I am really confused… and angry at the SA market!!
There are all these laws to try and prevent the illegal reproduction of music, yet if you do end up in court because some traffic cop thought it funny to arrest you because of the copied discs in your car, and you are able to prove that you legally own the originals you get scott free! This basically places you between the devil and the deep blue see!
What is the use then of these laws, as they are not properly enforced. A few bucks will probably save you the court hearing as well!!
The record companies only have themselves to blame for the situation we are in and again they aren’t helping the situation. R150 for a disc lately is kind of ‘cheap’, I actually paid 210 bucks for one CD from L&L in the last week. This is a rip-off, that same disc is in US between $7 and $14 (I just couldn’t wait, for I would’ve bought it from overseas). $1 is basically for the US as R1 is in SA, I’ve never been overseas so no idea really but if this equation is roughly accurate we are being ripped off in every bloody store!!
With a basic salary of say R7000 in SA you will be able to, if you’re crazy enough, purchase as little as 33 CD’s @ R210, if in the US you get the equivalent (R7=$1) $1000 you will be able to purchase a whopping 71 CD’s @ a cost of $14 per disc. This clearly shows that we are being ripped off, where did the other 38 CD’s go? There is NOTHING that goes into a CD that will be mass produced that would make R200 a CD reasonable. The sad fact is tat very little of that money goes to the Artists. I once purchased a limited edition CD from L&L and was able to get a total of R130 off from R1300, and I won’t have anybody tell me that they lost on that deal! I agree that this would drive 99% of people wanting to copy the disc from us instead of paying for it – Hello piracy!!
I have to mention that I have a collection of 300+ Original CD’s (Very proud of this, and the entire household collection of 900+) and not one single copied disc (Even more proud of this!). I don’t mind paying R200 for a CD because I feel that the Artist deserve every little cent that they get! Even if it is because I like only one song on the entire disc, all I want in return for these ridiculous fees is the free PERSONAL use as I like. I feel I deserve this, even a guy who legally purchased one CD should have the right to any form of personal use of that disc.
I am actually looking at purchasing an Apple Ipod, purely for use in my car as it has a single disc changer not supporting MP3 format (which in any case is as illegal to use in this case) because having the Ipod is safer in the sense that I don’t have to change discs the whole time and endanger my life and the lives of people around me while driving. The law won’t stop me, at all! I have actually downloaded Itunes and copied about a third of my music already so that once I get the thing (just dealing for a better price from Apple) it is only the Syncing that’s left.
It is actually ironic how the whole MP3 thing became illegal! Correct me if I’m wrong but the MP3 was initially created for people to download free of charge to hear what the band sounds like and you were by agreement (EULA of Napster etc. then) forced to delete after 3 days. This obviously got out of hand because no one had kept to the EULA and started these huge collections as one would find on some client’s pc’s lately. Now they are trying to make every one else pay for their own stupid fault! It is a shame!
I don’t think that the Itunes store being eventually available in SA would affect the CD sales that much! There are obviously the people that won’t purchase in store CD’s anymore, but there are the crazy people like myself who will pay to download a song to hear what it sounds like and then go out and buy the CD because it gives me some sort of satisfactory feeling to have the original disc and lastly there is a very small percentage people out of 44million that can afford a MP3 player and access to internet to purchase and download music. They will still go out and buy CD’s.
Fighting the law and the record companies would be like making a fire in the middle of the sea! Things will eventually work out the way they should, we just need to be even a little more patient!
Peace