Music Industry Pays $67M Fine For Price Fixing

Krelnik writes "Reuters is reporting that the music industry is paying a $67.4 Million settlement to end a lawsuit where they were accused of artificially inflating CD prices at retail. Yeah, P2P is causing their problems. Sure, sure it is. Here's the story at Reuters UK."

No surprise here....

[Seek4th]

Ok, so it costs like $15 for a CD, even though there is so many different artists out there. Give me a break RIAA, I buy your CDs, least you could do is offer me some sort of a deal.

Where's my cheque?

[WildBeast]

Do I get any part of that amount?

Let's write a law

[pussycat]

Let's write a law to make it legal to hack* RIAA lawyers when we suspect them of "pirating" our money.

* hack meaning to chop into little pieces

Drop in the bucket

[siliconshock.com]

Isn't this the amount they spend on promoting N*suck during the superbowl? They will just regain the cost of the fine when I pay the $21.99 for the new Brittany cd anyways!

$75.7 million in CDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

The five largest music companies and three of the USA's largest music retailers agreed Monday to pay $67.4 million and distribute $75.7 million in CDs to public and non-profit groups to settle...

75 million in CDs? So what's that buy nowadays, 20, 30 CDs?

So are they going to lower prices now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah right. When hell... hey wait a minute - massive climatic change [slashdot.org]? Maybe there is hope...

Re:It had to happen

[MaxVlast]

Have you seen the headquarters of Sony Records? Potted palm trees aren't cheap, mister. Think of the trees!

Re:Drop in the bucket

[Idarubicin]

They will just regain the cost of the fine when I pay the $21.99 for the new Brittany cd anyways!

The real problem here is that anybody is paying for a Britney CD.

Understand, in this case I'm most definitely not advocating piracy.

Re:I wonder...

[charon_on_acheron]

You should send a letter to the RIAA, and explain about this. They probably have never heard about the possibility of P2P helping sales.

Of course, when the cops arrest you for admitting to music piracy remember, IANAL. ;^)

Re:Priceless...

[bizitch]

I've been collecting my refund now for about ohh... 3 or 4 years now (When did p2p get hot again?)

Re:this is good news

[SmlFreshwaterBuffalo]

At most any local parking lot. You're sure to find your 1 cent, which would be your fair share, lying around there somewhere.

WHAT!?!?!?!

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

They don't even give money to the Artists, so I don't think you're going to get any.

Re:Where's my cheque?

[djupedal]

You will see your part when they raise prices to pay the fine :)

how to succeed in recording industry

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Massively Overcharge
2. Get fined 14% of the amount you overcharged
3. ???
4. PROFIT!!!!

Re:only 67M?

[Dalroth]

"goto www.half.com"

No, I'm not a programmer, I swear! :)

Bryan

Re:Great

[Evangelion]

SO people complain when CDs are too expensive, but also when they are too cheap?

You mean there aren't supposed to be different people in this world? With different opinions, even?

Damn, I must have missed the hivemind meeting.

NOT AT ALL

[FunkyELF]

Columbia house will offer you a dead :)
All kidding aside though, it really isn't a suprise at all. Have you ever seen a CD cheaper than the same thing on a tape? It costs them under a penny to produce a CD in under a second while it costs bundles to mass produce tapes. If tapes and cds were the same price, i wouldn't say anything. If tapes were 50 cents more than a cd, i wouldn't say anything, but when you charge more for something that costs less to produce just because of its superior quality some will say its 'whatever the market will bear', while others call it price fixing.
P2P is awesome, nothing will be done to stop it. What is File and Print Sharring or running an FTP server if not P2P? P2P will hopefully take enough money away from the record industry that we will be able to go from
a: choosing an $18 CD from the 200 or so artists that have been played on the radio/mtv in the past year
to
b: choosing a $5 CD from 5,000 artists who make equally good music but don't lip sync too well N'Suck or have a face good enough to paste on top of porn star bodies and post all over the internet Britney or can play awesome live shows but don't have hollywood making million dollar videos for their lame music Lincoln Park.

Hopefully we will get more variety and less MTV / Hollywood bullshit in our music.

I'm just waiting for a similar lawsuit to follow for Hollywood charging ridiculous prices for DVDs just because they contain footage that wasn't good enough to make it in the actual film....Tell ya what, how about I pay $20 for the DVD without any extra crap, and if i feel the urge to hear it in Pakastani or want to watch some deleted scenes, i'll come back and buy the other half for another 10 bux.

I'm just rambling, its late...But as far as the music industry goes,its right up there in the list of things that have power which shouldn't...Microsft/MTV/AOL/Bush goodnight bedtime

Re:No surprise here....

[Kwikymart]

What if Celine's latest album is crap?

That kind of question is a priori.

Re:Out of curiosity...

[Alsee]

$67 million cash + maybe $3 million in CD's for schools (actual cost, not retail cost)

They probably spent that much on lawyers fighting the case.

-

Correction

[Snork Asaurus]

Sorry to reply to my own post, but I have made a serious error in my calculations - I forgot to include the artists' royalties that they'll have to pay. So, instead of $1,114,000.00 cost to the record industry, make that $1,114,003.65. My apologies for the oversight.

Re:let;s tell lawyer jokes

[commodoresloat]

So you're locked in a room with Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and a lawyer. You have a gun, but only two bullets. What do you do?

Shoot the lawyer twice.

Re:No it doesent

[blair1q]

It's less than Madonna's first big contract with Sony. It's a small fraction of Michael Jackson's contracts. It's not much more than Mariah Carey got.

It's Tommy Mottola's wall-safe money.

The lawyers get a third, the rest of us get 50-cents-off coupons for Chicago MCMXVIIIII.

Re:hrm

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote:
"I know if I were on the board of directors, I'd be asking for the head of the person who cost me this fine, and getting something signed in blood by the people who I can decapitate if it happens again."

Sorry, Only Ozzy can get things signed in blood. ;o)

Re:this is good news

[quintessent]

Heh. If you mod me down, I'll introduce you to my sister.

Re:And at a board meeting, a single tear is shed..

[dasunt]

I have a theory that what geeks need is a large advertising budget. We need commercials on TV that tells our side of the story.

Imagine it...

View of a long haired pale man hunched over a keyboard
Johnny is a hacker. But he doesn't live in his parent's basement. He doesn't work for an evil foreign government. He's not part of a group that spells their name with numbers. No, Johnny works for the record companies. Under a proposed US law, Johnny will have the right to hack into your computer and break it. The record companies are very concerned with getting the ability to hack your computer - even though they aren't concerned about lower CD prices. They were recently convicted of overcharging Americans roughly half a billion dollars for CDs.

See, we need an agency to mix the FUD our way. :)

Re:Wow. That gotta hurt!

[operagost]

That's pretty much what Microsoft does when they donate "millions of dollars" worth of their own software to schools.

Justifies P2P downloading!

[gosand]

OK, so the RIAA owes me. They can subtract all the music I have "pirated" from the bill. I bet they still owe me money.

New Meanings

[offlerthecrocgod]

"We believe our policies were pro-competitive ..." obviuosly they are reffering to a new meaning of the word competitive....of which I am not aware of one with the total opposite meaning....ummm now I see why they though Napster was bad when it was actually GOOD , right gang?