Ringles
According to an article in Billboard, Sony BMG has come up with a plan to market something it refers to as Ringles; this is a play on the old idea of singles.
When I was a kid, we'd buy 45's, 7 inch vinyl recordings that had a hit song on one side and a not yet heard of song on the other, referred to as the "B-side". B-sides would occasionally become popular in their own right and if you bought a Beatles or Beach Boys single usually both sides were getting airplay.
Sony is taking this idea, putting a hit, a lesser known song, and perhaps a remix or old song, along with a ring tone on a single CD in a paper slip-sleeve cover with a suggested retail price of $5.98 to $6.98, and they expect the wholesale price to be "under $4" (which probably means $3.99).
Now I like the basic concept; when I was a kid, and granted that was forever-ago, we used to buy these 45's for 25¢ each. Over time they increased to eventually being $1 each which is at about the point where I stopped buying them. Now, for comparison, gas at that time went for around 30¢/gallon so for some reason Sony feels that an inflation rate twice that of gasoline is reasonable.
In short I think the pricing is a total rip-off. CD blanks are less than 17¢ a piece now and I've found places that do bulk pressings for 9¢ a piece in large quantities, so how can they justify selling wholesale at almost $4 per piece and retail for $6.98? It's not like the artist is actually making money; any artists making decent money are doing so touring.
Screw that! If they put high quality music VIDEOS on there with 96 Khz sample rate, NOT copyprotected, so I can play them in WinAmp, burn a bunch to a custom DVD or whatever the I want to do with them, then yea maybe it would be worth the price. Just as well though, it seems the mainstream record companies don't get any real artists anyway, just belly button girls and burned out pseudo-rock stars.
When I was a kid, we'd buy 45's, 7 inch vinyl recordings that had a hit song on one side and a not yet heard of song on the other, referred to as the "B-side". B-sides would occasionally become popular in their own right and if you bought a Beatles or Beach Boys single usually both sides were getting airplay.
Sony is taking this idea, putting a hit, a lesser known song, and perhaps a remix or old song, along with a ring tone on a single CD in a paper slip-sleeve cover with a suggested retail price of $5.98 to $6.98, and they expect the wholesale price to be "under $4" (which probably means $3.99).
Now I like the basic concept; when I was a kid, and granted that was forever-ago, we used to buy these 45's for 25¢ each. Over time they increased to eventually being $1 each which is at about the point where I stopped buying them. Now, for comparison, gas at that time went for around 30¢/gallon so for some reason Sony feels that an inflation rate twice that of gasoline is reasonable.
In short I think the pricing is a total rip-off. CD blanks are less than 17¢ a piece now and I've found places that do bulk pressings for 9¢ a piece in large quantities, so how can they justify selling wholesale at almost $4 per piece and retail for $6.98? It's not like the artist is actually making money; any artists making decent money are doing so touring.
Screw that! If they put high quality music VIDEOS on there with 96 Khz sample rate, NOT copyprotected, so I can play them in WinAmp, burn a bunch to a custom DVD or whatever the I want to do with them, then yea maybe it would be worth the price. Just as well though, it seems the mainstream record companies don't get any real artists anyway, just belly button girls and burned out pseudo-rock stars.
posted by Nanook at 10:50 AM
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