Malcolm Gladwell ‘Surprised’ to Become an Amazon Bargaining Chip
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
* Great SNL character, btw: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfrozen_Caveman_Lawyer
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/02/17/140217fa_fact_...
"Amazon’s competitors are trying to seize the advantage. Walmart.com, for instance, is promoting Hachette titles at 40 percent off, and said Friday that its online book sales had jumped as a result."
It might be the case that a few platinum artists have more in common with their labels. As might a bestselling author like Gladwell with his publisher.
The last probably accounts for most of it. I forget the exact saying at the moment, but it is something about everyone in America believing that they are destined to be a rich person, and make decisions/vote in a way that would only be in their best interests if they were rich.
Why did Trent Reznor sign with Columbia afer releasing music independently for many years? It's because they provide value to him.
http://www.spin.com/articles/trent-reznor-david-byrne-major-...
Using him as a shining example is to be incredibly naive about how contract negotiation works. Nobody is saying that recording studios do nothing (just handling distribution is big), just that they suck out far more value than they provide for the average artist.
Trent Reznor went back to record labels because he's going to make more money with a record label, even if he's going to keep less share of the profit.
> Trent Reznor went back to record labels because he's going to make more money with a record label, even if he's going to keep less share of the profit.
I'm sorry but you seem a little confused. You can't hand wave that the terms of the contract are irrelevant but also assert that he is making a smaller cut of the pie with the label.
People sign up with record labels because record label representatives tell them stories about people like Trent Reznor, and lead them to believe that Trent Reznor is the rule, rather than the exception.
Oh, a lot longer than that. Since day one for the recording industry, and much longer if you count the sheet music publishers of the 19th Century.
Scott Joplin got a whole 1% royalty on the sheet music for his songs. Died in poverty.
Stephen Foster got paid about a hundred bucks a song. Died in poverty.
Inserting yourself between the money and the talent has a very long and sordid history.
I think you might be looking in the wrong end of that. The preponderance of musicians screw the labels. They sign a contract, chew up a bunch of production and marketing money, then fail to make music that enough people want to pay for the up front costs. Then the musicians don't have to give back the up front money after making some complete floater of an album.
Now, the one percenters of the music world, you know, the acts from the '60s through '90s that 1 out of 3 people actually remember. Lots of them think they should have gotten richer, and lots of them did sign contracts that had they known their label would make them a one percenter they never would have signed. But that isn't the preponderance of musicians. That is just the musicians associated with the preponderance of a label's revenue.
The labels provide him value, as they do for many artists.
http://www.spin.com/articles/trent-reznor-david-byrne-major-...
"When we negotiate with suppliers, we are doing so on behalf of customers. Negotiating for acceptable terms is an essential business practice that is critical to keeping service and value high for customers in the medium and long term." is the relevant quote for how it's not killing customer experience.
The short term customer experience is indeed impacted, but in the long run, I'd rather have more reasonably priced ebooks.
Of course, this is Amazon so they're not going to just say "yup, we're doing this out of greed, screw the customer". It's up to you if you believe what they did say or not.
It was their publisher who instigated this. Amazon is a retailer and when 5/6ths of the big publishers conspire to price fix, you can bet every one of them is going to have their necks on the cutting block.
Amazon does not need these publishers, they are no longer an online book company they're one of the worlds biggest retailers. These publishers need Amazon, they're a massive retailer known for books.
Don't shit where you eat folks.
Additionally probably half of my Kindle purchases are impulse purchases, and half of those are done right on the device itself.
Amazon may have just enough market power as a customer of theirs to break this arrangement, however it would be quite a stretch to call Amazon a monopsony.
We've seen this in the no poaching agreements... the dude certainly wrote a lot of emails without consulting his lawyers.
People have this tendency to jump to the "big questions" that the law and judges simply aren't concerned with. There was very clear evidence here, and your opinion of Amazon doesn't factor into it.
[1] In fact, the comment "somebody has to ring the bell" suggests significant awareness of biases in and limitations of legal processes.