record industry going down slowly?

[~KissTheStar]

Big deal ... so interested parties will buy the CD's elsewhere ... that is assuming the general public still buys CD's (big assumption I know). I don't think it will hurt Warner as much as it will hurt the retailer .... heh you would think with sales down for both wholesalers and retailers that they would come together for their common goals .... but when the ship is sinking it's "every man for himself".

~Craig

[~Dan1boy]

Good point, Craig. Very good point.

[~Brand New Idol]

The sad thing with HMV is that they rob the Record Companies of millions of dollars in advertising costs to be profitable then pull this crap about wholesale prices.

Believe me getting your album priced and positioned on a hit wall at HMV is going to run you tens of thousands of dollars and you might need to run it multiple months if your a major label. So I understand where the majors are coming from. Why should I give HMV more money when I already give them hundreds of thousands/millions of dollars in coop advertising money and deep deep discounting. Remember that HMV also gets a bottom line discount on their purchase, I won't tell you what it is but there is a new release bulk discount that all retail stores get and that's definately deeply cut into the record labels profits and increase the retailers profit quite a bit. Then you gotta throw that coop money at the retailers so they'll tell that 6 dollar an hour clerk to put some 10% discount stickers on it.

I watched HMV dig it's own grave over the past years, I'm not feeling sorry for them. EMI has interest in HMV as a former owner so I'm sure that was part of EMI's decision. I don't think it's indicative of the down turn in the music business, HMV is just poorly run. I can guarantee there is a downturn in the big mac and leather jacket business too and hell the computer business has been down for 3 years, everything is just down. It has nothing to do with price it has all to do with market conditions and the amount of money people have to spend impulsively.

And believe me it has nothing to do with wholesale pricing it has all to do with TERMS. Tower wanted Caroline to give them 365 day terms. That means we sell product on July 11th, 2002 and don't get paid until July 11th, 2003. Yeah we chuckled at it and told them where they could stick their terms. I"m sure HMV wanted 6 month terms or instead of 180 day terms or whatever the majors give them.

It's all a game of "how much can they get out of me how much can I get out of them". You realize in an ideal world retailers would never pay for product, they'd just want have distributors ship it to them and then put it on consignment and never worry about paying the record companies, hey wait Tower tried to do that too, of course we told them where they could shove that as well.