We have theives among us folks, who you ask ?
Well most of you have heard of them, they are the big music companies Sony, EMI, BMG, Universal Music, and Warner, who distribute at least 95
percent of all music CDs sold worldwide.
Well, they have many smaller satellite operations to make it look like its a small operation but theses giants between them own virtually all the big
pressing and distribution chains.
Over time they joined an organisation called the Riaa which was formed to help standardise a technical issue on vinyl recordings.
Moving on to the present day the Riaa have changed beyond all recognition.
The members of this cartel enforce a rigid pricing policy in every market they come to dominate.
These same members take a massive slice of the cake you pay for the goods you purchase.
If they paid the artist even double what they do at the moment then they would still walk away with 3 times that amount themselves after expenses, in pure profit.
I would like to make my position clear on this.
I would like the right to play music I pay for in any format I choose, without paying for it twice.
I would also like the industry to recognise they cannot control or buy up all the small independant companies, who are not as greedy as themselves.
The current cartel/music industry is an extortion racket.
Their rhetoric is this "join our club or we will use our ownership and monopoly contracts to make sure you never get to a decent audience or market ".
I welcome any input from anyone who can show me different, although I have long since resigned myself to watching theses theives strip
artists and the public in many continents dry.
The fact of price fixing in many nations is what they dont want you to know folks, if I wish to purchase a cd in the UK it costs around
£14 pounds, so thats about 20 dollars ? In the US I can purchase the same item for $9 dollars !!
I wonder why this costs so much to ship to the uk ?
In fact it is not even shipped to the UK, its pressed within the UK or in europe more cheaply, so where is all the added expense coming from ?
Well it seems that they are willing to charge what they think the local market can stand, and the fact that actual disk sales are up says to them its
in their best interest to keep this rather quiet from the public, and not change a policy that keeps the cash rolling in.
The fact that Mp3,s can be downloaded with no packaging or outlay except for a high bandwidth server on the record companies behalf is lost to them. Or is it ?
Lets look at it this again, selling me something overpriced and cheaper elsewhere maximises profits for the industry.
I think this is the real reason behind them not wanting to allow Mp3 downloads, aside from the fact of who wants to purchase the other 10
"not so hot" tracks on the album
Looking at it like that its scary and understandable huh ? Not so.
I now lead on to the Itunes and Napster efforts to test the water in electronic downloads, both seem to be enjoying a nice healthy profit and the recording industry has asked Napster to increase the price recently so their members can make more out of the rich bounty, while apple quitely use the seperate market trick to overcharge any countries market it wishes to.
What can be said to all this folks ? I think it shows that the industry is scared of change that could lose them its dominant market position.
What can we do about it ? Not much except bear in mind that the large companies like Sony are the ones flooding WinMx and that the new
playstation 3 is jammed packed with digital rights management (DRM) features, that lock products to markets.
Yes DRM , nice idea if you want to control a market, and create an artifical monopoly for yourself.
Most of the heavy backing comes from Japan for this sort of technology , I suspect thats because in the eighties the Japanese industries made
major investments in some of these big companies that sit at the top of the Riaa/Mpaa tree.
Ok thats my rant completed..till next time.
hmm just found this 