Oct 03, 2001, 1:20am

Music Conglomerates, and RIAA still suck.

Not a newsflash, I know, but they suck. Big time. See, here's the deal. All last year (and the year before) when RIAA was up in arms over Napster and MP3s, they bullshitted the public by saying that CD sales were declining. In actual fact, 1999 and 2000 were bumper years for the music industry, seeing good growth in CD sales. In other words, RIAA was lying.

But in the first quarter of 2001, CD sales worldwide fell off some 5-6% over the previous first quarter. Wonder why? I can tell you why... consumers were FED UP with the greed displayed by RIAA and it's 5 representative companies. Consumers were happy to buy CDs, in growing numbers, as long as they could trade and get singles and stuff off Napster and its ilk. Let's face it - broadband users are a total minority in the world - most people are surfing at 56K or less. And sucking down a CD's worth of 192kbit music is just not appealing to most folks. Most, like my father, would go on Napster, find a new song by and artist he liked, download it, listen to it, then the next day head to Walmart and buy the friggin thing.

But no longer. RIAA's immense and overwhelming greed (to the point where they also locked out their artists from many profits) has backfired. Consumers are finally pissed off enough in enough numbers that CD sales are slumping.

So what does RIAA and it's representative companies do? First, they jack up the already inflated CD prices even more. Next they go public saying "see, trading HAS hurt us". This after a year of completely lying to the public about trading hurting sales. And now they blame this downturn on trading. Well, yes, the problem is trading... or the lack thereof. Consumers are royally pissed at you RIAA and the major labels. Stop fucking around.

And now I hear CDs are encrypted with Macrovision... sheesh. It will come a day soon where a cracked and ripped song from a CD will sound better than the original, what with all the layered bullshit on top of the digital audio file on the CD... cracking will strip that, and give the clean digital sound. VBR MP3 it up to 320, and walla, any audiophile will be pleased.

Stupid record companies.

--

Speaking of stupid, how stupid is Compaq, and especially Compaq Canada? Get this... if you bought an iPaq after Sept 6, you were supposed to get a "free" upgrade to Pocket PC 2002. Turns out this "free" upgrade could cost Canadians as much as $58 or more. Sure doesn't sound free to me.

How'd I get that number? Simple. First, Compaq is charging the outrageous $13 USD to ship you the "free" cd ($20 Cdn). Then they add $1.83 in "taxes" to the shipping which is illegal on several levels. First, there's no PST on shipping from outside the province of BC. Second, there's no GST # number on the form, making their GST collection also illegal. So now we're up to about $23 Cdn, some of it illegal, the rest obscene. $20 friggin dollars to ship a CD. I could ship a CD to ANYWHERE worldwide, insured, packed well, first class mail for under $4.

Next, they appear to be shipping it from Texas. Yep... Canadian orders are shipping from Texas, to Canada, via FedEx ground. Guess what. FedEx ground is subject to a $35 to $40 "brokerage" fee for going through the border, regardless of the product being shipped. Ditto for UPS. So now your "free" upgrade could cost you $58 to $63 Cdn.

Yep. Free. Nice.

Stupid Compaq.

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Mixelania

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Canon 5D
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