Anonymous Patron sends us this update on the music industry settlement’s ‘free CDs for libraries’ plan. From the article:
“Public librarians aren’t prone to looking gift horses in the mouth, but many have nevertheless been taken aback by the odd and in some cases overly generous allotments of free music CDs that have begun arriving in the last week as the result of the settlement of an antitrust lawsuit against major record companies.
The CD cornucopia — consisting of approximately 5.6 million compact discs — was billed as a windfall for libraries and schools when it was announced in September 2002 as part of a $144 million settlement of the lawsuit, which alleged that music distribution companies illegally inflated the price of CDs by requiring retailers to sell them at or above a set level in order to qualify for substantial advertising funding.
But when the first shipments began arriving last week, some librarians suspected that the companies — the Bertelsmann Music Group, EMI Music Distribution, Warner-Elektra-Atlantic, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment — were dumping CDs that had been gathering dust in warehouses when they received hundreds of copies of some titles for which there is little or no demand.
Lots of Barry White and Ricky Martin
Not saying there’s anything wrong with Barry White or Ricky Martin, but we sure didn’t need fifty –each– of them. We’re a smallish public library. Two of each title would have sufficed, really.
On the plus side, we’re kind of an international community, so some of the more obscure foreign artists will probably be appreciated.
We received ours last week
We received 257 CDs last week. Our cataloger was rather wide-eyed at the collection, but I promised to dole them out in metered doses.
Looking through the packing slip, I’m not sure there’s a dozen CDs I would have bought with my budget. But for every two duds, there are some cool finds– I’ll take a Lionel Hampton CD any day.
Hmmm, maybe we can set up a bartering system here. I’ll trade two 98 Degrees CDs for one Latino music disc. I’m sorry, we’re keeping the “Martha Stewart’s Spooky and Scary Sounds for Halloween.”
we’re a little nervous here
Apparently, the state is getting something like 50,000 cds and giving them out to the largest metropolitian libraries (which includes mine). Nevermind the fact that we’re swamped with the end of the year spending, but we’re scared we’re going to be greeted with 4,000 copies of ‘Nsync, or worse, one those guy’s solo albums. *shudder*
Re:we’re a little nervous here
can’t you give them away during the summer reading program? nothing against that in the books!
or what about a check out five, get a CD program? That would increase circ, and help get rid of your unwanted Nsync CD’s.
*grin*
Matthew