from scratch, and if you think you already own them, you don't. And if you do, by your own logic, why the hell download it? To the guy who said CD sales dipped before Napster... no. Napster was at its peak in 1999/2000, and the iPod came the same year CD sales started slipping (in 2001).

To the guy who said it's the Beatles who determine the price of their CDs - link, please? It's EMI who knows they can sell Beatles albums at full price without worrying about a lack of sales. See Trent Reznor's rant at his old label for a perfect example of this. I doubt McCartney and Ringo really give a shit - McCartney recently left EMI, citing their lack of interest in music and emphasis on money-making and marketing.

A lot of that 2.99 stuff you see in bins around the place is of dubious legal status, in terms of copyright and fair trading. When you see "The 40 Greatest Bob Marley Hits" for $5, raise an eyebrow. It'll either be an illegal bootleg, or 40 shit live recordings of obscure reggae songs you've never heard, sung by dudes who sound like Bob Marley.

Despite this, I'm not against downloading, it just irritates when people use faulty logic to justify it. Be honest and say you download stuff because it's free and easy. This isn't the US, the RIAA isn't going to bankrupt you. Force a change honestly - many bands are beginning to realise recorded music is a loss leader for where the real money is, and don't mind. Seriously.

Eventually, within the near future, recorded music will be legally freely available, distributed on licence/subscription perhaps as TV used to be, or (god forbid) on some kind of ad-supported model. In other words, don't download Mothership because you think you already own it; download it because you want to hear how the new remastering sounds, and because it will hurry the change to the new way.

I think...

lunaspark.net
fuckkittyhawk.com