NEW YORK and SANTA MONICA, Calif., Sept. 3 -- Universal Music Group (UMG) announced today an aggressive plan to significantly reduce the cost consumers pay for CDs by decreasing its wholesale prices and by instituting a $12.98 Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) on virtually all top line CDs in the U.S. New pricing policy goes into effect October 1.

I oppose piracy, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you systematically overchage people for decades, they will eventually find a way around you. Hence file-sharing.

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Originally posted by jonathan_little:
Spicy, the distribution of the settlement payments has been delayed since four individuals have filed appeals saying that the settlement is not fair.

[Message edited by jonathan_little on 09-04-2003]

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My point exactly. Cd sales are have already declined dramatically over the past few years. By the time the settlement comes, record stores may already be a thing of the past. These big media conglomerates will continue to maintain the prices that they have now.

Went to a record store yesterday, didn't see any price drops on any cd whatsoever.

(Darn. Man'o beat me to the punch)

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Originally posted by ManOfSorrows:
"New pricing policy goes into effect October 1."

So...?

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This is in regards to the lawsuit brought on that the music labels were artificially inflating the prices of CDs. Yeah, they got sued, but did it affect the price of the CD's? Nope.

Seems to me like a promotional ploy from Universal to get people to go out and get their CD's.

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Originally posted by Spicy Ramen:
Seems to me like a promotional ploy from Universal to get people to go out and get their CD's.

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Exactly right. Too many people are illegally downloading for free, which is not the way the company wants to people to get the music. This is one helluva promotion, and I hope it sticks. The only way it will work is if the 30% decline in price, therefore revenue, is made up in at least a 30% increase in number of CDs sold. The new $12.98 price tag offers more opportunity for "impulse" purchases, which is very very similar to what WB did with their DVDs.... with remarkable success.

I have noted in interviews with Universal executives that certain titles will not be included in the price drop, classical genre being one of them. I saw no clear indication that scores (like those on Decca) would see price drops, and fret a little that the musicians union re-use fees would prevent a drop in score CD prices. It's only a matter of weeks before we find out.

I agree with PeterK.

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Originally posted by justin boggan:
Exactly right. Too many people are illegally downloading for free,

I agree with [b]PeterK.

We can only encourage them by stopping all together that nasty little habibt.[/B]

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The new $12.98 price tag offers more opportunity for "impulse" purchases, which is very very similar to what WB did with their DVDs.... with remarkable success.

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Funny how some DVD's are cheaper than buying CD's...

Music labels have been ripping us off for the past decade or so. They need to overhaul the whole way they do business.

I can agree that it's weird how some DVDs are cheaper than many CDs, but the cost/profit structure of the two is completely different. I don't think the DVD/CD price argument holds.
CDs have to sell to make a profit. Most DVDs offer movies which have already turned in a profit.

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I can agree that it's weird how some DVDs are cheaper than many CDs, but the cost/profit structure of the two is completely different. I don't think the DVD/CD price argument holds.
CDs have to sell to make a profit. Most DVDs offer movies which have already turned in a profit.

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From an economic standpoint, if you want real statistics it's the label that makes most of the money and not the artists.

The price gauging I am referring to is the unequal distrubtion of the revenue. How much does an artists make off his cd? Less than a dollar per cd sold. Subsidies by music labels to record stores help keep the prices of CD's high.

So how can you justify keeping prices of CD's so high when most of the money goes on to support these big conglomerates? Large scale orchestrations or not, many musicians get exploited out of their share of the money. Ask how much a violinist makes in a scoring project. Probably barely enough to get by.

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Originally posted by Spicy Ramen:
Ask how much a violinist makes in a scoring project. Probably barely enough to get by.

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I have.
And $200+/hour is not barely enough to get by!!

Browse around afm.org, and you'll find lots of *.pdf files about musician's fees in North America. Most fees exceed 75$ per musician, per hour. Pay me that, and I'll be more than glad to 'barely get by' and let the label make millions if it can.

American orchestras, and apparently British ones too, are slowly losing their recording contracts precisely because they make too much and the labels can't afford to pay. The labels are not charity organizations. They're businesses.

Artists can agree to record or not. Since artists continue to record for the big labels, they get more utility out of recording that way, than recording using other means. As far as I know, Warner doesn't put a gun to Enya's head forcing her to record songs. And she can easily record and make her music available on a website completely unrelated to AOL Time Warner. But she doesn't. If she prefers to record for Warner, I don't give a rat's ass. I'm not her agent to try to get the labels to pay her more.

What the labels' profit distribution is is really none of my concern, and I fail to see what the point of the argument is, as again I repeat: if the artist records for a major that's a free choice - the artist knows (or can know if she/he wants to) the terms of the contract before agreeing to them.

It is no big deal for Wal-Mart, Best Buy, or Barnes and Nobles, to name a few, to drop prices on some product. In fact they can drop all prices until local competition disappears. Such is the case in the metroplex where I reside.

The reason the music industry is losing money is that they gave up on developing a customer base and sold out to market to teens who are mostly spending their parent's money. Now with families cutting back, even a teen has to think twice before plopping down $20 at the mall for a CD.

Music in classical and jazz areas suffered because big labels resorted to rehashing the same repertoire and classic performances so much that they undercut any newer recordings from really doing well. Sell outs like "Opera Babes" is only one of many pathetic reasons why that area is in bad shape.

What will likely happen is the continual buying up of the few independent labels and stores that are left so that the music industry will begin to look like the publishing industry, fewer choices, overhyped, and premium prices returning once the buyouts are complete.

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Originally posted by sakman:
Music in classical and jazz areas suffered because big labels resorted to rehashing the same repertoire and classic performances so much that they undercut any newer recordings from really doing well.

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Only part of the problem. There is another major part of the problem: new music is perceived by a large part of classical music buyers as being crap. The labels can record as much of it as they want, people who avoid it in concerts are not likely to buy it on CD.
You can only imagine how many people avoid 'new works' when you see that orchestras are now beginning to schedule the new works in the middle of a performance. That way it's less convenient for people to walk in late after the new work premieres or to leave early before it starts. If people are that desperate to avoid new music, I cannot imagine the record labels spending hundreds of thousands of dollars recording it.
So what's left for the labels if they can't record new works is to just rehash what they already have.

In order for new recordings to be made, particularly of new works, the new works have to be wanted and appreciated. That's not happening right now.
And even big names and proven repertoire don't assure sales. Apparently the CD version of Rattle's Mahler 5 with the Berlin Philharmonic is not doing too well so EMI is slashing prices almost in half.