Sony Raises Price of Whitney Houston's Music 30 Minutes After Death 507
First time accepted submitter M.Nunez writes "Just 30 minutes after Whitney Houston died, Sony Music raised the price of Houston's greatest hits album, 'Ultimate Collection,' on iTunes and Amazon. Many technologists, including chairman of the NY Tech Meetup Andrew Rasiej, suggests that Sony should be boycotted for the move. In a tweet, Rasiej wrote, 'Geez Sony raised price on Whitney Houston's music 30 min after death was announced. #FAIL...We should boycott Sony.'"
Price fixing... (Score:4, Interesting)
There should be an investigation for price manipulation for that. They sue people for "copying" music for several hundred times the digital price, yet they pull dick moves like this and expect people to just ignore it as a normal matter of business. If there was going to be a run on resources, like in the production of CDs, I could see increasing the price to help open up a new line or two to produce more to compensate, but its digital. There's ONE master. They produce NOTHING, just data. Outside of bandwidth considerations, there's no significant additional cost to them over what's already being used.
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I don't care (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So? (Score:5, Interesting)
And the rest of the world has a right to say no to tacky corporations because there's quite enough tacky in the world already. I hope enough do say no that Sony gets the message loud and clear.
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Re:They meant well (Score:5, Interesting)
Heck with that, what about John Foggerty, he was tricked by the record industry into selling his artistic soul while not yet out of puberty, After quitting CCR, couldn't write a note of music that didn't belong to the record industry for 20 years. AND finally after getting his life back after the 20 years and resumed writing kick ass music was sued in 1993 by Saul Zaentz, who owned CCR’s old label Fantasy Records. Zaentz asserted that Foggerty's new song "Old Man Down The Road" was plagiarized from "Run Through the Jungle." The recording industry sued John Fogertty for plagiarizing John Foggerty. Like raping him for 20 years wasn't enough, they wanted his new stuff too. The jury laughed Zaentz out of court after two hours (about as fast as a jury can make a decision without doing it right there in the jury box.) Foggerty demanded that Zaentz pay the $1.09 million court fees for this legal insult, and Zaentz told him to kiss his southern exposure. The law to that date had been heavily weighted on behalf of the plaintiff (corporations), such that if a plaintiff sues you and you lose you have to pay the attorney's fees, but if you win, they didn't have to pay yours. It took Foggerty over a year and appealing all the way to the Supreme Court to get a decision, that stated indeed if someone sues you, and they lose, they should pay your attorney's fees.
You know, there should just be a legal requirement for truth in advertising that has a permanent message tattooed into the heads of the RIAA and its minions stating "I am here to screw you, everything I ever do is designed to rob you, use you, and leave you buggered and you can tell whenever I'm lying by the fact my mouth is moving." Of course we'd then be forced to tatoo politician with the message "I blow more CEOs by 9:00 AM than a high priced call-girl does in a year." and who's going to pass that law?
Re:So? (Score:5, Interesting)
...those who are buying her music after her death are equally parasitic and not really deserving of any breaks.
I fail to see how buying her music shortly after her death is parasitic. Not real fans, sure. Trend-following, sure. Parasitic? It sounds like you don't know what that word means.
Re:Sony is a Profit-Oriented Corporation (Score:5, Interesting)
One might suggest it's the people who wouldn't pay for Whitney Houston's music until after she died who were doing something "in bad taste". So much for supporting artists while they're sitll alive.
Re:TPB (Score:5, Interesting)
IF you exclude the risk of being infected up the wazoo.
From a bunch of MP3 files? How, pray tell, does that work?
In a discussion about Sony, who DID work out a way to infect computers using an "audio CD" that actually included a root kit, that's pretty ironic.
Re:Sony is a Profit-Oriented Corporation (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd rather support them by fighting for a sane society without disney copyright. Having Whitney Houston as a grandma is not a debilitating injury after all, more likely a boon. So I see zero logic in what you said. Your'e just echoing the cynicism of the coporate cancer: it points to and USES humans, but shares none of the concerns or insights.
Whitney Houston's grandchildren would benefit so much more if we simply burned down Sony and dispersed the ashes... but instead the idea is to buy her CD's, 0.000001% of the profites showing up in the checkbook of her relatives.... uhm, what? How about "no"?
Re:Sony is a Profit-Oriented Corporation (Score:4, Interesting)
"Many companies actually try to follow a code of ethics in the way they do business."
No, that would be some people in them. It simply doesn't apply to corporations, and if it did, that would be a defunct corporation in economical theory. Better wrap your head around that, the world will make much more sense.
Ethics is just something that is necessary, even though expensive. They would rather make it unnecessary than stay ethical. Any calculator can tell you that.
Re:We should boycott only now? (Score:5, Interesting)
At least vultures have the decency to wait till the body is cold.
Um, no. Vultures have to act quickly before other scavengers arrive. Flying gives them an advantage in finding the bodies quicker, and exploiting that they're still warm and haven't alerted other scavengers by starting to smell yet. Then they often get a second chance after other scavengers are done.
As for "decency", how do you know this wasn't an automated price setting based on number of purchases, in which case the ones to blame are the hyenas who rushed to the scene to buy the music of someone they never gave a fuck about when she lived?
Re:We should boycott only now? (Score:4, Interesting)
These movie and music distributors behave like they dont give a damn about the rest of society, they seem to spend all their time plotting the best way to take all our stuff, no consideration to ethics or morality at all.
Its like they are bunch of PIRATES !!!
Its time to turn the tables with this "pirates" tag and stick on them.
From now on consider usign the term "MPAA Pirates" or "RIAA Pirates"
Sony used to be a great company (Score:4, Interesting)
Along with brands like Pioneer back in the '70s and '80s, they helped make decent hi-fi gear affordable. With the Walkman they launched the entire portable audio market, and they co-invented the CD. Their Trinitron TVs and monitors were well-respected, and they were a major player in developing the portable camcorder market as well.
Then in 1987 they acquired CBS Records, and in 1989 they acquired Columbia Pictures; this started them down the road to becoming a "content" company. It's been all downhill ever since. Quality of their hardware declined sharply; the last piece of Sony electronics I bought was a Digital-8 camcorder around 7 years ago, and it sucked. Debacles like the CD rootkit incident, the controversial change in stance over 3rd party code on the PS3, and the PSN security breach have now become the norm.
In my lifetime the Sony brand has transformed itself from something I actively sought out, to something akin to a warning label. It's a damn shame; I now go out of my way to avoid their products.
RIP Sony, you are dead to me.
Re:We should boycott only now? (Score:3, Interesting)
As for "decency", how do you know this wasn't an automated price setting based on number of purchases, in which case the ones to blame are the hyenas who rushed to the scene to buy the music of someone they never gave a fuck about when she lived?
I didn't get very far in economics, but I always thought the more units you sold meant the lower the unit price could go due to scales of economy. Now I know scales of economy don't work with a digital good in the same way - after all, you probably have a fixed price for transmitting it over the internet and giving the device a license to play the song (plus a minimal future expected cost of allowing them the right to activate it on a few devices in the future, which have minimal bandwidth usages), thus there is no savings by increasing unit production.
However, digital music is not a tangible good and thus can have a nearly infinite quantity (ie, limited only by the bandwidth of the selling service, which would mean all songs on the service should increase if bandwidth was reaching maximum usage, not just one subset), thus there is no scarcity issue to drive up the price. Supply should always exist to meet any demand. Thus with infinite supply, cost should either remain steady or go down.
The only way I can see the company actively choosing to increase the cost is to increase their profits on an arbitrary basis. Okay, maybe not so arbitrary - maybe the stigma of the artist drove down the price, but Sony recognized the stigma was removed upon death (as people seem to be adverse to holding their bad opinions of when people die, Hitler and several other dictators being the exception to this rule) and restored their normal pricing structure. After all, I doubt that Vanilla Ice or Milli Vanilli sell as well as Adele or Lady Gaga right now, but who knows - maybe if Vanilla Ice had a horrible tragic death then there would be a resurgence in his sales that would result in a normal pricing structure.
However, for now I will just think of it as Sony price-gouging based on a blip of popularity due to an artist's tragic death.