01.29.08
Scrapping CDs, because if you don’t your margins will go down
Here’s one of those crazy facts, which makes perfect sense to ecomonist, and mystifies the rest of us.
EMI pays £25m a year to scrap unsold CDs, yes £25 million. They pay to make them, and then they pay to scrap them. If ever there was a motivator to move to a digital distrobution method, this would appear to be it.
Why don’t they just give them away, I hear you say? Or sell them really cheaply? Because by doing so, they would undermine the value of their product, and no longer would you be willing to pay £15 of a cd, because you know that they COULD sell it for a fiver. Or £3. Or in fact have to pay somebody to take it away.
Now here’s the interesting bit, in my book; why would you ever pay £15 for a CD now? Why not download it illegally, or better yet buy it in digital format for far less, either through 7digital, or CDBaby or even iTunes. best option, buy it from the artist themselves in whatever format you like. I love getting cds in the post from fakeIndieLabel and Distraction
la said,
January 29, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Kinda makes you nostalgic for the Soviet Union, don’t it?
coldclimate said,
January 31, 2008 at 12:26 am
Not really, it makes me want to beat a bunch of narrow minded music execs with a spade until they realise people are happy to pay for music, but to make musicians richer, not middlemen who’s niche has been removed.