“The five largest music companies and the three largest music retailers will pay $67.4 million in cash to settle a CD price fixing case launched by New York and Florida two years ago, State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said on Monday.”
“In August 2000, 43 U.S. states and commonwealths said an industry practice called “minimum advertised pricing” (MAP), under which the labels subsidized advertising for retailers that agreed not to sell CD’s below a minimum price determined by the labels, artificially inflated the price of CDs between 1995 and 2000, violating federal and state anti-trust laws. ”
“The five record labels — Vivendi Universal’s Universal Music Group, Sony Music, Bertelsmann AG’s BMG Music Group, AOL Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Music Group and EMI Group PLC — and the three retailers, Musicland Stores Corp., Trans World Entertainment Corp. and Tower Records, agreed to stop using MAP policies as part of the settlement.”
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