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In Reply to: FYI: The Graph from How Things Work is copyrighted I have emailed them posted by Teresa on September 14, 2006 at 21:54:36:
...to listen to analogue transciptions of music, a choice which was taken from her and anyone else who wanted to continue buying LP's for no reason other than profiteering and short-sightedness.Digital, and CD in particular, doesn't need 'defending' - it's been the defacto format for nearly 20 years, whereas a substantial minority who wanted to buy LP's were effectively told by the industry ...... "tough".
That's not very 'democratic', now is it? In fact, as an ethos it rather smacks of fascism. (Fascism? Surely not? Everyone knows the "corporate-state" has only our'freedoms' and well-being at heart).
BTW, the thing that surprises me is that the same industry doesn't recognize that if they want a real 'copy-protected' 'high-resolution' format, they already have it without having to resort to absurdly complex digital 'water-marking' algorithms and draconian hardware licensing, which I suspect they still don't find 'secure' enough, and is as much the reason for the impending demise of DVD-A and SACD as the 'market' (or lack of) for them. Round and round we go.
Follow Ups:
To make the masses who are like sheep (right?) accept a cheaper to produce, more profitable, but poorer sounding format. You guys kill me, it's like thinking that we really did not land on the moon.I was around for the switch over, and I remember that most people could not wait until the CD version of an album was released (remember when the Beatles catalog was released on CD) and when the customer had a choice between CD and LP they choose CD most of the time, I have been buying LP's and CD's since the late 60's and I can tell you that unless the store owner was a complete idiot, they stock what people want or they will not be in business long.
Better does not necessarily win in the market place, 8-track vs. 4-track, cassette vs. reel-to-reel, Beta vs. VHS, CD vs. MP3, SACD vs. CD, etc. No matter what you seem to think, the market wanted to move to CD there was no big conspiracy to dump LP's, actually your numbers are flawed because cassette was outselling LP at the end and you can't make an argument that cassette is better than LP.
I'm not saying that CD is better especially the early releases where the record companies did not use the original masters (in a lot of cases because they could not find them, not because they didn't want to use them), the mastering sucked. But the industry has learned a lot since those early days and some CD's sound great.
But it's all a conspiracy, the big bad corporations wanted to screw us (laughing their evil laugh).
Did you know the law in the U.S. was changed many decades ago to give corporations "rights", the same as people (individuals)?Some people seem to believe that that cartels and monopolies are the 'natural order of things'. Others seem not even to recognize that such entities exist, and that they often work against the best interests of thier 'customers'.
A conspiracy? It depends what you mean by the word. In the case of the music industry, that a de-facto cartel rigged the market and 'conspired' to inflate prices for years in the case of the CD is simply a matter of historical fact.
As for people clamouring for more CD's, I've already commented on the effectiveness of marketing in our time.
How do you think the recent U.S-led invasion of the Middle East was 'sold' to the great unwashed?
The record stores DID NOT remove cassettes from their shelves. You may not call the removal of LPs from stores a conspiracy but it was an industry mandate to move the 75% of the holdout Americans from LP to CD.I was one of the dumb ones that bought CD when it first came out, so I was part of the 25% that adapted CDs in the first 2-3 years. The other 75% had to be pushed. They never got them all and many of us left CD. But CD was a financial success and that is what matters in the music business.
"Analog is Music, Digital is mathematics"
Happy listening,
Teresa
Well put.The imperitive was always to overcharge for CD, which within a few years of it's introduction was cheaper to manufacture (and was always cheaper to distribute) than LP.
The pricing of CD's is one of the most singular examples of the defiance of basic economic 'laws' ever seen, particularly in the context of 'ecomomies of scale'. Prices should have fallen steadily throughout the late 80's and early 90's as volume went up and costs fell, but they never did. The amount of money that must have been made is mind-boggling.
It should be obvious that from the get-go the intention was to remove LP from the equation, as the conspicuous difference in price (and perceived 'value') would eventually have given even the most bamboozled pause for thought.
Please give some statutory, regulatory or case citations to back up this statement:"Did you know the law in the U.S. was changed many decades ago to give corporations "rights", the same as people (individuals)?"
Actually, in the United States, as in virtually every country in the world, a corporation is deemed to be a separate legal person for purposes of entering into and enforcing contracts and pursing claims in court. That's true in England, from whence we derived our legal system. It's also true in Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, etc., etc., etc. What's wrong with that?
Nothing changed "decades ago" in any of these nations, including the United State. I get really annoyed by such drivel.
were the laws of corporation which were passed by Congress in the US in the late part of the 19th century. Prior to that, corporations did not exist in the US and had never been envisioned by the founders. They knew the problems with trusts, as they were known in England, and wanted no part of them. They allow for conditions that undermine true free market competition. There is no mention of corporation or trust in the constitution, and Congress exceeded it's powers by passing those laws. Just because they also exist in other countries and have been accepted does not mean they are either necessarily good or inherently part of our system.
Corporations are a creature of state law. There is no such thing as a federal corporation and Congress has had nothing to do with their creation.
I am glad you can see through all that, you must truly be one of the smart ones. What I say everybody else must be such fools, what sheep, what idiots. Good I hope that those mean old corporations can sell me something else, and maybe the government can invade Canada next.I am glad there are people like you to alert us all to the danger, I for one will sleep better knowing that you are so smart to watch out for all us sheep that are too stupid to realize what is going on.
I am indeed one of the "smart ones", and find it hard to disguise my contempt for pack-mentality "group-think".
I think most people can think for themselves, decide what is right and wrong by themselves and you think most people are a bunch of cattle. Hope you have a happy life with your perfect little self.
The people voted with their wallets. If digital had stiffed in the marketplace, the music biz would still be issueing LPs, or better, some other, even better, analog format.
Here is what you can do. If you want LPs released, put up the money to pay for it. Pay for the rights to the music, pay for the mastering and production. You can have as many LPs as you're willing to pay for.Surely you will do this. Or are you just a profiteering fascist who cares more about your money than pure analog sound?
And it you yourself won't do that, why do you expect anyone else to do it for you?
Now that we've all grown up, and realized that marketing men (and the people they work for) aren't necessarily the first people from whom to expect impartiality and balance, a lot of us have realized that the old aphorism "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone" is actually a truism.The market decided, huh? That's not how I remember it going down (in the 90's), not at all.
The way I remember it, an all too pliant public, hypnotized by whizz-bangery, allowed a de-facto cartel to fleece them for an (infamously) overpriced product, from which very large profits (also infamously) very little went to many of the actual performers of the recordings on that product.
I'm not here to slag CD off per se, but I'm rather less sanguine about the availability, past present and future, of decent quality, affordable vinyl than a surprising number of the 'vinyl asylum' inmates appear to be,
The way I see it, some, er, 'positivity' about the medium (rather than an an admixture of fatalism and elitism) might even see the industry come regard it as a viable proposition again, particularly given the decline in CD sales they've been wringing their hands about for the last 5 years or more.
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