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Music Industry Blues Spur Best Buy to Act

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Music Industry Blues Spur Best Buy to Act

Old 04-13-02, 04:08 PM
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Music Industry Blues Spur Best Buy to Act

I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this article or not.Mods if need to be moved to the right location, do it please.

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Music Industry Blues Spur Best Buy to Act
Sat Apr 13, 9:28 AM ET
By Ellis Mnyandu

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The music industry, hurt by slumping sales due to raging piracy on the Internet, may soon have an ally in Best Buy Co. Inc. , the No. 1 U.S. retailer of both entertainment software and consumer electronics.


The Minneapolis company, whose Musicland Group Inc. unit has suffered from whose sluggish music sales, said it is looking to team up with record labels and technology groups to devise ways to prevent wholesale copying of CDs without antagonizing customers.

Although Best Buy sells items like CD burners, MP3 audio players and personal computers used in CD copying and Internet music swapping, it supports the push by some music companies to produce CDs with anticopying technology, Chief Operating Officer Allen Lenzmeier told Reuters on Monday.

"I think there's going to have to be some type of copyright protection that comes out," Lenzmeier said. "Hopefully, we can facilitate a solution" that makes consumers willing to pay for music instead of swapping files on the Internet.

Such a step could provide the necessary incentive for artists and record labels to go on making music, he said.

Last week, Best Buy executives blamed Internet music-swapping and a dearth of new blockbuster albums for a slowdown in sales at Musicland, which operates stores under that name as well as Sam Goody, Suncoast, Media Play and On Cue.

Analysts expect downloading of Internet music files to lead to another year of declining sales after U.S. music shipments slumped 10.3 percent in 2001.

When the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) released the figures in February, it said 23 percent of surveyed consumers said they were not buying music because they are downloading or copying it for free.

COPY-PROOFING VS. PLAYABILITY

In an effort to stem piracy, some labels have begun embedding copyright protection into CDs. But Sony's release of Celine Dion (news - web sites)'s latest album angered fans in Europe this month when their computers crashed as a result of the protection.

BMG, one of the world's five major labels, has announced plans to use copy-proof technology on promotional CDs, the free discs distributed to critics, retailers and other insiders weeks before the official release.

Some kind of anticopying process, whether in the hardware or software, is necessary to prevent consumers from making numerous copies, Lenzmeier said, but it should not prevent them from playing a CD they purchased or from making a copy for their car.

"Somehow the technology industry, the music industry, the distributors, the retailers, have to look cooperatively to come up with some mechanism to make this do-able," he said. "Consumers are willing to pay for content; that will have to be edited in some way differently than it is now."

Best Buy, which operates nearly 1,900 stores under its own name as well other brands, said last week that it sees the music industry sales slowdown persisting through 2003.

More immediately, it said it expects weak music sales to crimp profits in the current quarter.

The company acquired Musicland in February 2001 for $685 million.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...l_bestbuy_dc_2
Old 04-13-02, 05:37 PM
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hey best buy, here's a news flash....

as long as you see fit with the recording industry to jack up the prices of cd's, the slumping sales will continue. lower the cd prices and i would gladly buy more cd's. however, i refuse to pay $17 or more for a cd.
Old 04-13-02, 05:39 PM
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Best Buy is making the same mistake Circuit City made with DIVX.
Old 04-14-02, 11:36 AM
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[Thoughts?]

OK, here is a rule I just invented....

.... only one such cut & paste/hit & run post per person, per week.

Of course there will be extra credit for substantial personal input by the threadstarter and where there is some indication that the replies are being read and commented on.



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Old 04-14-02, 02:09 PM
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Originally posted by kevin75
hey best buy, here's a news flash....

as long as you see fit with the recording industry to jack up the prices of cd's, the slumping sales will continue. lower the cd prices and i would gladly buy more cd's. however, i refuse to pay $17 or more for a cd.
Word! I'd rather pay $12.95 for a CD over $17 any day.
Old 04-14-02, 03:07 PM
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Analysts expect downloading of Internet music files to lead to another year of declining sales after U.S. music shipments slumped 10.3 percent in 2001.
When the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) released the figures in February, it said 23 percent of surveyed consumers said they were not buying music because they are downloading or copying it for free.
If 23% of the music buying public wasn't buying music that they can copy for free, then wouldn't it make more sense if sales were down closer to 23% instead of 10%?

Old 04-14-02, 05:13 PM
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Originally posted by Iron Chef




If 23% of the music buying public wasn't buying music that they can copy for free, then wouldn't it make more sense if sales were down closer to 23% instead of 10%?

I took it to mean that 23% of those who weren't buying music used that as a reason. Maybe I'm wrong though.
Old 04-14-02, 05:34 PM
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Newflash for the recording industry:

PUT OUT BETTER MUSIC

Let's see. What accounts for most of your content: cookie-cutter rap and new metal, boring r and b, trite pop pablum.

And you're surprised that people elect to download a song they sort like for free rather than pay $15-$20 for a CD containing that song and forty-five minutes worth of filler.

You've refined your images and over-produced your albums to the point that everything sounds mind-numbingly bland and your "artists" have no personality. I can't tell the difference between Jay-Z or DMX or Master P -- and truth be told, I don't really care. A new metal band video plays on MTV. Is it Staind? Drowning Pool? Mudshovel? I don't know. It all looks and sounds the same.

Your rock stars have no personality. I don't know the names of any of these guys. There are so few distinct voices and so few distinct looks that it all blurs together. Criminy, I remember the 80s, and I could tell Poison from Warrant and I didn't even like those bands.

Either I'm getting old (which, of course, I am. No way around that.) or something in your industry is broken. I tend to believe it's the latter. I can still find new music I enjoy -- some of it's available only on the indie labels or imports, some of it's old -- older than I am. The Beatles broke up before I was born, but I found them recently. As I did Dylan and the Stones and... the list goes on. I started listening to Joy Division years after Ian Curtis died. The music was fresh and exciting. Ten years from now do you think anyone will the say the same about any of the crud you're inflicting on us?

Copy protection isn't the solution to your woes.
Old 04-14-02, 06:34 PM
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What Josh said times 1000.

I'm still out there buying new albums. Just not the new albums that the record companies are plugging as "best new widget of the week."

Top 40 is a wasteland these days with identical pop, R&B and nu-metal songs clogging all of the top spots. Typically the new releases I'm looking for on a Tuesday are never even picked up by Best Buy.

Aside from lowering the disc prices (without adding the copy protection), another solution might be to PUT OUT MORE CD SINGLES!!!

For some reason the record companies have stopped producing singles. Instead, forcing consumers who may only want a single track to buy a whole album of filler. An increase in the availability of SINGLES (CD-5s) might bring up the bottom line of the record companies enough to stave off some of this silly copy protection BS.
Old 04-15-02, 04:06 AM
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We just had a new Best Buy open and I bought
a 110-pack of CDR's for $19.95.

Whatever cd's they make copy-proof......I'll just do without those.

None of this would be so bad if the greedy record companies didn't make it where discs can be $20 with tax.

The artists get pennies for the most part.

The hell with em.
Old 04-15-02, 07:35 AM
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Originally posted by Josh-da-man
Your rock stars have no personality. I don't know the names of any of these guys. There are so few distinct voices and so few distinct looks that it all blurs together. Criminy, I remember the 80s, and I could tell Poison from Warrant and I didn't even like those bands.



at the Poison / Warrant comment
Old 04-15-02, 01:30 PM
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Originally posted by Aaron Amos


Word! I'd rather pay $12.95 for a CD over $17 any day.
Really? I thought I was the only one. You would think people would like to save money...

But really, if CDs were at a standard of $9.99 -12.99, I would be buying A LOT more CDs. There was a period of two years I went without buying a CD; just downloaded and burned everything. I'd much rather support artists and I'd rather get the whole package and real CDs sound much fuller than mp3s to the trained ear. But at $17.98 +tax for a CD, it can be expensive to be even a casual music listener.

Last edited by Cornfed; 04-15-02 at 01:37 PM.
Old 04-15-02, 01:44 PM
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It is pretty funny - if they'd quit obsessing over copying what was cool last year - the next Limp Bizkit/Creed/Matchbox 20/Alanis and on and on... we buying public might hear something NEW and buy it. The funny thing is, these artists are on the major rosters, but usually get dropped after a record or two of really subpar, halfassed promotional support. Examples:

- Patty Griffin (dropped by A&M)
- David Gray (dropped by Atlantic)
- David Garza (dropped by Lava/Atlantic)
- Wilco (dropped by Elektra)
- Kelly Willis (dropped by A&M)
- Aimee Mann (dropped by Interscope)
- Spoon (dropped by Elektra)

It's also true that there are some great indie labels out there it is good to pay attention to. Some examples:

- Merge Records (Superchunk, Spoon, ...Trail Of Dead)
- SpinART (Clem Snide, Ron Sexsmith)
- Matador (Yo La Tengo, Belle and Sebastian)
- Heavenly (Ed Harcourt, Beth Orton, Doves)

There are plenty more, I'm sure, but there are lots of great bands around, that's for sure.
Old 04-15-02, 02:14 PM
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Originally posted by tthorn
It is pretty funny - if they'd quit obsessing over copying what was cool last year - the next Limp Bizkit/Creed/Matchbox 20/Alanis and on and on... we buying public might hear something NEW and buy it. The funny thing is, these artists are on the major rosters, but usually get dropped after a record or two of really subpar, halfassed promotional support. Examples:

- Patty Griffin (dropped by A&M)
- David Gray (dropped by Atlantic)
- David Garza (dropped by Lava/Atlantic)
- Wilco (dropped by Elektra)
- Kelly Willis (dropped by A&M)
- Aimee Mann (dropped by Interscope)
- Spoon (dropped by Elektra)

It's also true that there are some great indie labels out there it is good to pay attention to. Some examples:

- Merge Records (Superchunk, Spoon, ...Trail Of Dead)
- SpinART (Clem Snide, Ron Sexsmith)
- Matador (Yo La Tengo, Belle and Sebastian)
- Heavenly (Ed Harcourt, Beth Orton, Doves)

There are plenty more, I'm sure, but there are lots of great bands around, that's for sure.
Just thought I'd note that Wilco were dumped by Reprise and that Trail of Dead are no longer on Merge (although they still owe them one album), they are now on Interscope.

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