RIAA price fixing settlement delivers ‘dud’ CDs to libraries

26 Jul 04 01:10 by Seán Byrne in category Uncategorized To news archive

Print this page

In a music industry settlement dealing with album price fixing last year, the music Industry agreed to pay out $ 67 million to consumers and another estimated $ 76 million worth of CDs to schools, colleges and libraries in 50 states. While the consumers received cheques for $ 13.86 several months ago, the RIAA chose carefully the type of CDs to give away to the libraries.

size=2>105,000 CDs went to Wisconsin libraries as part of the price fixing settlement, however the music may not be the taste of most music lovers. A good majority of the CDs were duplicates and most of the bulk consisted of Classical, Opera and Spanish titles. There was some pop, country and rock including live recordings, however no recent chart music.

While the librarians welcomed the free CDs for their libraries, they are confused by the amount of duplicates and less known titles in the lot. To reduce the amount of duplicates and unwanted CDs, the library plans on exchanging CDs with other libraries and selling excess and unwanted CDs at a discount and using the profits to purchase music worth adding to their libraries.

face=Verdana> src="http://www.cdfreaks.com/contentimages/newsimages/1363395904" align=right border=0
>Wisconsin libraries have received more than 105,000 CDs as part of a national settlement with the recording industry to settle a price-fixing lawsuit, but few are choices most listeners would opt for.

face=Verdana>The selections are raising a few eyebrows and unlikely to get a lot of use. Among the several hundred CDs given to the Charles M. White Public Library were many duplicates, including 29 copies of Handel’s Italian Cantatas and 21 copies of Mozart’s Le Nozze Di Figaro.

face=Verdana>“It will take a while to catalogue before we can release them to the public,” said Bob Stack, director of Portage County Public Library. “But something is better than nothing.”
To get rid of the duplicates, the library tried to unload many of the CDs at the book sale during Crazy Days. Hundreds remain, Stack said.

face=Verdana>Among the 592 CDs shipped to the Marshfield Public Library, there are 22 copies of Ricky Martin’s “Sound Loaded,” 20 copies of Samantha Mumba’s “Gotta Tell You,” 16 copies of “The Three Tenors in Concert,” 12 copies of Georg Philipp Telemann’s “String Concertos/Musica Antiqua KÅ¡ln-Goebel,” and 12 copies of Mandy Moore’s self-titled album.

Read the href="http://www.wisinfo.com/journal/spjlocal/292464933486275.shtml"
target=_new>full story here.

While many consumers were happy to receive a small cheque to compensate for being previously overcharged, it looks like the music industry decided there was no way they were going to give away popular or chart CDs as the other part of their price-fixing settlement. Maybe the music industry had a big backlog of unwanted CDs gathering dust on shop shelves and figured that this would be an ideal way of ‘disposing’ of them. :p

Source: Stevens Point Journal

0 Comments

Hello guest,: To benefit from all extra features you need to log in or sign up.

RIAA price fixing settlement delivers ‘dud’ CDs to libraries

0 Comments

Post a comment

Most popular headlines

Grandmother is falsely accused of file-sharing (11)

PS3 closing ground on Xbox 360 (1)

Blame Blu-ray for lack of PS3 game downloads (14)

Murdoch: Avatar DVD won't be 3D (17)

Active Commenters