Friday, February 17, 2006
One More Problem With The Record Industry
Consumers tell record labels time and time again that CD prices are too high. (No, argue the labels, if you adjust for inflation blah blah blah -- they're TOO HIGH.) I buy tons of CDs but when I go into Tower Records looking for a 30 year old album and find it's $18.99, I walk away. One other reason album sales are slipping? Record labels like to keep it a secret when the CDs are coming out. Sure you can go to some record stores and stare at a list of new releases that might cover 10 or 20 albums --if you're lucky. But just try and suss out what's in stores without simply going in and roaming the aisles. Check out Billboard's new releases section of its website. It should contain dozens if not hundreds of titles sorted by genre. Instead, they often list about 5 CDs total for each week. Serious fans have to buy ICE, a CD release date newsletter, just to get the info that labels should be providing for free. Crazy/
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1 comment:
I've always been annoyed when I read Rolling Stone and other mags pretty regularly but still can walk into a record store and be surprised to see a new album is out by an artist I really like and I had no clue. They do a terrible job of promoting new releases.
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