Typically, a business model for success involves offering a product or service people want to buy, taking their money, and enjoying your profits. That’s not a terribly hard concept, but it is one that still seems to be over the heads of most entertainment companies.
I wrote a post on December 2 about why supposed copyright laws are getting in the way of my ability to give the music companies the price they seek for the products they are trying to sell. You’d think, in this modern era of digital music and hundreds of daily flights between the UK and US, that I would have the products by now. You would be wrong.
We have received the DVD, as well as one cd. I’m still missing two cds, and now one of those may not be shipped out at all. Amazon.co.uk sold out of their stock, though they still have an affiliate selling. Unfortunately, said affiliate doesn’t want to sell to the US, and Amazon’s UK store doesn’t know if they will get it back in stock. Dear music companies: If it’s selling out, it is popular to warrant offering as, at the very least, a digital download. And our damn yankee money should line your pockets just as easily as the pounds & Euros you’ll take from other countries. (The only redeeming element of this story is that Amazon’s UK store has offered us free shipping if they ever get the other disk back in stock. Oh yeah, and there’s one more disc from this artist that we’d like to buy, but again, none of the smaller retailers through Amazon want to deal with an international order.)
On the other side of the pond, we have Amazon.com willing to sell a cd single for a song from the concert encore directly to US consumers. Yay! Only it should have arrived by today. Instead, it has not shipped. The only thing I can deduce from their sudden re-listing of the status of the cd recently is that they are having trouble getting copies here in the US.
Seriously, music executives, I want to buy your product. You can even mark it up at ridiculous rates and it’s likely I will still buy it. Why won’t you take our money? And more importantly, why are music company investors not firing all of your executives for refusing to sell products that make a profit?
I’d love to import the Solomon Kane movie (since for some reason it was never released theatrically or on home video outside Europe), but thanks to DVD and Blu-ray region encoding, even if I did import it, I wouldn’t be able to watch it.
I’d give them my money happily, but not if I can’t use their product. Especially for a stupid reason like region encoding.
A couple of years ago, I attended a math conference, and after-hour parties included music from a German singer (provided by one of the organizers of the conference, who was German).
I liked the singer, wrote down her name, and noticed the CD was illegally copied.
When I tried to buy the CD a few months later, I had to go to the German Amazon (surprise!), resort to an online translator to order the CD, and wait for a few months.
The CD never came, but via the magic of e-mail and online translators I was able to get my money back.
Gee, I wonder why the CD I originally looked at was illegally copied!
As I mentioned in the last post I did on my efforts to give the music industry money, Sebastian made the comment that piracy is simply easier than trying to buy it if you are interested in anything other than top 100 songs.