Universal Music Label get a clue

Spyder Jonez wrote:

Troublezone wrote:

Now that i think of it... maybe the "green/enviromental" movement may be behind the downfall of physical cd's. They started with that cardboard crap packaging and now they want everyone to download to eliminate the use of paper and plastic.

I heard there may be plans to eliminate newspapers as well.

It's getting outa hand, really.

Oh and hopefully this will bring back/bring in a few record stores. I miss being able to rumage for CD's to buy.

Here is more fun stuff to come:

Harvard Hometown Plans Coercive Taxes, Veganism to Stop Climate 'Emergency'

Going green will not be optional in Cambridge, Mass., if the Cambridge Climate Congress has its way. It will be mandatory.

There will be congestion pricing to reduce car travel. Curbside parking will be eliminated. There will be a carbon tax "of some kind," not to mention taxes on plastic and paper bags. And the Massachusetts city, home of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will advocate vegetarianism and veganism, complete with "Meatless or Vegan Mondays."

Those are just some of the proposals put forth by the Congress, which was created in May 2009 to respond to the "climate emergency" plaguing Cambridge. Once the Congress settles on its recommendations, they will submitted to the City Council.

"This emergency is created by the growth of local greenhouse gas emissions despite the urgent warnings of climate scientists that substantial reductions are needed in order to reduce the risk of disastrous changes to our climate," the Climate Congress reported in proposals issued on Jan. 23. "This proposal is made in the belief that an effective local response is, if anything, made more urgent by so far inadequate global agreements and federal policies for emissions reductions. It is made in the belief that our City should lead by example."

While the group's proposals remain a work in a progress, some experts say the potential measures it advocates are "heavy-handed" and incongruous. But others say the city just might be onto something, particularly if the taxes associated with the plan are used to make buildings and transportation more efficient.

Dr. Ken Green, a resident scholar on environment and energy at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank, said he found an "overall redundancy" in the proposals, specifically regarding a carbon-based tax coupled with congestion pricing, increased parking meter rates and parking tickets.

"That's just a revenue-raiser for the city," said Green. "There's an overall incoherence of having a carbon tax and three or four indirect taxes."

To best reduce emissions in the near-term, Green suggested a revenue-neutral carbon tax, meaning that little -- if any -- of the funds raised would be retained by municipal government. The vast majority under such a plan would be returned to the public.

"It creates an incentive to become more energy efficient to either avoid the tax or keep as much of any rebate as possible," Green said. "But if they do the [carbon] tax, they should get rid of almost all of the other things. If the point is to put a price on carbon, pick one price, make it transparent and then get rid of the other regulations, which end up overpricing carbon. So if you had your carbon tax, you don't need your congestion pricing because people are already paying the tax in their gasoline."

Green also said the proposal to ban the production and distribution of plastic bags and bottled water in city limits is as "heavy-handed as government can get" and questioned Cambridge's proposal to institute disincentives for the purchase of non-regional food.

"Trying to grow something out of season in a greenhouse locally may produce more greenhouse gas emissions than having the same food shipped in from a place where it grows naturally," he said. "Studies do not come down uniformly on the side that local is better."

But Richard Rood, a professor of atmospheric, oceanic, and space sciences at the University of Michigan, praised Cambridge's proposal to create a "temperate zone" program, in which building are neither heated nor cooled during the fall and spring.

"That is a place where you might make a difference," said Rood, who writes a blog for Weather Underground.

He also praised the city's proposal to advocate vegetarianism and veganism.

"From a climate point of view, eating less meat would have a climate impact," said Rood, citing increased deforestation, methane production, fertilizer use and greenhouse gases associated with maintaining that land. "Eating less meat is for the environment in many ways.

Regarding the possibility of a carbon tax, Rood, who supports such a move on a national level, said the impact on a city level would be "fairly small." The real positive effect, he said, would be if the plan caught on in other cities if successful.

"In general, if you look at how policy develops, it often starts on regional and local scales and then advances forward," he said. "Cambridge is full of really smart people, so you know, it has the potential."

It still remains to be seen, however, how these proposals will be received by Cambridge residents. Cambridge City Councilor Sam Seidel, who spoke to FoxNews.com after riding his bicycle to his office, said that remains the key unanswered question.

"The challenge in broadest terms is to figure out what makes sense, what doable, but all of that in the context of how much ground we have to cover," he said. "We have to be realistic on what we're going to be able to accomplish."

Seidel said the Climate Congress will next meet on March 6, at which point the next steps regarding the 20-page proposal will be decided. Any success in slashing greenhouse gas emissions will hinge on individual efforts, he said.

"It's my own view that while governmental action is going to be an important part of any successes we're going to have, individual citizens are also going to have to take individual ownership and responsibility for their own actions," he said. "It's only by working together that we're going to see the necessary reductions that climate scientists have been calling for."

Asked if the proposal amounted to a series of taxes, Seidel said, "The goal of truly, accurately evaluating the cost of our decisions is an important part of greenhouse gas emissions reductions, it's really pointing out to people what their choices imply."

Even though many publishers are taking massing hits these days and there's going to be a thinning of the herd I don't think printed materials are ever going out of style.

Metal Misfit wrote:

Even though many publishers are taking massing hits these days and there's going to be a thinning of the herd I don't think printed materials are ever going out of style.

I agree too that books will be around for a long time to come but I myself dont read the newspapers because I dont like the slant that most of the majors have. I also dont care for the plagarism scandals that seem to be a lot more commonplace today. Its rapidly becoming all the news thats fit to invent.

Well, I've never had much use for newspapers other than checking movie times. It's just too much to read. If I want news, I'll go to MSN or check my cell phone for a few interesting bits and that's it.

Honestly, I'm pretty much in my own little world and don't really pay attention to the news.

I like reading the newspaper... cup of coffee, some music.... a relaxing moment on the weekend. Much more than just looking at a screen (which I do enough of anyway!). Unfortunately it looks like they're on the way out, too. I don't mind being a 'dinosaur', but I don't want my music purely downloaded, nor my news only online, nor movies on my phone. I like it as it is now, thanks -different experiences for different times!

I can't keep a monitor and keyboard balanced on my lap in the hopper.

As for the music thing, I like the idea. Too little too late? Probably. But I'll take advantage of it while I can. I set a price cap for myself of $10 on cd purchases a long time ago (with some exceptions of course), so that is fine with me.

It certainly worked in the case of FYE. I almost NEVER bought any new music there, they were grossly overpriced. I usually just trash picked the used section. But in the last few months, I've done quite a bit of shopping there, both for new releases and even a few "blind purchases".

I don't think it's killing the music companies as bad as they let on. "Ohhhh we're hurting. Instead of making 80% profit on a cd, we'll only make a 55% profit." Boo-hoo. It's still a profit, ya babies.

Good move...better late than never...if Universal is doing it, other labels will follow suit...especially if it works for them. Between FYE dropping to $10 and Universal, maybe things will level out if not pick up a little for the physical format.

Funny how the music "Business" works. In the real world, when the economy slows, merchants start cutting prices to stimulate sales. This is done in part by taking less profit and by mutual agreement with suppliers to share the burden. A very simple business principle. Yet here we are years down the line. The general sentiment is that those running the show feel as if they are special in some way.

The record companies have been greedy for so long, they didn't want to even consider cutting their prices until now... big mistake.

FYE is now $10 across the board? I didn't realize that. I don't shop there often but I have noticed lots of "budget" collections coming in (three albums for the price of one) and $9.99 metal new releases. They need to go back and drop the prices on what they already had in stock!

Metal Misfit wrote:

FYE is now $10 across the board? I didn't realize that. I don't shop there often but I have noticed lots of "budget" collections coming in (three albums for the price of one) and $9.99 metal new releases. They need to go back and drop the prices on what they already had in stock!

I'm not sure if it's universal in all the stores yet, but the 3 in my general vacinity are. I remember asking a clerk about it awhile back and she told me they were going to try the $9.99 price cut at select stores and if it worked (ie moved more music), they would implement it in all of their stores. She didn't say when that would happen though.

I immediatley thought it was an attempt to clear out their inventory so they could close-up shop altogether, but it does appear that they are re-stocking various titles. So maybe this $9.99 thing is working in their favor.

It would make sense. Sell 3 cd's a week for $18.99 each or 20 at $9.99? Sure it may cut-down on their overall profit, but like I mentioned with the record companies, a profit is still a profit, be it 80% or 50%.

I have two FYE stores by my home at two different malls, and the one that does sale CDs for 9.99 across the board tells me that do killer business, the othe FYE with the regular prices does not move as many CD's and the manager is hoping FYE will do this pricing at all their stores.


The 9.99 store was suppose to be only til Nov and then it was going to go back to regular pricing in Nove but they still have kept the store as one of the test stores.