Record Industry Bashfest

I want to know why the RIAA and the record companies aren’t getting the bejeesus sued or beaten out of them for price fixing. Certain music stores, like Virgin Records, are selling CDs for pennies less than the price of CDs after they were first introduced. Maybe that’s why they’re suffering and on the brink of going under?

Seriously now, the CD has been around in the neighborhood of 20 years. Why should I be paying upwards of $16 for a new cd? Didn’t other major companies like Nintendo and even Microsoft at some point get sued for price fixing? The economy has changed, the value of goods has changed in the past 20 years, technology has changed to allow for faster and higher quality mass production of these items… why should I be paying such an antiquated price for an album that might not even be over 30 minutes long. Furthermore, only pennies (that’s right.. PENNIES) are actually getting to the artist. All of the rest of my $16 is going to record executives, agents, lawyers, and a laundry list of middle men and lackeys.

Now if you want to get into the quality issue, this is a whole different can of worms. Think about the last ten CDs you bought. Can you honestly say that you enjoyed even 80% of the tracks on those CDs? Did you buy a CD (or maybe even a few) for maybe two or three songs? Maybe you even had to pay for the entire CD just to get one song because it wasn’t released as a single? We have all been there and it sucks. I know not every album can be stellar, but why has it become so difficult to find an album that has more than one good track on it? Actually the answer is simple. If every artist only puts one or two purchase-worthy songs on each album and fills up the rest of the disc with the stuff that should be on the cutting room floor and flashy “multimedia enhancements” then the record company can charge a higher price for the disc and get the artist to turn out a new album every 12 to 18 months. Have you noticed that the only artists that aren’t trapped in this factory formula are established artists with creative control, artists on independent labels, and a lucky few that get mentored by established artists?

Now if more of those artists that aren’t under the proverbial thumb of the record industry brass would speak out about all of this RIAA induced hysteria, maybe we could get somewhere.

Tags: CD, copyright, mp3, Music, RIAA

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July 22, 2003 | Filed Under Music 

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