ChrisB

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertain...ic/3416437.stm

"CD-Wow! currently charges £8.99 for a CD in the Top 75 albums chart, but will now have to add a £2 surcharge to any CDs delivered in the UK or Ireland from this Sunday, director Philip Robison told BBC News Online."

So much for global market places and the like

andrewdelvard

The *****. Real pity.

rogp

In my opinion the moves by the British Phongraphic industry to put an end to cheap imports wil only hasten 'piracy' through downloading.

I can't remember the last time I bought an album

flat4

sounds about right

Neil Smalley

All it will do is drive people to use P2P even more.
CDW not selling CD's that are released in the US first will have as much impact as the 2 quid surcharge.

Ohh look, the new XXX's alubumn is'nt due out for 2 months in Europe. I wonder if (insert p2p software here) has it.

Oh look, there it is, for free too..

The sooner these dinosaurs realise that people would rather pay a nominal free on a track by track basis the better.

Actually i'm surprised artists don't bypass the record labels altogether and run the service themselves. They'd get more money and we'd get what we want.

ozzy

[rant mode on]
That's just so typical of the UK these days. Manufacturing and service's (e.g. call-centres) get offloaded abroad and then get imported back into the country and taxed.

Everyone's always after a cut. You cut out a few middle-men and they find some way to make some more money for themselves. Usually it's the government applying some fecking stealth tax.
I'm sure the artist and record company get the same cut whether we buy here in the UK or from abroad.

So who exactly needs the BPI anyway? Why do we need another middle-man between the Artist, Record company and the consumer?

Ironically the BPI have a petition wanting support to reduce the VAT on music. We'll need a big feckin discount after they've forced costs up by another £2 - *****.

[/rant mode on]

Stefan

ozzy

Has anyone checked out the Coca Cola music website? Governments and local industry are afraid of official Internet music downloads because they will find it hard to justify any local taxing. If I'm downloading tracks at 99 cents, how can the UK get their own cut out of me?

All this region stuff is nonsense nowadays. They have a mindset of 100 years ago were it took months for news to travel around the World.

If XXX releases an album, why the heck should anyone wait 2-3 months simply because they're not in the same country on continent?
The whole concept and benefits of the Internet and modern communications means that you can reach your target audience almost immediately regardless of where they are in the World.

The only valid reason I can see for keeping releases back is to justify (or hide) local price differences.

They don't bother adapting to modern life, instead they would rather use scare tactics to 'force' people into their ways.

Stefan

[Edited by ozzy - 1/21/2004 1:28:02 PM]

jjones

the cd is dead, long live p2p

Hobo_Jojo

does the £2 off trick on cd wow still work?

LG John

This is good news. Now you can pay over £10 for a CD legit or you can illegally copy it. No brainer I doubt this is a victory for the music industry.

Neil Smalley

I wonder if CDW could introduce a £2 voucher for UK customers with every CD purchase.

I.e Buy one CD at 10.99, using the voucher you get the next one for 8.99?

Scooby-Doo

On the import front, does this mean HMV, tower records etc can no longer have an imported record section ?

Hobo_Jojo

theres already a way to get £2 off a cd

www.avforums.com

unclebuck

"I am delighted that we have been able to resolve this case on agreed terms," BPI chairman Peter Jamieson said.

LOL Truely an industry lead by donkeys. Can't help thinking that the once great British Music Industry is destined to go the way of British car manufacturing - down the pan.

UB

Dream Weaver

*****, i was quite happy to pay for legit music at £7 and £8 a CD, even with a 5 day or so wait.

If it goes above £10, looks like it will be time to dust off Kazaa and get DL'ing again

Dream Weaver

I meant the BPi are *****, not you lot btw

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

Why not just order them direct from the Hong Kong site and get them delivered here

http://www5.cd-wow.com.hk/

would that work?

Neil Smalley

Not sure. They could just add 2 quid on, if your shipping country is the UK. People are finding out.

Fat Boy Slim

I agree with all of you on this I would not mind paying £6.99 for a CD or DVD but the price of them is just crazy! Does this mean that Play.com will also be made to do the same???? Alsolute gits the lot of them.

Dont bother with Kazza get yourself on Soulseek all you could wish for!

When will this country learn??? I think we are all at breaking point with everything going on! Only a matter of time beofer well all snap and go down the pan!

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Now, there's a nice little business idea for someone. Have an office elsewhere in Europe and charge £1 each to forward small parcels on to the UK. Could be a very nice little earner once you've also negotiated bulk discounts with a courier for shipping to the UK

AlexM@work

My biggest issue with the BPI, or the British part of the multinational music publishers (as appropriate) is the apparent wholesale introduction of so-called 'protected' CDs to the UK market. Interestingly, CDs marketed in the US and Asia are typically not protected (yet).

I now cannot listen to almost any uk-bought CD issued within the last six months on my PC, unless I want to hear it as a 128kbit/sec MP3 file. If I wanted to do that, I would be downloading from the internet and saving myself £13-£15. Even some conventional CD players have problems with these disks, and the integrety of the bitstream is compromised. It is not for them to dictate which devices I can or cannot use to listen to my music. I though I was buying a licence to listen to the contents of the CD on any CD player, a term with a clear technical definition which is policed and trademarked by Phillips and Sony.

Aaah says the BPI - we label the disks as protected, and don't call them CDs as they aren't compliant with the red book digital audio standard.. well then. thats ok (not).

That is fine with me - I for one will boycott any label who markets a CD with protection mechanisms from now on, and get them from 'other sources'.


[Edited by AlexM@work - 1/21/2004 6:11:16 PM]

[Edited by AlexM@work - 1/21/2004 6:11:58 PM]

Bonehead

Looks like a winning situation for E-Bay!

The niavity of these people (BPI) staggers me.

Tony

V45DSM

Where's the ******* consumer association - they should have picked this case up! They're supposed to be looking after our interests. Has anyone said why the nips get cheap CD's and we pay 70% more for ours?!!!

[Edited by V45DSM - 1/21/2004 8:03:27 PM]

Chris L

What a joke I cannot see how the record industry can in any way justify this when the music you are talking about is exactly the same. The CDs are almost certainly made in the same factory. What a complete load of boll***s.

The music industry is full of dinousours (spelling?) and like them them, they will be wiped out unless they change their ways.

Chris

V45DSM

Dinosaurs

Huxley

For those of you that would like BPI Email address here you go general@bpi.co.uk

Roll on likes of Kazar and ebay etc etc **** the BPI it's there loss but there again were all like sheep sometimes [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

But I bet we will still keep funding the greedy ******* and buying the CD's over here at the normal UK over inflated prices [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

[Edited by Huxley - 1/21/2004 8:59:26 PM]

hedgehog

It occurs to me that the reason the BPI and others were so excited to get the price of CDs back up was that the savings were coming from the cut for middle management, accountants and the like. I doubt if the artist was actually making less money.

In effect all that extra cash just funds people with meaningless titles and no real purpose in life.

However, these are also the people who drive stupid ideas, in any organisation, with enthusiasm and utter ignorance.

The current situation is very interesting. The BPI, or a similar organisation my memory isn't good, has said that they will start policing P2P networks and demanding names from ISPs. They they intend to launch legal attacks on some kid in his bedroom.

What this will do is drive the development of a P2P system that is secure for the users. By this time there will be genuine hatred of the record companies and people will download their music just to spite the middle management in such organisations.

I think they've shot themselves in the foot big time.

Robertio

iTrader: (1)

Thanks Huxley, have sent them the following:

Dear Sir/Madam,

As a regular CD Wow customer I have just been notified that following a case with yourselves they now have to add a 2 pound surcharge to any CDs sent to the UK.

I would just like to congratulate yourselves on one of the most amazing pieces of short sightedness I have ever heard of.

For people who were not willing to pay the UKs over-inflated prices for CDs CD Wow was perfect, they could order the music they wanted and get it delivered to their door with the artist getting their share, all for a fair price. Now all that is going to happen is that these same people who were not willing to pay UK prices will just download the music instead and the artist doesn't get any money despite all their hard work. If you don't believe this go on just about any internet forum and have a read around, this has really put peoples noses out of joint.

Should we expect to see the import sections in HMV and such like suffer the same fate? or because they already charge extra for imported DVDs are they going to be exempt?

At the moment ninty percent of the music that makes it into the charts in the UK is commercialised rubbish, dross that has been produced on the back of equally bad TV programmes aimed at the teenage market. Might the British Music Industry not be better placed to look at what is going wrong closer to home, and ensuring that a wider range of music which has something beyond a glossy top coat and a shelf life of five minutes makes it out to the general public? Maybe then they might be willing to pay for a product they like, and you could perhaps even look at why music costs more in the UK than the rest of the world - if it cost about the same in the first place (and had the same release date worldwide) the public wouldn't be using places like CD Wow in the first place.

The last time such a ridiculously ill-thought scheme made it out for public consumption was regional encoding for DVDs. My what a marvelous success that was, what happened? the public either went out and bought DVD players that could play any region, or bought a cheap machine not made by one of the companies involved in DVD production - the manufacturer didn't care so left it with an easy any region hack. Those with a genuine interest in films still get them from the US or wherever, all that it managed to do was alienate a percentage of the buying public, quite a few to the point where they now wont by region 2 discs out of principle. A lesson to be learnt perhaps?

I really do hope you see sense and have this surcharge removed.

Regards
...

Huxley

Just got this from CD Wow

CD WOW! - An Important Announcement

Dear Member,

The UK Major record companies through their mouth piece the BPI* have unfortunately restricted the UK and Irish consumers right to enjoy the freedom of the World Wide Web.

As from this weekend, any CD ordered for delivery to the UK and Ireland will incur a surcharge as we are only able to deliver CDs manufactured within the EU (more expensive).

Delivery to the rest of the world will not be affected.

You only have a few days left - so order now!

Be quick to make the best of our current low low prices while you can still exercise your right to choose.

We will of course still be supplying UK and Irish customers but as of Sunday 25th January 2004 a surcharge of £2.00 (3.00 Euros) per CD will apply.

Please Note - our prices of DVDs and Games will remain unaffected

Warmest Regards,
CD WOW!

spufus

iTrader: (2)

It would almost be acceptable if the artists benefited from the increase.
As usual it's Joe public who gets fu##ed and has to pay for the suits while the artists get sh*t.
Not that I'm bitter!