In article <9403111358.aa14562@delta1.uucp>,
Michael King <mike%delta1@cs.tulane.edu> wrote:
quoted 5 lines How much more difficult is it for foreign record interests (outside of>How much more difficult is it for foreign record interests (outside of
>the EEC => the US, Japan) to get market share when you have
>*artificially* inflated prices at home? Is the UK unfairly jacking up
>its CD prices in a *protectionist* act to hinder the *choice* of the
>people to purchase US goods? I say yes.
I'd be interested to know just how you can work this out. Intellectual
property (particularly when it comes to culture) is a rather different
kettle of fish to manufacturing industry.
The true import market (shipping the CDs themselves) is a *tiny*
fraction of the music industry. The vast majority of sales in other
territories are of licenced material, pressed locally for a fraction of
the cost of shipping stuff halfway across the world and with the only
import duty payable on the price of the blank DAT used for the master.
In the UK you will find no consistent price difference between material
from US-owned companies' UK divisions, US-owned material licenced to
European-owned companies or local material on UK-owned labels.
Generally throughout Europe the price of all CDs seems to be set at
whatever the big 5 record companies reckon the market can bear in each
territory. This is currently being investigated by the Monopolies
Commission in the UK and I understand some other European governments
are also looking into it. In terms of share, around a quarter of the UK
market is taken by companies from outside Europe, in Germany it's
closer to a third.
True imports are a speciality market with the price even less important
to consumers when making their choice of what to buy. In this case, yes
there are import duties for material coming in from outside the
European Union. However, this seems to take second place to the laws of
supply and demand and with a baseline dictated by the current price of
domestic releases.
Both European and American import 12" singles currently go for UKP 6.50
to UKP 8.50 ($9.50 to $12.50) and import CDs for around UKP 13 to UKP
20 ($19 to $29). US imports have risen faster in price, primarily due
to them not being shipped over in such large quantities since American
soul, rap and R&B have fallen from favour with the dance community from
a peak in the mid-eighties. The US's faster abandoning of vinyl hasn't
helped either. Prices of imports from other countries in Europe have
generally remained stable, despite bigger quantities now coming into
the UK and the dropping of import duties under the Single European
Market.
--
Stephen Hebditch TQM Communications steveh@orbital.demon.co.uk