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Music Media

Music Companies Convicted of Price Fixing Again 217

Posted by michael from the plus-c'est-la-meme-chose dept.
InspectorPraline writes "Providing more proof that the record industry is indeed a oligopoly, this article at the New York Times reports that two major record companies, Vivendi Universal and Warner Communications, have been convicted of price fixing by the FTC over a recording from 1998 of the Three Tenors. While Warner reached an agreement with the FTC about a year ago, Vivendi continues to deny wrongdoing and will, of course, appeal." The FTC's release is quite informative, describing the entire case.
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Music Companies Convicted of Price Fixing Again More

Music Companies Convicted of Price Fixing Again

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  • Hmm... (Score:3, Funny)

    by ceejayoz ( 567949 ) <cj@ceejayoz.com> on Saturday June 29, 2002 @06:18PM (#3793495) Homepage Journal
    Yay! So now they'll change their evil ways and become good corporate citizens, right?

    *cough* yeah right *cough*

    Took 4 years for one record, what about the thousands of other CDs that come out every year? Something tells me this is just gonna be a slap on the wrist that they'll recover from quite quickly.

    • hopefully this ruling will make precedence and let all the other rulings follow in quick succession w/o the long court process...

    • Im sure they will recover quite quickly, soon everything will be back to normal. The industry will soo go back and keep its head in the sand about digital music, and dragging whatever remaining artists are still signed to major labels to a slow and unheard of death. "If history repeats itself, how come nobody was bailing out the carriage industry when the internal combustion engine was invented?"

  • Price Fixing? nah! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Myselfthethoom ( 303715 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @06:21PM (#3793507)
    In other news senators carrying large bags of money proposed changing the law and making it legal for music companies to DOS people accusing them of price fixing.
    • Quoth Myselfthethoom:

      "Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master"-Unknowen

      It's actually a quote from a game, Alpha Centauri.

      "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last loose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

      -- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "Librarian's Preface [firaxis.com]"
    • Thoom!

      I think we need to "fix" some of these record execs...
  • It's rediculous that these companies are permitted to do this at all. CD prices keep going up while manufacturing costs keep going down. Any common person can see that all the music labels and distributors are 100% guilty of price-fixing.

    And that's why I don't bother to pay for CDs anymore. I would rather support my favorite artists directly by going to their shows, buying their merchandise or even buying the CDs direct from them. (Yes, the label and distributors still get their cut, but the artist gets a bigger cut than their usual pennies.)

    Call me a thief and tell me I have no morals. I really give a shit what someone on Slashdot thinks of me. Really.
    • Personally, I try and compromise by only buying used CD's. This way, I can still support the little record store on the corner, and get the full and always complete CD that I want. I sometimes have to wait. Wait a very very long time (I recently bought an album I had been waiting to find used for two years) and in the meantime I listen to the downloaded version. I'm also willing to buy new CD's from labels that aren't the RIAA, but I haven't really gone looking for small, unheard of bands yet (there's still so much that I do know about already).

      I have a bit of difficulty not going for the new bargain CD's that they sell at Tower or something. While these things don't really have the price gouging argument against them directly (hell, $7.99 is a great price for a CD even by used standards) the money will go towards gouging consumers in other ways. On the other hand, if they see that people will buy more at lower prices (an obvious fact that they have failed to grasp) then maybe they will lower other CD's to these prices, not just those in catalog that have already paid forthemselves and more.
      • *shameless plug*
        Overstock.com has lots of clearance CDs for $5.99-$6.99. Not the newest releases but last year's and older. RIAA can't be very happy about that price, but I just snapped up 6 CDs myself which is more than I've bought in the last 3 years combined.
        *end shameless plug*

        I'd actually be willing to pay more than that myself. $6 is even cheaper than vinyl LPs back in the day. I think one big factor is that $10 is a psychological barrier between an impulse buy and a carefully researched purchase. I'd be pretty pissed to waste $18 on a shitty CD. When they were around, Blockbuster Music had listening booths to let you try out any CD in the store. Any other places still do that?

  • As the concert approached, the complaint alleged, Warner and PolyGram became concerned that the audio and video products resulting from the Paris concert would not be as original or as commercially appealing as the earlier Three Tenors releases. To reduce competition from these earlier releases, the companies allegedly adopted what they called a "moratorium" agreement. Through this agreement, the complaint alleged, PolyGram would not discount or advertise the 1990 Three Tenors album and video from August 1, 1998 through October 15, 1998 (the "moratorium period"); in return, Warner would not discount or advertise the 1994 Three Tenors album and video during the same interval.

    I guess this is price fixing but what about all the CDs that are released. Aren't they all over-priced becuase of all the record companies working together to raise prices?

  • Anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mullen ( 14656 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @06:26PM (#3793524)
    By now, no one is surpised by price fixing and record companies. Even my 60 year old mother, who buys about 12 CD's in a year, made a comment to me about how the cost of making CD's goes down, but the cost to consumers does not.

    I just don't see how the FTC can not bring the hammer down on these companies. It is just plain obvious that they price fix.

    • Re:Anyone surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by FatRatBastard ( 7583 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @06:56PM (#3793601) Homepage
      Even my 60 year old mother, who buys about 12 CD's in a year, made a comment to me about how the cost of making CD's goes down, but the cost to consumers does not

      That's because your grandmother isn't buying plastic discs. She's buying content. The CD is simply the device by which it is delivered, and is only one part of the 'cost' of the product. This is no arguement for proof of price fixing (If so we could sue each and every book publisher for not adjusting the price of a book every time the price of paper changes).

      • IS and argument for proof of price fixing. AS well as the cd "single" that costs a hell of a lot less then the cd, and still has the same massive hype and advertising attached.
        • IS and argument for proof of price fixing.

          No it isn't. All that tells you is that selling tapes is not a viable business in its own right (meaning, if a record company stopped selling CDs and only sold tapes, they would not last very long). The reason that record companies can keep a relatively unprofitable tape selling business alive is that there is a substantial overlap in the costs of producing the tape and the costs of producing the CD.

          AS well as the cd "single" that costs a hell of a lot less then the cd, and still has the same massive hype and advertising attached.

          Again, you've already spent the money on the hype and marketting before you produce the single. The marginal cost of releasing it is relatively low. You don't have to pay those marketting costs more than once, you know.

      • How About These Examples? (Score:5, Informative)

        by krmt ( 91422 ) <.moc.oohay. .ta. .erehmrfereht.> on Saturday June 29, 2002 @07:40PM (#3793715) Homepage
        I have an argument against price fixing. How about CD's that cost less to make?

        Wilco's new "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" album was recorded for some incredibly cheap sum, like a few thousand dollars. Yet it's sitting there with the same price tag at Best Buy as the huge manufactured pop albums. Add this to the fact that Wilco released the entire album on the internet themselves before the CD was released, and they've still already turned a profit on the thing.

        Another example is the new Massive Attack DVD compilation of music videos. If you've seen this thing in stores, it's basically a clear plastic case with a boring looking DVD inside. That's it. No artwork or inserts. Nothing. The reason for this is that Massive wanted to keep the costs for the buyer as low as possible (they're giving profits to charity). You can go their website and download the artwork for yourself (you even have three choices of which artwork you want). But what happened when they talked to retailers? The retailers said that the DVD would be marked up to the same price as all the others on the shelves, even though it cost them a hell of a lot less to buy. The details are all on Massive Attack's site (I think in a newspost from 3d, although it might be in the forums).

        Either way, there's a lot of price fixing and gouging going on, and no matter what steps are taken by the artists themselves, short of delivering the CD's directly to fans, they can't get the retail price down.
        • Wilco's new "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" album was recorded for some incredibly cheap sum, like a few thousand dollars. Yet it's sitting there with the same price tag at Best Buy as the huge manufactured pop albums.

          There are other costs. For example, the employees at the record shop need to eat. In any case, this example is a long way from "proof" that record companies are colluding to keep prices high. Your other example just shows that the record shops are getting greedy. There could be some ominous agreement between other record companies and the record stores to keep prices of competing albums high, but one needs to make an argument to that effect.

          • It's Not Just The Record Companies (Score:5, Insightful)

            by krmt ( 91422 ) <.moc.oohay. .ta. .erehmrfereht.> on Saturday June 29, 2002 @10:00PM (#3794123) Homepage
            Yes, I understand that record shop employees need to eat, but that doesn't mean that this should be happening. If the record only costs a couple thousand to make, then it can be sold overall at a lower price in order to recoup the expenses. You can still tack on the same cost for shipping and retail profit, and still have a lower cost because the entire manufacturing process is cheaper.

            This is how other products work. Lower manufacturing costs lead to lower retail cost. In both examples, there is some kind of price fixing going on.

            I never explicitly said that it was the record companies colluding, but it appears that it's the whole chain. Remember, the middleman is who gets hurt the most by people downloading music, and the middleman in this case is the record store. The fact is that both these examples demonstrate that something is going wrong and that collusion and price fixing is taking place.

            Somehow I doubt that when Massive Attack's new album comes out, if they try to do the same thing, that the SRP will be any lower than the other CD's on the shelf, and as a result, neither will the actual price. So, once again, the consumers and the artists get the shaft.
            • Yes, I understand that record shop employees need to eat, but that doesn't mean that this should be happening. If the record only costs a couple thousand to make, then it can be sold overall at a lower price in order to recoup the expenses.

              There could be a lot of reasons why you don't get a price reduction. For example, a more uniform pricing scheme entails less administration costs. I'm not proposing this as a reason, but simply pointing out that it's not at all obvious that retailers will pass savings on to customers product for product. For example, if large record companies that produce large lines of low cost recordings, they are cheaper on the shelves (for example, some record labels sell jazz recordings at about $10 or so). In the case where savings on an isolated recording aren't passed on, I'd put it down to laziness on the part of the record store.

            • Yes, I understand that record shop employees need to eat...

              Record sales clerks make nothing. I was one. You can have the most extensive musical education in the world, they'll still pay you nothing. Last time I checked, Tower Records paid minimum wage (5.25 an hour) and Virgin Megastore paid 7-ish. Keep in mind this is in New York City, where the cost of living is so ridiculously high it's impossible to survive on minimum wage. for instance: minimum wage at 40 hours/week after taxes is about 672 bucks a week. The absolute cheapest I've seen for a room in the outer boroughs is 300ish. Plus utilities, phone, and transport.

              I'm not arguing with you or anything, I'm just saying that since there're so many college kids in the city they can afford to pay nothing because there'll always be someone else lookin' for work.Paying employees isn't at all where their money's going.

              Triv

        • ...short of delivering the CD's directly to fans...

          Maybe that's what CDBaby [cdbaby.com] is for?

        • Notice I said This is no arguement for proof of price fix

          I didn't say that there was no price fixing. The fact that CDs are uniformly the same price (as compared to the book industry where there's a lot more variability) I think is good proof.

          My only beef was the "CDs are cheaper to make, therefor it proves price fixing." That is fundamentally wrong. The price of production is only a small fraction of the cost of bringing an album to market.
      • Ok, so the people's work of ten years ago worths less than Britney Spears, BSB or anything else recorded nowadays? Come on, somebody is clearly taking some extra money from this business chain...
      • "She's buying content"

        Whatever. All I remember is that back in the eighties, the record companies all increased the price of albums when they went to the black LPs to the silver CDs with the argument that that was because of the higher cost associated with the new medium and the promise of returning to the LP price as soon as the medium cost went down.

        Well, the medium cost has gone down, now where are the promised price reductions? Twenty years and still higher cost of CDs manufactured in a few huge fabs than those big black LPs that were manufactured in a much higher numer of smaller operations? Sure.

        All I can see is record companies not keeping their promise by keeping the price of CDs high.

        They've created a oligopily and the consumer is the victim.

      • Re:Anyone surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by lunenburg ( 37393 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @07:57AM (#3795175) Homepage
        The day I can send the music companies an album on vinyl or tape, or send them a broken CD, and get a replacement back on the media of my choosing for the cost of shipping, is the day I'll buy the "You're buying content, not the delivery device" argument.
    • The FTC doesn't seem to have a hammer, it's more like a rubber mallet, considering the penalties that have been handed down in the past, and the fact that Amway still exists.
    • Sayeth Mullen:
      "I just don't see how the FTC can not bring the hammer down on these companies. It is just plain obvious that they price fix."

      I hesitate to write this, because it almost, even to me, appears to be a troll (my reply, that is, not your post). But the answer is money. It's always money. And money, when it comes to the entertainment industry, doesn't just sing (ironically enough), it fscking yodels. The FTC is the Federal Trade Comission. They're governed and directed by laws. Politicians make the laws. The politicians get a significant amount of support from Political Interest Groups.

      Seeing the conflict of interest here? =)

      So I'm not trying to flame you, believe me, but it's not very hard to see how this happens.
      • I hesitate to write this, because it almost, even to me, appears to be a troll (my reply, that is, not your post)

        I made an observation. It may not be true, but it's an obervation. However, I still think it is true.

        . But the answer is money. It's always money. And money, when it comes to the entertainment industry, doesn't just sing (ironically enough), it fscking yodels. The FTC is the Federal Trade Comission. They're governed and directed by laws. Politicians make the laws. The politicians get a significant amount of support from Political Interest Groups.

        I don't think this is true either. The FTC and a number of Government regulators have gone after companies and groups for colusion and price-fixing. Take alook at the Oil, Banking system, Cars, Stock sales, and Airline industries. In this case, the modern Music industry is new and it takes Government to react and move on something.
        The music industry, I think, tries to stay off the FTC radar so it does not get busted. That is why were not seeing the FTC go after them.

  • I though the prices were always fixed. (Score:4, Funny)

    by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @06:27PM (#3793527)
    Has anyone got this Three Tenors album in mp3 or ogg vorbis? I haven't heard it yet.

    Bwahahahaha
  • ALright, let me first say that i don't approve of many of the actions of the record companies. But many people here go off about how the record companies abuse their control over the musicians, because the musicians don't get much money from the price of a single CD. This is all very true, the record companies do get the majority of the moeny from a CD sale, but they also spend loads of money on alot of these artists. I'm not sure of the exact price that it takes to put together a music video, but i imagine its in the millions, now the artists themselves sure as hell don't pay these costs. Also the record company has to promote songs and albums by paying radio stations and MTV to play them. Most popular musicians today owe all of their fame to a record company. It is these 'evil' companies which have talent scouts that go around searching for potential stars. I admit that there are a few very talented musicians that could make it big in the country by their skill alone, but these people are few and far between. For the most part it is the record companies that makes these people stars.

    This post does focus largely on the company's efforts to promote big stars like Britney Speares, N'Sync, and other large pop stars. But it still applies to almost anyone artist who is picked up bya record label.

    • Re:Defending the Record Companies in some Ways (Score:4, Informative)

      by fluxrad ( 125130 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @06:40PM (#3793557)
      you really have no idea what goes into the making of an album/video/star, do you?

      1. Most videos don't cost that much...maybe a couple hundred grand for some extremely famous bands, shooting in to the millions only for videos done by people like Michael Jackson who usually fund a lot of it themselves.

      2. Most bands flop. This is the reason the record labels buy in bulk when they're searching for talent. For every Britney Spears, there are 10-20 "chick" singers you never heard of because they didn't sell shit. Of course, if you actually get to make a second album, most of the procedes are spent paying the label back for the first one. The record companies don't have that much influence on who becomes a star or not when all is said and done, they just have the ability to put it on the shelves and see who buys what. You need to start looking at companies like BMG, Geffen, and Sony as nothing more than gigantic venture capital groups for musicians. Except the "interest" rate they charge for their benevolence is basically usury!

      btw - please back off the stream of consciousness style of posting next time. it's hard on the eyes, you know.

      • The monopolies are the reason of the situation when you come to a store - you'll see a lot of disks!
        And you cannot hear WHAT is on that disks. If we have situation when *IAA are banned and declared illegal, music shops will be much user friendly and allow people to shop for music by listening to a part of CD they're going to buy.
        Really, a label on CD means nothing. Only CD contents means. And it's not shown in stores.
        • Only CD contents means. And it's not shown in stores.

          Actually, most of it is. You can go to any number of shops that'll bust open a CD for your previewing pleasure. In Denver we've got Twist & Shout, Wax Trax, and Recycle Records, to name a few. Plus there are dozens more stores that have the at least newest albums available at listening stations.

          Of course, that doesn't mean that the music you're listening to doesn't suck in the first place ;-)
      • The record companies don't have that much influence on who becomes a star or not when all is said and done, they just have the ability to put it on the shelves and see who buys what.

        Payola [salon.com]

    • Re:Defending the Record Companies in some Ways (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 29, 2002 @06:44PM (#3793572)
      I'm not sure of the exact price that it takes to put together a music video, but i imagine its in the millions, now the artists themselves sure as hell don't pay these costs.

      Actually, a lot of them do. why do you think groups like TLC were broke after so many hit songs. They got a little more than $1.00 per CD sold but they had to pay all of the expenses for videos, and their tours. The artists are still getting the shaft. And don't give me that crap about "The record company only get's one diamond for every 100 pieces of rock"...last time I checked, diamond producers were very very wealthy, and so are record labels. If the recording industry wasn't making an ass load of money, it wouldn't be the recording industry....it would the recording company because no one would want to do it.
      • last time I checked, diamond producers were very very wealthy, and so are record labels. If the recording industry wasn't making an ass load of money, it wouldn't be the recording industry....it would the recording company because no one would want to do it.

        Sony Music makes something like $50 million dollars a year in profit. Not sure if that is 'typical' for the big music company, but that is absolute peanut shells compared to oil companies, software companies, semiconductor companies, tobacco companies, etc., who generally net about 100-400x that per year. In short, the music industry is tiny and not even in the same ballpark as the industries generally considered to be lucrative.
    • The above post is simply incorrect. Artists are usually given loans for promotional videos which have to be paid back to the record labels, also they can write off a lot of their promotion as business expenses. Also, record companies can't really pay to have videos or songs played, it's illegal. The truth is that record companies exist mainly to perpetuate themselves. Videos were created mainly to close the airwaves to anyone without the cash. Before videos, singles were the only real mass promotion channel and were cheap and easy to release. Now that you have to have a video in order to get airplay, the cost of entering the distribution channels has increased to levels where corporate power is needed to be popular. Thus, record companies discourage artists from being independent and force them to sign with a label so that they have a chance of being heard.

      So shut up before I have to drop any more knowledge on your ass.
    • the record companies do get the majority of the moeny from a CD sale, but they also spend loads of money on alot of these artists. I'm not sure of the exact price that it takes to put together a music video, but i imagine its in the millions, now the artists themselves sure as hell don't pay these costs. Also the record company has to promote songs and albums by paying radio stations and MTV to play them. Most popular musicians today owe all of their fame to a record company. It is these 'evil' companies which have talent scouts that go around searching for potential stars. I admit that there are a few very talented musicians that could make it big in the country by their skill alone, but these people are few and far between. For the most part it is the record companies that makes these people stars.

      This though is what makes the situation so wrong. We aren't buying beautiful music when we go to the record store, we are buying business. It's like buying a share in a company yet we don't get an investment in return.

      Once there were musicians who didn't care about being famous. Then for a while music became an arena where people wanted to play for anyone and everyone but they still didn't want fame; it became "cool" to diss the companies which promoted you. Now music is in a state where most of the people you see today with an album are the ones who are in it for the fame and fortune alone.

      Now this doesn't mean we don't have good artists, who provide us with quality music, and want to be rich too. But many artists I know, who aren't famous and only pay a local gigs say that they don't want to go into "the business" because it has changed so much.

      Now they aren't going to stop playing music, they just realize that it isn't about the fame and fortune. It's about aesthetics, it's about the message - it's about art.

      They admit playing Madison Square Gardens would be great, and they want to live by playing gigs all over but they don't want to become a pawn in a game of the recording industry.

      The RIAA is so nuts because they are simply a group which has risen by providing capital for artists. Then they own you, and likely your music. The question is are they needed today in such a connected world?

  • well according to this:

    James P. Timony ordered a series of companies, all of which are subsidiaries of French corporation Vivendi Universal S.A., among other things to cease and desist from entering into "any combination, conspiracy, or agreement" - with producers or sellers at wholesale of audio or video products - to "fix, raise, or stabilize prices or price levels"

    lol, unless "among other things" is a big whopping fine which, i seriously doubt since that would have been certainly mentioned...

    this decision basically amounts to a "stop doing that" decision, yeah that oughta get their attention
  • When Thomas Jefferson put the idea of intellectual property into the Constitution of the United States, he did so because he realized that information leaks; once people learn something, they can reuse that knowledge. If there was no protection to intellectual property, people would not be encouraged to share knowledge with others. Writers would not write, inventors would not invent, artists would not . So in the US Constitution, it says:


    Congress shall have the power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

    The reason why this is important is spelled out in Jefferson's own writings:

    If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it...He who receives an idea from me, receives instructions himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should be spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature ... Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
    His assumptions are based on the fact that you can not control what people do with information that you give to them. If you hand someone a book, they can transcribe it. If you give someone a physical invention, they can disassemble it. But if you give them a new form of media, say, a song on a copy-protected CD, and they can no longer listen to it except on approved devices that they cannot copy from, why should the government provide the same protection to you? The record companies and movie studios want to have their cake and eat it too. They want traditional copyright protection, technological copyright protection, and a government guarantee of technological copyright protection. They want to deprive all those bearded Linux hippies their DeCSS, so they can't watch bootleg Buffy the Vanpire Slayer DVDs in their parents' basement. But if they have technological protection, then why should the government give them traditional protection? It was only there because information was hard to protect as property.


    How far are we going to let the copyrighters go? We need to remind people that copyright, like most laws in the US, is a balance between two forces, and the scale should not be tipped too far to one side.

  • Who doesn't appeal (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Vivendi continues to deny wrongdoing and will, of course, appeal.

    I often wonder: Who doesn't appeal a decision that doesn't go their way? I mean, an appeal is basically the same thing as a childrens "Do Over" with more adult pretention...

  • Oh, I was thinking for a moment that it could have been important.

  • when (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by fluxrad ( 125130 )
    when are all the lovely people of this world going to wake up and realize that the only way to take back from the RIAA is basically piracy.

    whine to the government all you want, but until some freak radioactive chemical is accidentally dumped on washington, causing every congressman to mutate into benevolent-o and slowly climb out of the back pockets of their contributors...NOTHING IS GOING TO COME OF IT!

    sometimes you simply have to fight fire with fire.

    • Re:when (Score:2, Insightful)

      by miffo.swe ( 547642 )
      Your sig about MTV says it all doesnt it? The music industry has taken a good healthy music collective and made it into a money milking cow. MTV was good but all it ever plays now is either corporate sponsored release promos (they call it hresh or something) or crappy mainstream (corporate owned) elevator crap.
    • when are all the lovely people of this world going to wake up and realize that the only way to take back from the RIAA is basically piracy

      Judging from the Napster phenomenon and the flood of P2P programs it generated, I'd say people have already discovered piracy. RIAA's still making oodles and oodles of money, though. RIAA's not going to disappear because of piracy.
  • [i]Providing more proof that the record industry is indeed a oligopoly[/i] There's nothing wrong with oligopols, 90% of all things you buy come from Oligopol markets. The main property of these markets is that the products are differentiated in the eyes of the consumer.

  • Remarkable. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by miffo.swe ( 547642 ) <{daniel.hedblom} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday June 29, 2002 @06:52PM (#3793593) Homepage Journal
    How can they screw us over with one face and cry about how they need DRM with another. All this at the same time that they arent losing money to pirating but to games.

    Realese som good music instead of brainwashing people with BSB and Britney Bimbo and maybe we ll feel that the music is worth paying for. As of today most isnt worth the plastiv its printed on. Note, thats not the artists fault. Pink is a good example of that!

    • from above:
      "How can they screw us over with one face and cry about how they need DRM with another."

      Dude, it's called greed. It's also called if they can get away with it, they will. Seriously, if you were an unethical, monopolistic slave to the dollar, you'd be the same way. Lucky for us, you're not.

      Soon, real soon, I believe, people will wake up and smell the coffee, and realize they have been getting screwed and this will change.
    • No one puts a gun to the head of the children and adults who buys BSB and Britney Spears and make the record companies their millions. If people are buying their manufactured music and they're making tons of cash, why would they stop?
      • It's common knowledge that things that are advertised more - pushed down our throats - sell more then ones that aren't. Why do the music companies feel that Britney, N*Sync, etc. deserve more advertising then others? It may not be a gun - people still have a choice - but when knowledge of choice is limited, what do you expect to happen?

        Honestly, if - for a short test period - every artist had the same amount of advertising and special offers/rebates - i.e. none - who would honestly sell more? Britney? Maybe at first, but I'd be of the opinion that it wouldn't last long.
  • Slap on the wrist, slight embarrassment, wait 6 months, repeat.
    • Slap on the wrist, slight embarrassment, wait 6 months, repeat.

      You forgot the make millions in extra profits from the fixed prices step!

  • Look at the bright side... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Daetrin ( 576516 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @07:24PM (#3793673)
    At least in America we maintain the fantasy that things are supposed to be fair, so the FTC can ocasionally crack down on the record companies if they're blatant about breaking the rules.

    I've been told that in Japan the record companies have some kind of agreement with the government allowing them to fix prices, which is why Japanese CDs cost $30 and the American imports were about $15 or a little over (this was a few years ago, funny how CD prices have gone _up_ as the technology has gotten cheaper, neh?)

  • Okay, as I understand it, the labels, afraid that the '98 performance was gonna suck, agreed to not advertise or discount CDs of the previous 2 concerts, so as not to take away from the fanfare of the most recent one. How is this wrong? It's not even like they got together and decided to make all their CDs more expensive. And even if they did, who cares? No one has a monopoly on selling music. It would just make more people take a closer look at independent releases. Besides, I thought price-fixing was reserved for markets that dealt with necessites, like the phone company or gasoline. You don't need CDs. In fact, they're very easy to go without.

    I'm the last person to defend major labels' practices (see the RIAA song and wallpaper [rootrecords.org] for proof), but I don't see anything wrong with what they did (or more accurately, didn't do). It's a free market, and they should have the right to choose whatever business model they want, no matter how crappy or unfair.
    • No one has a monopoly on selling music.

      I would make a witty comment, but the challenge has gone.

    • >How is this wrong?

      Because it's illegal. That's the only reason the RIAA needs in order to go after us, and they keep flaunting it. Why should we need any more reason to go after them?
    • How is this wrong?

      Price collusion is illegal. Plain and simple. The recording companies got together and decided not to reduce some older CDs so that the newer one wouldn't be competing against them for price. That is illegal. This is something that the recording companies do all the time [slashdot.org].
      • I think you meant "produce" not "reduce".

        The recording companies got together and decided not to [produce] some older CDs so that the newer one wouldn't be competing against them for price.

        I'm a little surprised by this ruling, since companies discontinue a cheaper older model so they can sell more of the new model all the time. E.g., DOS, Win 3.1, 95, 98, & NT. So if the fact that two companies (out of several major and many minor players in the market) agreed together to discontinue the old CD's makes it illegal, what does it mean when one company that has been legally determined to be a monopoly does the same thing?
  • REMAINING U.S. CEOs MAKE A BREAK FOR IT

    Band of Roving Chief Executives Spotted Miles from Mexican Border

    San Antonio, Texas(Reuters) - Unwilling to wait for their eventual indictments, the 10,000 remaining CEOs of public U.S. companies made a break for it yesterday, heading for the Mexican border, plundering towns and villages along the way, and writing the entire rampage off as a marketing expense.

    "They came into my home, made me pay for my own TV, then double-booked the revenues," said Rachel Sanchez of Las Cruces, just north of El Paso. "Right in front of my daughters."

    Calling themselves the CEOnistas, the chief executives were first spotted last night along the Rio Grande River near Quemado, where they bought each of the town's 320 residents by borrowing against pension fund gains. By late this morning, the CEOnistas had arbitrarily inflated Quemado's population to 960, and declared a 200 percent profit for the fiscal second quarter.

    This morning, the outlaws bought the city of Waco, transferred its underperforming areas to a private partnership, and sent a bill to California for $4.5 billion.

    Law enforcement officials and disgruntled shareholders riding posse were noticeably frustrated.

    "First of all, they're very hard to find because they always stand behind their numbers, and the numbers keep shifting," said posse spokesman Dean Lewitt. "And every time we yell 'Stop in the name of the shareholders!', they refer us to investor relations. I've been on the phone all damn morning."

    "YOU'LL NEVER AUDIT ME ALIVE!" they scream. The pursuers said they have had some success, however, by preying on a common executive weakness. "Last night we caught about 24 of them by disguising one of our female officers as a CNBC anchor," said U.S. Border Patrol spokesperson Janet Lewis. "It was like moths to a flame."

    Also, teams of agents have been using high-powered listening devices to scan the plains for telltale sounds of the CEOnistas. "Most of the time we just hear leaves rustling or cattle flicking their tails," said Lewis, "but occasionally we'll pick up someone saying, 'I was totally out of the loop on that."

    Among former and current CEOs apprehended with this method were Computer Associates' Sanjay Kumar, Adelphia's John Rigas, Enron's Ken Lay, Joseph Nacchio of Qwest, Joseph Berardino of Arthur Andersen, and every Global Crossing CEO since 1997. ImClone Systems' Sam Waksal and Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco were not allowed to join the CEOnistas as they have already been indicted.

    So far, about 50 chief executives have been captured, including Martha Stewart, who was detained south of El Paso where she had cut through a barbed-wire fence at the Zaragosa border crossing off Highway 375. "She would have gotten away, but she was stopping motorists to ask for marzipan and food coloring so she could make edible snowman place settings, using the cut pieces of wire for the arms," said Border Patrol officer Jenette Cushing. "We put her in cell No. 7, because the morning sun really adds texture to the stucco walls."

    While some stragglers are believed to have successfully crossed into Mexico, Cushing said the bulk of the CEOnistas have holed themselves up at the Alamo. "No, not the fort, the car rental place at the airport," she said. "They're rotating all the tires on the minivans and accounting for each change as a sale."

    I take no credit for this ... I ripped it off from a forwarded email
  • Most /.'ers are ignorant to scream evil when a cd price goes up. Yes cd MANUFACTURING prices have gone down, but making the property that is on the cd, costs far more than any of you probably realize. The time and effort, and of course money required to make the music on a cd is so high that the record companies have to protect what they have invested. Sure some of their practices are questionable, but who are you to say how a loan company an artist chose is doing wrong? No one forced the artist to sign a record contract, they did it because they couldn't pay the fees to make a cd themselves. I'm really dissappointed in the ignorance of such an esteemed "nerd" community.

  • So I went to Sam Goody today (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @07:36PM (#3793706) Homepage Journal
    The average price of a CD is $19. That's right, $19. And some Phish CD's were $26. Sale items marked $17. And there is no difference whether the CD you're looking for is 14 years old or 14 days. Nineteen Bucks.

    They need to gargle sulphur in hell while their children are eaten by Rhinos. Long live musci sharing.
  • Two music companies that joined forces to sell recordings of the opera stars known as the Three Tenors illegally fixed prices, an administrative law judge ruled.

    This is not a huge loss for anyone involved. No real impact will come of it. It sounds to me like a small slap on the wrist for two companies selling the same product at the same price as part of an agreed upon deal. Albums like this deal probably account for less than 1% of what is available on store shelves.

    Move along...nothing to see here, or at least not what you are hoping to see.

    -Pete
  • The music companies are a bunch of lousy bastards anyway. I hope they all go out of business. It might even be good for the world if new music had to be mastered, produced and marketed by the artists themselves. First of all, a lot of the bands out there couldn't even afford to do it, and they might go out and get real jobs. And since most new music sucks anyway, that wouldn't really be a problem at all. I'd say that damn near everything from 1990 onwards has sucked big time. Even Metallica! Yeah, their first four albums kicked ass, but the rest of their shit is just that: Shit! So what am I talking about? I say the government should simply shut down the RIAA and everyone involved. Just put them all out of a job. Make them sweep the streets or repair the pavement somewhere or something. That would actually be good for society. Kids wouldn't waste every penny they have on music, partly because music wouldn't cost so damn much, and partly because there'd be nothing to buy. Rap would die. Heavy metal... well, there hasn't been any good metal in years. Let me tell you something, that would be good for the whole damn economy. I'm not saying ban music... I ain't the cotton flippin taliban or something. I'm just saying, listen to the old stuff, because it had a lot of shit in it that new music doesn't have... namely skill and spirit. In other words, listen to most of the new music (especially if it involves electric guitars). What is it? It's a bunch of kids playing power chords because they don't know how to play a Gawd-damn guitar, and some of those kids have halfway-decent drummers, so it doesn't sound totally disgusting. And the lyrics are shit. So you know what? Let these assholes price fix all day long. Because in the end, I think they're a bunch of idiot bastard muthuf*ckus.

    Ooooooooooooooooh well.

    • Yeh your right, we should elect you as the minister of music affairs, because your taste is generally suited to the american peoples. A lot of new music is crap, and yet the kids still buy it. THEIR WRONG!!! You must save them, you know whats best. On another note, screw you, I love the way a power cord sounds through MY loud amp. My lyrics mean something to me, and I dont care if you think their crap or not. Maybe you should lighten up and let people to and buy what they want, not what you think they should. My opinion of good is definatly different than yours, so screw you for saying any art is crap.
    • Are you crazy? Everyone knows that music didn't exist before lollapalooza, other than maybe cavemen beating on logs with sticks and howling at the moon.

      The RIAA can get down on it's hands and knees and blow me while I download music all day that I will NEVER pay for.

      Moral Relativism is reality. Companies cannot be expected (on a moral level, legally it's whatever we want) to charge any less than they can get away with, nor should people be expected (again morally only) not to pay as little (or nothing) for something they want.

      So in other words, I don't want hear any bitching about stealing music.

      "Irony irony ha ha ha" --Unknown
  • It's not terribly significant by itself, but it's great ammunition for the next time they sue anyone for copyright infringement, though...

    "Your honor, the group of companies suing us has been convicted of conspiracy. That court put on them a cease and desist order which they are violating by bringing this suit. We're filing a countersuit, and move to dismiss their suit."

    Saying that your opponents are preventing you from illegal price fixing is a little tricky.

    Of course, these days the MPAA is much more of a problem than the RIAA, which seems to have largely killed their market.
  • Microsoft commits illegal actions and practically gets away with it, while if you copy software the BSA will get you.

    If you swap MP3s you are going to jail for copyright violations, but price fixing by huge corporations is OK. I'm so glad the Justice Department has their priorities strait.

  • Advertisement (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1 computer - $999
    1 CD burner - $50
    1 pair of headphones - $15
    1 Portable mp3 player - $199

    Ripping off the record companies - Priceless

    for everything else, there's gnutella
  • So, the same companies that are lecturing us about how immoral it is to trade music, are price-fixing?

    Yea, fuck that.

    Fuck their moral bullshit.

    Fuck their intellectual property.

    Fuck them.


  • What did they do, charge us the price for four tenors?

  • Ok, enough with the 3 tenors jokes.

    This is important because it gives the FTC a rock solid example of the kind price fixing scheme that is going on throughout the industry.

    A few years ago, an FTC investigation found that the industry had set up contracts that prevented retailers from advertising CDs below a certain price level. Without competition, the price of CDs was kept artificially high.

    To anyone who has been to a record store lately, it is obvious that whatever was done to correct this has made no difference. Prices continue to float upward, while the cost of making CDs goes down.

    Meanwhile, the RIAA has poured money into campaign funds, buying votes to help them continue their abuse. Now every time I buy a CD to back up my data, I pay a tax to the artists^h^h^h^h^h^h^h record companies. The more we get disgusted and boycott them, the more statistics they claim to have showing they need more government protection.

  • Is the USA becoming a Communist state? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NewtonsLaw ( 409638 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @09:04PM (#3793925)
    I thought that one of the things America prided itself on was that it was a perfect example of capitalism in action -- individuals and companies that succeed on their merits and markets where consumers benefit by fair and open competition.

    Oh dear, how things are changing.

    Now we have a few key players in a few industries (RIAA, MPAA) bribing the government to introduce *state-enforced* controls over markets and competition.

    The rights that previously protected US citizens from the excesses and over zealous actions of large corporations are gradually being eroded as things such as "fair use" under copyright law is completely wiped by legislation such as the DMCA.

    What's more, it becomes patently obvious that when industries such as the RIAA and MPAA conspire to defeat the principles of capitalism and free-market competition, the government seems interested only in slapping wrists on the one hand while handing them more power (via the DMCA) on the other.

    Shouldn't citizens be asking -- why are we allowing big business to buy-off the government?

    And, above all else, citizens should remember that governments are elected to SERVE and REPRESENT *all* citizens, not just those with big wallets.

    Go talk to your elected representitive and tell him he's not getting your vote unless he shapes up and restores the USA to its former caplitalist glory!
    • It looks like capatilism is just reaching it's inevitable climax, where by the market is controled by large multinationals, who buy up evrything in sight. that's what happens when you have 100 years or so of capatilism.

      communist is (by the dictionary)
      "A economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property."
      or by the english dictionary
      "social system based on public ownership of most property"
      Nope-thats not wIt looks like capatilism is just reaching it's inevitable climax, where by the market is controled by large multinationals, who buy up evrything in sight. that's what happens when you have 100 years or so of capatilism.

      communist is (by the dictionary)
      "A economic system characterized by the collective ownership of property."
      or by the english dictionary
      "social system based on public ownership of most property"
      Nope-thats not what the RIAA want!!!

      capitalism(by the dictionary)
      "An economic system based on private ownership of capital."

      That's the baby,
      Looks like ameriica is becomming full-cycle capitalist.hat the RIAA want!!!

      capitalism(by the dictionary)
      "An economic system based on private ownership of capital."

      That's the baby,
      Looks like america is becomming full-cycle capitalist.

  • Nothing will change from this case. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by robkill ( 259732 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @09:50PM (#3794090)
    The previous price-fixing case was more damaging than this one (at least at first glance on this one.) Since a record company has a monopoly on a given CD in the U.S. due to mechanical reproduction copyright, they can charge what they want to the resellers. The RIAA line on digital copyright is that they are holding out for the true value of the copyrighted content. That will be their argument here as well.


    What we need is to support more artists who are on their own label (Ani DiFranco, Christine Lavin, etc.) or who are on independent labels. The artists don't get shafted, and we get music at a better price.


    I'd like to see more artists take stands like Tom Petty did. His "Hard Promises" album (back in the LP days) was going to be retailed at $9.98, while he wanted it retailed at $8.98. If it was going to be sold at $9.98, he was going to call it "The $8.98 album". The record company caved, and hence the title "Hard Promises."

  • The music industry is certainly a wacky bunch of madcap zanies. It pains me that eventually they and their kind are pretty much going to OWN your computer, everything you put on it, and your right to put anything on it that they don't own. We lived through a golden age (the 90's), but it's end is near.
    • I can almost read the words right out of Lawerence lessig's books. But Im afraid your dismal prophecy is not going to come true. If we(and by that I mean the general public) are abandoning the media of the prepackaged CD...then what makes you think anyone would sit idly by and have the music industry OWN their PC, even in an incremental way? It wont happen, and the VCR ended up not being the end of the world either. Perhaps you need to learn how the electronics of the whole thing works before you make such statements...or at least make someone elses statements...in the end its still PEOPLE who make the designs for these products, and PEOPLE will just make other 'devices' if they dont like the ones they are presented with
    • They will 'own my computer' when they pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

      And they will prevent me from keeping my own data when my neurons no longer fire (see 'cold, dead hands' reference above).

  • Anyone see a pattern here? (Score:3)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Saturday June 29, 2002 @10:00PM (#3794125)
    It's just like Micro$oft; get caught, even loose a trial, and as your "punishment" you promise not to do it again. Then, of course, it's business as usual. I've lost track of how many times M$ has done this. Pretty much the entire record industry, as their punishment two years ago when they were caught in predatory practices, agreed to stop doing what they were doing, [ftc.gov] which was going to lead to lower prices. See how much they have come down?

  • Public Enemy et. al. (Score:4, Informative)

    by cant_get_a_good_nick ( 172131 ) on Sunday June 30, 2002 @02:23AM (#3794691)
    I can't steal from my old comment, Slashcode doesn't get that far back, the bastards, now I have to write with a few beers in me....

    PE had a couple new tracks, and a lot of remixes, and they wnted to put it out. They called it Bring the Noise 2000, named after their track Bring the Noise which permanently changed the direction of hip-hop/rap. Def Jam (their label) didn't want to. So PE released it as MP3s on the net, the label gave them hella shit. I actually have a copy of that before they pulled it from the web (thank you GeoCities).

    After this, PE left Def Jam (I think Def Scam was their wording) and put out an album called There's a Poison Going On, after they split from Def Jam/Columbia. They sold it from AtomicPop.com for $8 downloads, $10 if you bought the actual physical album, and that came with an autographed CD liner from Chuck D (I bought it to get the autograph). AtomicPop later imploded unfortunately, and I then see the exact same album at Virgin Megastore for $18.

    Did Virgin give Chuck and Flava Flav an extra $10 per album? (They didn't sell autographed ones, so compare to $8-9 or so.) I doubt it. I'm pretty sure the price bump was just to get it in their normal, non-sale price structure, and give R. Branson a couple extra bucks. Many artists have fought with the industry to get a what they consider normal price. I think Tom Petty actually released an album named 8.99 (or something like it) to stop the labels from boosting the price past that. The way the labels structure it, groups get cash from touring, not from record/CD sales, so groups have little incentive to sell a lot.

    Count how many elements a tape has:
    You have two plastic half-shells, two reels each with a plastic piece to hold on to the tape, the tape itself which has the tape, an oxide layer deposited on it, and two leader segments added to it, the metal and spongy piece to force good tape-head contact, and possibly astenerws (though the cheaper tapes just snap on). Contrast this with CD, with only one part, nothing moving. And the CD costs more? Ummmmmm....
  • "the record industry is indeed a oligopoly" How ironic then, that they will be responsible for creating their own oligopsony. B-) (thanks to www.investorwords.com....) "These cornflakes need more Tabasco."
  • oligopoly: a market situation in which each of a few producers affects but does not control the market

    While you get credit for employing an obscure, seldom used word, price fixing implies a certain (read "large" in this case) amount of control, which the record companies do wield. They do more than simply affect the market. Since Vivendi Universal and Warner Communications had exclusive control of the Three Tenors recording in question, maybe you should have stuck to the good old fasioned word

    monopoly: 1 : exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action 2 : exclusive possession or control 3 : a commodity controlled by one party 4 : one that has a monopoly

    ~sigh~ A fool and his big words are soon parted.

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