On Sun, Jun 29, 2003 at 09:10:48AM -0600, Jef Barnhart wrote:
> >
> > Actually, the current laws do favor the large companies. Large companies
> > control major stores inventories (you want to sell all of sony CDs? then do
> > not carry these small companies CDs - nice monopoly) and therefore they
> > control who can come in easily. I suspect that much of the reason for
> > stopping download-able music is not to stop "theft", but to stop the creation
> > of small labels. It is one of the problem with congress and any corrupt
> > admin.
>
> How do you know that Sony is doing that? I doubt that Sony, Warner, WEA
> and any other major label is doing those things. Most record stores are
> in it for the money. If the band does not sell albums then they don't
> sell them. Supply and demand pure and simple.
Except that in the real world, supply and demand are rarely pure and
simple. You say "if the band does not sell albums ..." as if it were a
matter of either/or, when of course most real-life bands (like just
about any enterprise) sell either a lot or a little. That's not just an
academic distinction, because I think the judgment as to how popular a
product has to be in order to make the cut has a great deal to do with
the scale of the company doing the selling.
What tends to happen, then, is that large chains carry mostly or only
mainstream products--i.e. those that sell well all over the country or a
large region, whereas independents can and often do cater to a local or
specialized market. So in a Libertarian paradise where consumers are all
rational and independent-minded, and the marketplace is perfectly
responsive to their demands, and all businesses have an equal
opportunity to market their products, what you would expect to happen is
that independent retailers would have a substantial presence in any
diverse metropolitan market ... so that, if you live in Semolina,
Kansas, you might have to put up with whatever MegaMusic is selling this
year, but in Denver, you'd have a very large selection, and in New York
or San Francisco, you could find just about any CD that exists.
But that's not what I see happening. I will concede that there are some
good things happening in the marketplace--I'm going to talk about books,
since I rarely visit music stores these days, and I think the book and
recorded-music trades are fairly similar--in larger cities there are
some very good independent retailers (e.g. the Tattered Cover), and
there are also chains that make a point of maintaining a large and
sophisticated inventory (say, Borders). Nonetheless, the dominant trend
in almost every business is "Walmartization"--the big guys get bigger,
and the little (or less-big) guys go under.
So my point is: it's easy to say, "supply and demand." But I think if
we, as consumers and citizens, want to have a role in shaping the
marketplace, it's not enough to "vote with our dollars," because,
whether we know it or not, our choices are influenced and limited by
corporate interests. So we need to look at who's shaping the
marketplace, and how and why--and if we don't like what we see, it is up
to us to find ways to change it. That might mean, in some cases, simply
being a little more careful about what we buy or where we buy it; in
other cases it might take legislation. But Step One is to try to
understand what's really happening in the marketplace.
--
Matt Gushee When a nation follows the Way,
Englewood, Colorado, USA Horses bear manure through
mgushee at havenrock.com its fields;
http://www.havenrock.com/ When a nation ignores the Way,
Horses bear soldiers through
its streets.
--Lao Tzu (Peter Merel, trans.)