I keep wondering when the RIAA is going to shift their focus from P2P over to blogs or even Usenet. I love browsing through blogs where long out of print vinyl is shared. I can't tell you how many of these OOP recordings would be in my collection if they ever came out on CD (and I'd never even heard of them before). But while looking through the blogs I'm amazed how many people set up sites offering brand new material. Seems like a pretty easy target for the RIAA to go after, but I never hear about it.

I don't think CDs should ever be over $10. I will sometimes pay more, but not very often.

while i'm totally on your side with everything you said; your first statement is purely a matter of opinion. i think the point being made by those who claim the opposite is that DVDs generally come with extras whereas CDs do not.

although that does seem to be changing lately with each new release...

rotfl

Since DVDs were brought up, it's also worth noting that they are sold under a dynamic pricing model. A DVD comes out, is on sale it's first week, and then hovers around $19.99 for a couple months. Soon it's MSRP gets dropped $5 and stores have it on sale for $10. Within a year, it's not unusual to see it for $5 or $6 as part of a sale.

CDs, on the other hand, are on sale their first week and maybe a few others if it's a popular or rising artist. After that, there's almost never a price reduction. Let's say I want to go pick up Counting Crows first album. Best Buy is still charging $13.99 for it. That's just fucking absurd. Back catalog titles like that should be around $5, tops. The record companies can produce them dirt cheap, so they'd still be profitable, and the reduced price would make older albums much more of an impulse buy for a lot of music fans. The music industry can look to DVD for a great example of how to cut piracy off at the knees and increase profits, but it would rather blame external factors than evolve its business model.

^^^
Good point.

I work at a college, and we got an email about all the changes. Here's my favorite part:

The pre-litigation letters offer the allegedly offending students terms of settlement at a “discounted settlement rate” to avoid litigation.

<Yakov>Discount law suit? America, what a country!</Yakov>

And heres what they recommend to our college:

Review and update their peer-to-peer (P2P) network policies to include information about the RIAA’s new approach

Distribute the updated P2P policies to faculty and students

Consult with legal counsel regarding communications to students identified in the RIAA “pre-litigation” letters

Consult with legal counsel to determine which of the other actions suggested by the RIAA are appropriate for institutions to take Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Yup, all of the above will work like a charm...They allready block Myspace and Facebook though.

I was complaining to a friend about this. Most of my friends never buy cds, I am about the only one. They find them too expensive. My friends would buy older stuff for $5-7 if available. The only reason I see for them not to do this is possibly the deals with artist royalties.

I had this same dicussion with someone. Except I can't understand how a multi-million dollar movie made one or two years ago can be had for under $10 while a CD, 10 or even 20 years after it's been produced, still costs $15.

All I know is I would definitely own more Pink Floyd, Moody Blues, and Beatles CDs if they followed the pricing of DVDs, and actually were sold for $5.00-$9.00 per CD. And in some instances, you find these older CDs for more than $15.00.

I'd buy more music if they followed DVD pricing as well. Since pricing doesn't, I have to rely on used CD's...but i remember the RIAA wanted a piece of that pie too. -rolleyes-

I just don't trust companies that lie to their customers or kick them in the teeth. They treat their most loyal customers like shit. How other do you explain the repeated bonus tracks that they put on CDs a month after it is released.

So, I'm an honest customer that just bought the new Saliva CD. A month later I walk into my local Best Buy and see the SAME CD with bonus tracks that I NOW do not have.

Now, explain to me how this LOYAL customer must feel like. Well, you know the answer to that question.

I USED to be that loyal customer but I got tired of getting an album with 1 or 3 good songs. Or I would get a good CD and then they would add 3 bonus tracks and expect me to buy the EXACT same CD to get these added tracks.

Nope, the RIAA did a wonderful job of making me feel like I was getting ripped off week after week after week after week......

Needless to say I am NOT alone. The RIAA made their bed, they can lay in it now because I have lost all respect for any of their companies.

From the Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/
University snubs RIAA
By John Oates
Published Friday 23rd March 2007 10:10 GMT

The University of Nebraska has complained that the Recording Industry Ass. of America wants it to do its work of tracking down file sharers.

The University IT system assigns a new Internet Protocol number to a computer everytime it is switched on. But it only stores this information for a month or so. Although the RIAA can track people sharing music to individual IP numbers, it cannot link that number to an individual student.

So although the RIAA is ready to sue 36 students for sharing music files it can only identify nine of them, and it regards this as a problem for the university.

A spokeswoman for the RIAA said: "One would think universities would understand the need to retain these records," according to the Omaha World Herald.

But the university made clear it did not believe it had any role in doing the RIAA's work for it. In fact, a lawyer for the university wrote to the RIAA asking to be reimbursed for the cost of tracking down students.

The university's chief information officer Walter Weir told the paper: "We're spending taxpayer dollars tracking down RIAA problems. Are we an agent of the RIAA? Why aren't they paying us for this?"

The university said each requests costs it $11 to deal with - and the RIAA has sent the university over 1,000 such requests.

The lobby group advised the university to block all peer-to-peer software to combat the problem, but the university refused because such programmes have academic uses too.

More from the Omaha World Herald (http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_pag...u_sid=2348353). ®

I think the RIAA is run by Sony.

I was at film panel with producers from Fox, Paramount, Universal, and Lion's Gate and they were going on about the ridiculous practice of the RIAA. I thought that was kinda cool hearing it from suits in film industry.

Um...why exactly is that?

I get the feeling that nobody outside of the RIAA actually likes the RIAA (and i'm sure some in the RIAA don't like it either).