Attorney General Investigates Music Price Fixing

An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian is reporting that the US Attorney General has launched an investigation into whether or not record labels are engaged in price fixing of music downloads. From the article: 'The department of justice inquiry centers on the activities of the four largest record labels: EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner Music. Subpoenas are believed to have been issued to all parties, with federal officials understood to be focusing on whether the companies have been colluding to keep the price of downloads artificially high.'"

Forgive me for plugging my site, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Another pretty good article on this subject can be found at this site [slashdot.org]

Re:The parable of the two farmers and the customer

[Aggrav8d]

But we're talking about music and music here. Your parable and the attorney general's actions are like apples and oranges.

Re:The parable of the two farmers and the customer

[Anonymous Coward]

The music industry is solely responsible for the awesome quality of music that is available to everyone, and without them, this music would never see the light of day. I don't even want to think about how we would all survive without these conglomerates!

Rule 1 of slashdot:

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter if it's apt. It doesn't matter if it's expressive. It doesn't matter if it's relevant to the situation, or if it accurately parallels reality. It doesn't even matter if it makes any sense.

If you make a post-length analogy, you will get +1 insightful.

(Rule 2 of slashdot is that if you say "I know I'm going to get moderated down for saying this, but...", you will get moderated up.)

Re:can the record labels justify the expense?

[FidelCatsro]

I would imagine it breaks down something like this

• Media & case: 0.10
• Artist fees: As little as we can
• Production: 0.75
• marketing: 2.00
• Ivory back scratcher: 5.00

Re:Dupe :-(

[Quirk]

"...so why don't we all go to Digg and set up camp at the new epicenter for geek news on the net?"

You go ahead and get things started, we'll, uhm.... be along, you know, after awhile; but whatever you do don't come back here cause we'll all be gone.

bye

How dare they!

[jimicus]

Don't they realise that 90% of albums make a loss?! That marketing and distribution is incredibly expensive? That the few artists who do make a profit essentially provide a subsidy so the record companies can go out and find new talent?

Do these busybodies not grasp that record company executives need to have two new luxury cars every year?

Do they not realise that by the time you've bribed DJs all around the world to play your music rather than the interesting demo some promising new band sent them, there's only enough money left for bonuses in the region of $20 million/year? How can record companies hope to continue attracting the best chief executives if they can only pay $20million in bonuses?

Re:The parable of the two farmers and the customer

[Kingofearth]

How about a new parable that actually fits?

What did you expect from BadAnalogyGuy?

I can see it now

[Anonymous Coward]

AG: Did you four callude to raise the price of music?

EMI: ahhh, no.
Sony: no.
BMG: er, no?
Warner: what was the question again? oh, yeah, definetly not.

AG: Well, that settles that, sorry for the inconvenience. BTW, hot dogs and hamburgers at my place tonight.

Kind of like lottery tickets....

[Kadin2048]

I always thought that the high price of ringtones was some sort of a 'stupid tax' designed to protect the general public from having to listen to the latest Snoop Dogg obnoxiousness every time some asshole's phone goes off on the train.

Obviously it's not working. Verizon, would you please, PLEASE increase the price on ringtones? How about $19.95? Wait -- I've got an even better idea -- why don't you bill it at 20 bucks per ring? You'll get right on that? Thanks.