Record Company To Produce "No Frills" Music CD's

Luke Harding in Berlin Monday July 5, 2004 The Guardian

A media conglomerate yesterday announced that it intended to sell cut-price and "luxury" versions of the same CDs to try to halt the decline in record sales.

Faced with rampant piracy and the phenomenal popularity of musical downloads such as Apple's iTunes, the German company Bertelsmann will offer three different versions of its CDs in its home market from August.

The no-frills version will look virtually identical to a pirate copy, with only the title printed directly on the disc. It will cost €9.99 - about £6.70. The regular version will cost €3 more. It will include a cover and lyrics. A "luxury" version with additional material and video clips will cost €17.99.

"The music industry has sat motionless on its backside for far too long," Maarten Steinkamp, the head of Bertelsmann's BMG record label in Germany, told Der Spiegel magazine yesterday. Record labels have lost a third of their sales in Germany since 2000. BMG hopes that its initiative will increase sales by up to a quarter.

"The cheap version will look the same as one burned at home ... it's our anti-piracy CD," Mr Steinkamp said.

There is unprecedented turmoil in the industry. BMG, the world's fifth-largest record label, is preparing to merge with the music arm of Sony - which plans to sell its own cheap CDs from the autumn, Der Spiegel reported yesterday.

Apple's European launch of iTunes last month saw 800,000 songs sold in a week. Some 700,000 songs are available for 70p, or 99c, each.

Last night Mr Steinkamp admitted he wasn't sure that his initiative would work. But he said changes in technology meant it was absurd to keep sticking labels on CDs saying "Don't Steal Music".

"It would be better for us to write, 'Thanks a lot for buying something from us,'" he said

Sounds a bit like they're shutting the stable door after the horse bolted...

£6.70 for something that looks blag or 20p for something that looks blag.

What blows my mind is that millions of people want something and the record companies have not the slightest clue on how to make money from it.

Big Des who comes round my boozer every Friday at about 4pm does his own line in "no frills" CDs for two and a half quid each. For that you get the CD, a shitey inkjet print out of the cover and a plastic sleave although I did take the Keane album home the other week to discover it was in fact some reggae compilation. Having now heard the Keane album I reckon I probably got a better deal first time round.

Another way of saying you`ll need to buy TWO copies of the CD.

And MAYBE....just MAYBE..., it's because what the record companies are selling these days is absolutly ass music!!! :barf: