Claims is part of an effort to listen to customers complaining about high CD prices, but CRIA blames piracy.HMV Canada announced last Thursday that effective immediately it has decided to to slash CD prices by an average 20%, with "...with some titles reduced as much as 33 per cent." According to them this means a savings of as much as $10 on some of the more popular titles in stock, but is it merely a losing effort to prop up a dying physical media industry? "We asked our valued customers their opinion on the cost of CDs in Canada and they told us they wanted lower prices," said Humphrey Kadaner, President of HMV Canada. "This move is another step in HMV Canada's ongoing commitment to making music accessible and affordable." With CD sales in a free fall, and the closure of almost every national music retailer in the United States and elsewhere, it's certainly nervous about the viability of its future. "We were aware that our customers were pleased with our new release pricing but they felt our back catalogue didn't offer as much value, so we offered to reduce the prices," said Saundra Bianchi, head of marketing at HMV Canada. "This is a more proactive approach to potentially greater declining sales," she said, acknowledging "a year-over-year decline in terms of how many CDs are purchased physically" as opposed to digitally. The CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) tries to spoil this act of goodwill however, blaming illegal downloading for the real reason behind the price drop. "Canada has the highest rate of illegal downloading in the world," he then told CBC News. "It's affecting our ability to build a digital industry." It also labels it as a simple effort to lure more people into purchasing music from retailers. "The effect is to put CDs in a price range that will attract more people," said Graham Henderson, the Association's president. He then makes an odd reference to the ability of other countries like the US and the UK "..to stem the tide of illegal downloading by updating laws and increasing enforcement He says that calls by the CRIA to update the country's copyright laws have gone unheeded. "A succession of Canadian governments have sat on their hands and done nothing," he said. Obviously the tide has not been "stemmed" against illegal downloading anywhere in the world, save maybe North Korea or Iran, so it makes you wonder what he really means. The fact that these days people can browse, preview, and even purchase music online all without having to step foot in a music retailer should've made HMV at the very least institute a price drop a long time ago so that they could remain competitive. For the CRIA president to blame it on illegal file-sharing or P2P programs is just nonsense and hides the true reason, which is that music, for better or worse, has become a form of entertainment just like any other and so thus must compete for a finite amount of a consumer's free time and financial resources. To try and make an individual get in his car, drive to a store, browse around, and then try make him pay extra for a bloated, overpriced CD is beyond contemptible, and is just part of the real reason why CDs are dying a slow and painful death. Portability and consumer choice are the others. A price drop should be just the beginning of "reinventing" music distribution. I mean how long do they expect us to lug around clunky CDs and portable CD players? I think that music wunderkind producer Rick Rubin has the real answer for how to fix the ailing music industry in that that its future lies in a subscription model, much like paid cable on a television set. "You would subscribe to music," Rubin explained, as he settled on the velvet couch in his library. "You'd pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you'd like. In this new world, there will be a virtual library that will be accessible from your car, from your cellphone, from your computer, from your television. Anywhere. The iPod will be obsolete, but there would be a Walkman-like device you could plug into speakers at home. You'll say, 'Today I want to listen to ... Simon and Garfunkel,' and there they are. The service can have demos, bootlegs, concerts, whatever context the artist wants to put out. And once that model is put into place, the industry will grow 10 times the size it is now." It may a difficult pill for them to swallow, I mean they have, after all, enjoyed being the proverbial music "gatekeepers" for more than 50 years. But, times have changed and the music industry will eventually be forced to change whether it likes it or not. Rubin sees no other solution to the music industry's dilemma. "Either all the record companies will get together or the industry will fall apart and someone like Microsoft will come in and buy one of the companies at wholesale and do what needs to be done," he said. "The future technology companies will either wait for the record companies to smarten up, or they'll let them sink until they can buy them for 10 cents on the dollar and own the whole thing." Some may say that he's wrong about his prediction for the future of the music biz, his own co-head of Columbia Records included, who long ago advocated a mind numbing proposition that record labels get a 50% cut from music artists real profits, touring, merchandising and online revenue. But, Rubin does know one thing and that's music. Record labels forgot about the heart of their business a long time ago, and at least he's a true purist who recognizes that, making his prediction and remedies not so outlandish after all. Either way, at least HMV is actually listening to their customers, the people actually willing to PAY for physical CDS and make up the decreasing figures the RIAA and the CRIA trot out in an increasingly tired argument that 'file-traffickers" are to blame when it was decades of artificially inflated prices and the trend towards forgettable "bubble-gum" pop nonsense for a number of years that are the real root causes. Pricing, content, and distribution, is it really that hard to understand? At least HMV is listening. Looking for more stuff to watch or download?Universal exec says 'music artists need us!'Is 2007 the year the CD died?3 Quick Ways to Watch Movies for FREE!
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We as consumers must realize what we are really paying for when we buy a CD or DVD. With a CD the case and "pretty" art booklet, and the LABEL on the case. The music is the last things and probably the cheapest part of the whole package.
With DVDs its simple we again are paying for the packaging and label, but mostly the "extra content" If the MPAA came out with DVDs with just a simple cover and the MOVIE ONLY the price would have to drop considerably, say down to between $16-12 a DVD. Do this and people might buy them more. I mean really think about it, how many of us watch the "extra" stuff more than once or at all!
HMV is on the right track, but what about the movies? They're on the right ttrack, but there is still a LONG, LONG way to go!! Until the consumer can get their music and movies without fear of being sued and what not, that is a day all this shit ends!!