> Hallelujah, someone finally gets it...ten bucks for a CD and $6.70 to take
> a flier on a new artist.  The question is why did it take them so long?

And Stewart, you know what?-- it's probably a case of "too little, too late"...
Another cliche that comes to mind is "closing the barn door after the horse
has run off" or however that cliche goes. It's doubtful the other major labels 
will fall into lockstep behind another major label's price-point shift.....they
haven't all done it before....but who knows? Everything's heading in that
direction anyway....

You probably read all about the "death of the CD and DVD" yesterday, 
right...Here's the press release: http://makeashorterlink.com/?I38D217C5
Of course, companies like this one are always predicting the end of the world...
but it's all connected to what's going on behind the scenes-- the end of CDs 
and the major label's rapid movement *away* from selling collections of 
tracks on CD, or vinyl or whatever, *towards* selling invidual songs, via
downloads....

The majors are, as far as I can tell, really starting to move toward "collecting" 
(i.e. merging together) so that they can sell their "content" (i.e. catalog) on a 
piece-by-piece basis, via downloads or whatever. I know Warner is moving
towards this, rapidly -- they're consistently talking about moving the calculation
of artist royalties (and publishing too, I suppose) from an album-based formula 
to individual track by track formulas too...Universal and Warner, in fact, are
working together on coming up with a "standard" royalty calculation formula
that takes into account the rapid changes in the way music is going to be sold
(and is being sold now).

One guy who works in WMG royalties (where I work, though my job is coming
to an end soon) tells me that *within five years* WMG won't be focusing on 
putting together CD albums for sale but rather be focusing on how to find 
ways to sell the same tracks independently to the consumer. 

This is real...and it's happening right now, behind the closed doors...the CD is on 
the way out....this is one reason why Warner sold off their CD manufacturing
plants recently -- they won't need them in the future. And major labels will
probably start shifting away from traditional store-based retail towards other
ways to deliver the songs they own....which affects CD sales, which means the
way they will make up for it is is (a) they'll make fewer CDs, (b) they'll move
away from selling collections of tracks....


Ok, I'll stop....

Bryan