The ethics of the resale

So...you'd sell me anything in your collection for the price you paid, so that I wouldn't be denied the same deal?

 

If it was something I didn't want for myself, yes, without hesitation. I do it all the time.

Bizarre, I know.

 

If I had a duplicate in my collection, I would not hesitate to sell it to someone on this forum who enjoys this music. I, like most on here, have several CDs that I paid well above the MSRP. There is music that I did not elect to buy (GD Fillmore '69 being the most glaring) that I would pay the market price for if I had the money. I have also carefully pointed out to my wife what some of my CDs are worth in the sad event of my demise

 

This is the reason I avoid Record Store Day like the plague. Intentionally created scarcity, appealing to the worst instincts of us all. I try to support my local bricks and mortars 364 days a year, but am giving myself the day off tomorrow.

 

Some remarks (I will defend the record labels for once)
-there's a big IF in your statement: If you sell 100x more
-there are additional costs per download: eg. credit cards companies and banks do not work for free
-lower download prices will lower the sales of cd's, that's not what the companies want (I don't know by how much, but it will)
-companies might charge a high price first, and then lower prices when demand falls

 

One guy had three DCC LA Woman discs, one for playing and two still sealed. He made no bones about the fact that he was holding on to the sealed ones for future resale at a big profit.

 

The costs you cite are minuscule, and in the case of credit card and bank fees, apply to any transaction regardless of sonic medium.

CDs sales have been plummeting for years. If record companies are concerned about cannibalizing CD sales, they are paying attention to the wrong things.

The basic principle here is that the more you sell, the less you necessarily have to make in profit on each sale. If Ford only sold one pickup truck each year, they would have to charge $1B for it. Because they sell in volume, they achieve economies of scale. This allows them to move the decimal point something like 5 places to the left for the consumer. That is huge! This is something the record companies have never tried. They are fixated on every song ever recorded being worth $1 or more. That simply is not true. But a lot of them are worth 15 cents, or 20 cents. At those pricing levels, no one will pirate anything. Just move the decimal point one place to the left and songs will fly off the shelves. Also bear in mind that back catalog content development costs have already been recouped. Anything you sell from your back catalog is PURE GRAVY!

What always get missed in these discussions is that clearly people are generally willing to pay something to own the music they love. But they want it in the format of their choice, they want it at the time of their choosing, and they want it priced fairly according to what the market will bear. Until the music industry wakes up, people will bypass them in a myriad of ways. As I have said before, neither label nor artist benefits from used CD sales. Isn't that a freakin' problem for a company that sells music? If it were my company, I would certainly be concerned about it. But rather than whine about that, ring my hands and blame others, I'd find a way to (gasp) SELL MORE MUSIC, 'cause that's what good faith businesses do - THEY SELL SH!T.

 

Record companies make more money on downloads than physical media. They have actively worked to promote downloads over CDs for years now, as they would like to remove production and distribution costs etc. They are currently supporting vinyl because there is more money in them per unit - vinyl is a niche format with less units to distribute, CD isn't.

 

And why should he? He probably also bought Zaireeka last year and took a bath on it.

 

I can understand the frustration when all the copies of an out-of-print item are listed at an outrageous buy-it-now or starting price that no one but the most desperate or well-lined fan/collector would even consider paying. The seller may sit on the item forever unless he lowers the price. However, using the 'Bay as an example, what if a seller starts the auction at list price and the item goes up anyway to an astronomical price due to the competition of the bidders? Is it really the fault of the seller that people are willing to pay that much? Are some of you saying that it's unethical to resell the item at anything other than the original cost?
I mean, those Grateful Dead Dave's picks releases tend to go from anywhere between $35-135 each when you look at sold items on the 'Bay. I'm assuming that in most of the <$60 auctions, the seller started at a lower price (maybe well below cost, say $10 with no reserve) and the consumers/fans/collectors determined how much it went for. If the guy started it at $10, is he really price-gouging if the fans brought the price up to $50?

 

I guess he wasn't feeling the love of selling one to a fellow forum member.

 

Any adult who pays top dollar to buy a limited-edition collectible deserves to be gouged to the fullest extent possible.

 

Great story. Funny how some people can be so rude. What an a hole !!

 

I bet Chad K is aka mymusicfix on eBay/Amazon.
You know the one who has tons of sealed albums he sells for waaaaay more than they are worth.

 

Why not just sell them for retail like Acoustic Sounds did prior to Chad buying all the remaining Led Zeppelin stk?

 

Do you really think Chad paid more than wholesale cost of all the Led Zeppelin titles? He would have paid far less than that. Why did he not wholesale the albums out to the other retailers - Greed.
It is called price gouging when a retailer does that.

Chads investment into Quality pressings happened years after his price gouging. To infer they were linked is incorrect.

Obviously Acoustic Sounds has many fanbois buying the same old albums over and over again.

Cheers

 

Nothing wrong with it. The end result is that the product falls into the hands of end users who are either lucky and industrious or those who pay more. Them's the breaks.

 

It's easy to quote text book cases on how things should work. But until you have actual data from the actual industry you're discussing and you also know what assumptions are being made, that text book example remains nothing more than a text book example based on assumptions made in that text book.

You also don't understand how costs work. There is almost always additional costs. They may be high, they may be low but there will be additional costs.

 

You mean when you deny someone who doesn't want to pay what an item is worth because they think they have the right to be able to buy any record they want for next to nothing.

 

Haven't you been following this thread? Apparently charging market price for music is wrong. It should be almost free, or at least, it should only cost enough for everyone to make an "honest" living.

 

Maybe that's how he came up with the money

 

Who knows? But it is capitalism!

I notice that many companies (but not all) have no passion for the thing they make or sell. The product or service is merely a lure to get what's in people's wallets. And if they could find a better lure they'd use that in a flash.

 

Whiners!! Why'd you wait so long to buy it from Classic? Here's another source for you. It's open.

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...sell-out-munch-saint-saens-kondrashin.350038/

 

see my post on #192

I bought all my Led Zeppelin Classic reissues when they were released in 2000.

Did you?


However I do care about others and ethical wholesaler and retailer behaviour artificially effecting supply and demand.


Do you? From your responses, no.