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Saturday, September 09, 2006
I admit my absolute addiction to DVDs. I buy a ridiculous amount and I just can't seem to stop. There are always more out there that I feel that I have to own in my collection. It's become a real problem, both in my finances and in the available space in my house for them. I thought about losing the boxes and only have the discs in paper sleeves on shelves, but that would kind of suck. Even if I had a catalog with the order listed in them and alphabetical markers that show where the A's, B's, C's, etc start on the shelves.
The main culprit for me these days is Deep Discount DVD. Not only are their prices extremely low, but they constantly have unbeatable sales.
I just realized that there is also a Deep Discount CD. Now I can haunt that place to find the lowest prices on brand new music releases. I'm a big music fanatic as well as a book and movie nut.
Deep Discount CD. It's a cool idea, but there's one problem. The music industry.
Take a look at movie distributors. These people have gotten pretty sharp over the years as they have dropped the prices on older DVDs. And not just junk movies either. All kinds of terrific titles can be gotten for extremely low prices. Just today I was looking at a Deep Discount sale and they had all kinds of great movies for $5.50. They offer free shipping too, and while it might take a while for them to process an order, I've always gotten mine in a somewhat reasonable time frame. If you pick the free shipping option at Amazon, it takes quite a few days to process those orders as well.
Yet the music industry hasn't gotten on the ball about lowering prices. The movie studios get a far lower profit on drastically reduced DVDs, but I think it more than evens out in the millions of movies that are sold on a regular basis. The music companies will tell you that they have suffered devastating blows due to piracy and copyright infringement, and I'm sure that they have. But the movie studios have taken their share of losses too. They have found a way to keep the consumers happy as well as make profits off of their enormous catalog of titles.
There has always been piracy and no matter what measures are taken, I think there always will be. As long as the faltering dinosaurs of the music entertainment industry refuse to bend and lower their prices, people will continue to mercilessly download, burn and help destroy them as much as they can.
ADDENDUM:
I am not, in any way, advocating illegal filesharing and bootlegging. I don't do it. I really think it's important to support the careers of the musicians we love. Just as it is vital for us to show our support to the writers and filmmakers we enjoy.
There are ways to show support to them and help them out. One: Most bands/artists have homepages. And most sell their recordings from them. It's a good idea to buy direct. Sure the record companies still get their cut, but the artist probably gets a greater one this way. Also, some will have a link to Amazon to buy the CDs. I think they may get a small cut when we buy this way.
It might cost a few more dollars to buy direct, but if you love music as much as I do, you will hopefully feel that it's important to support your favorites at the source.
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