On Mon, 22 May 2000, Scott McKeating wrote:
quoted 4 lines My point was that record companies and record stores are fucking the
> My point was that record companies and record stores are fucking the
> customer over. Which on the whole you'll find they are. If a store owner can
> buy a new Cd at ?7.25 from a distributer (without discounts for bulk etc)
> then how do you explain the price it hits the shelves at.
most record companies, stores etc. are in the business primarily to make
money. some feel that they have to make more money on a transaction than
others, but no matter how nice the record store is, they still need to pay
the rent, utilities, advertising, etc. so some markup is always a
necessity otherwise, you arent' going to be able to find your records
anywhere because nobody's making money
i don't think there's a giant conspiracy involving every music label or
store to rip off the customer. there is definitely a market-wide habit of
marking up the product by over 1000% but this is more to do with the major
manufacturers' anti-competitive practices forcing retailers to conform to
a Minimum Advertised Price or they are cut off from the major
distributors. Small labels are forced to use the major distributors or
they cannot sell their product, small stores have to use them too
otherwise nobody will bother coming into their store. On the whole, i
think you will find that small stores (i.e. not TOwer or Virgin or
COconuts or Sam Godforbid) and small labels (i.e. not WEA or Virgin or
Universal or Sony) are not trying to screw the customer but it is an
industry-wide pricing model that they are forced to take part in or enjoy
a mere .0001% of the market.
--
String Theory : Digital Music for Humans
http://www.enteract.com/~yoshi/index.cgi
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