This is what's wrong with the Rolling Stones, U2, Eagles...

And all of the other washed up bands who sell out to corporate America and play music just make tons of money. It really bugs the hell out of me. Then we wonder why radio is crap. Glad I am going to see a band tonight that doesn't rely on the MTV's of the world to make good music.
**********************************

Oct. 7, 2003, 10:26AM

Stones play favorites
Retailers incensed at Best Buy exclusive
Reuters News Service
LOS ANGELES -- If music retailers needed another warning that their future is imperiled from slackening sales, veteran rockers the Rolling Stones have given it to them.

The British band snubbed U.S. record stores late last week by anointing mass market electronics chain Best Buy Co. as the only seller of its new DVD, Four Flicks, for four months, and independent record store owners are seething.

From Nov. 11 through the holiday rush, traditional music retailers will be forced to watch as potential customers flock to Best Buy to snap up the four-disc package being sold for $29.99.

As the music industry reels from plunging sales resulting in part from Internet piracy, they also are facing heightened competition from mass merchants like Best Buy and Target Corp. that control about 55 percent of U.S. music sales.

These giants often use their muscle to sell music as loss-leading products in hopes that a customer will walk out with a newly released $9.99 CD and a $1,000 TV or refrigerator.

Increasingly, the mass market vendors are entering into exclusive deals with top bands such as U2 and the Eagles, although the exclusive sales windows for those acts lasted weeks rather than months.

Such deals are shortsighted and hurt not only traditional retailers but also the music industry as a whole, said Clark Benson, chief executive officer of Almighty Institute of Music Retail, which helps record labels work with music stores.

"The more that a mass merchant like Best Buy ends up having an exclusive, the more it hurts these pure-play record stores," Benson said. "Those stores are the ones where people are really getting turned on to new stuff, not the mass merchants."

Benson said more than 1,100 chain and independent record stores have closed in 2003, making it hard for consumers to stumble upon the new music that is the industry's lifeblood and future.

Torrance, Calif.-based Wherehouse Entertainment, which had 339 stores a decade ago, will soon be down to 111 after filing for bankruptcy protection in January. The 95-store Tower Records chain of Sacramento, Calif., is flirting with bankruptcy. Industrywide, in North America, first-half 2003 music sales fell 11.7 percent to $5.1 billion from the year-ago period.

Some retailers are not only angry but are also plotting revenge.

"The mistake some of these guys may be making is that a lot of retailers are like elephants that don't forget," said Mike Dreese, co-founder of Boston-based Newbury Comics.

Best Buy's two-week exclusive in 2001 for a U2 concert DVD caused Newbury to retaliate by doubling the fee it charged U2's record label for marketing any of its acts. Newbury ended up with about $15,000 in extra income.

"In essence we issued a speeding ticket to them, and they paid it," Dreese said.

With the Rolling Stones, Dreese expects he will mark up the band's extensive CD catalog by a few dollars.

He expects to lose some customers but said, "We're basically not going to make it easy for them to easily profit off their brand if they're favoring a competitor in a permanent way."

A spokeswoman for the Rolling Stones said the members and advisers were traveling and unavailable for comment.

Retailers kicked up a fuss earlier this year after the Eagles released a DVD single exclusively through Best Buy for one month but received no sympathy from the band's manager, Irving Azoff.

Gary Arnold, Best Buy's senior vice president of entertainment, shrugged off the concerns about its exclusive deals and said that he expected Four Flicks to be the company's best-selling music DVD ever.

 

I just think its the consumers who lose in the long run, NOT the retailers. If you sign a deal with Best Buy to sell you music EXCLUSIVELY you eliminate the theory of competition. Now we are going to get a high price from Best Buy just beacuse they can, AND a high price from the indie-record store because they are trying to prove a point to the record companies.

All I want is the music at a fair price for its fans... instead we get to hear about how much money they lose to the internet and how they are suing 12 yr olds. Blows my mind how the music industry can't adapt to the internet and drop the outrageous prices they have been gouging us with for the past 10 years.

Makes me appreciate the Radioheads and Pearl Jams of the world.

 

I agree.. in my anger I threw out the term "washed up" towards some of my favorite bands... my bad.