I believe Rockefeller or one of his co-barons back in th' day said something
to the effect of 'Whatever the market will bear' with regard to pricing.
The only problem with this pricing scheme is that it assumes that there is
no viable competetion for the money - in the above case, rides and shipping
to/from large cities, in the case being discussed, prerecorded music. It's
also extroadinarily difficult to revert to competitive pricing after years
of this sort of behavior because the extra revenues generated tend to create
excess infrastructure (bloated promotional budgets & artist incentives, for
example).
The majors know that other factors affected last year's earnings, but the
problem they see on the horizon, filesharing et al., is truly worrisome. A
good businessman who is used to being able to sell his product for AT LEAST
$9 a pop across the board sees filesharing and realizes that there is no way
he can possibly compete. When a college radio DJ decides to treat the whole
of KaZaA as a charity case by uploading the latest *** album that he got in
the mail five weeks prior to release, he's undercutting every person in the
chain - you can't go lower than free.
So the answer in the case of music labels is to OUTLAW this practice because
it is the only way to stop the juggernaut of $0.00 filesharing.
Artists on the majors who speak out against the RIAA and the lawsuits
against Napster and KaZaA etc. are not worth listening to for the following
reason: Hi, I'm Prince, I've made my fortune nine times over and I think
filesharing is a wonderful thing and the record labels are bad!
Dear Prince,
How did you make your fortune exactly?
Yours,
The Big Five
If the future of music is filesharing networks clogged with the kind of
quality music we've come to expect from free MP3 hosting sites and the like,
then I think it's in your best interest to do like me and go stuff that
backcatalogue with as many quality tracks as you can find - 'Clash On
Broadway', the Led Zeppelin 4CD box + the Police anthology are a few
excellent places to start. They do cost money, however. At least the
packaging is nice.
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