CD Wow loses / backs down

bonkey

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35022.html

CD Wow, 0
Big Business, 1

jc

spongebob

The deal will add €3 or £2 onto each CD , thats about what Play charge but Play have a much wider selection .

M

Typedef

And boy, is the music industry happy. "It is not the consumer that will suffer, just CD Wow's profit margins. They made a lot of money out of cheap CDs," one insider told the FT.

You'd have to wonder really, do these people have low IQs?

krattapopov

right well, im STILL not goin to buy a cd from the mainstreet shops

seamus

Originally posted by Typedef
You'd have to wonder really, do these people have low IQs?

No, just big bank accounts to fill.

They're still going to work out cheaper than stores anyway, won't stop me buying from them.

sceptre

Doesn't affect DVD pricing.

Now perhaps I'm being a bit simplistic here but given that any region 2 discs they sell are for the most part, er, region 2[1] and are PAL, they're destined for the UK market anyway so hopefully the same stick can't be used there

(sceptre has never bought anything but DVDs from cdwow)

[1]Few exceptions. They do sell DVDs that are R2/4 as well as just R2. ANd my Monsters Inc is region 4 on the box but works with R2 as well (so obviously the disc is R2/4)

As seamus said, they're still going to be cheaper than your HMVs.

bonkey

Other than the general disgust I felt at the outcome, what interested me most in the article was the almost "by the way" comment made about the BPI "mulling over" suing Amazon for the same practice.

Personally, I hope they do.....because I can see that suddenly escalating to US/EU-level, at which point some compromise will be reached....which CD-Wow or another enterprising outfit will take advantage of.

As for the assertion that higher prices don't hurt the consumer......that doesn't even merit a response.

jc

BluE-WinG

The bastards...

Lets hope CDWow still maintain competitive prices.

cranoo

Will there be any increase in the price of MP3's, "NO" well it does'nt matter then


Cranoo..................ww)

seamus

Originally posted by bonkey
Personally, I hope they do.....because I can see that suddenly escalating to US/EU-level, at which point some compromise will be reached....which CD-Wow or another enterprising outfit will take advantage of.

Indeed, that may even be what they're thinking. Even with £2 added to the price of the CDs, they're still cheaper. Shopping online is much easier (and has a better selection). CD-WOW know that people will still buy their CDs at the same volume for this reason. It's a cheap, and very large source of revenue. By fighting it, they could potentially lose that, and indeed, that would probably mean the end of them.

Amazon, however, can afford to fight on the cheap CDs issue. Amazon are better known for their books and videos, and even if they lost in court, it wouldn't be a significant drain on them. If, more likely, Amazon won in court, Cdwow, as you say can simply step back and resume selling CDs from Hong Kong (not importing - they never imported Cds from Hong Kong for sale).

Samson

What the fuck?

The British and Irish record industries have struck a mighty blow for consumers...

Surely that should read struck a mighty blow against consumers?
Bastards.

Discovering

My question is....

Who keeps the extra £2/€3???

If it is CDWOW then wtf?

Cuz all that means is their sales will go down but their profit margin will have a massive jump!

bonkey

Its not CDWow, because they've just agreed that they will not 'import' CDs into the EU.

Instead, they will pay the EU price for them, which is where the hike comes in....

The difference goes to the Sony's, EMI's etc. of this world. They charge €X for CDWow to buy a CD off them in Asia, and €(X+2) for them to buy it in Europe.

This disparate pricing strategy is what led to CDWow's business model in the first place. Now

Why do the distributors charge more in Europe? Well - as the article I linked at the top so rightly puts it : because they can.

jc

therecklessone

Checked the CD Wow site and the prices are changing already (I think).

Pre-releases on cdwow.ie are €15.95 (thats +€2 isn't it?)

Hong Kong site appears to be HK$107.99, an increase of HK€2 (feck all really)

Still, pity they caved to the gouging basta*ds.

robbie1876

Hmmm prices on the .hk site are still at €10.79 odd, including most of the pre-releases. I wonder if they will just add the extra to the european sites.

As was stated on another thread somewhere, buying from a HK site and getting the product shipped to Ireland is pretty much the same thing as physically buying from a shop there and popping it in the post to yourself. We are not purchasing goods in the EU, therefore CD-WOW are not parallel importing, right?

I can't see how they can add the extra hike to the .hk site, which we all use anyway, don't we? I'm sure HMV will take the opportunity to put their prices up by €3 too

bonkey

Originally posted by robbie1876
We are not purchasing goods in the EU, therefore CD-WOW are not parallel importing, right?

CD-Wow were nevre parallel-importing. Their customers were!!! The only way CD-Wow could have been importing into Europe would be if they had a disty-centre here....which I don't believe they did.

You, as the consumer, would be the one importing from HK. Because you do this at a level below that where import duty becomes liable, you were not breaking any laws either.

However, this ultimately boils down to the fact that the intent of the law was to protect big business from suffering from its own disparate pricing mechanisms. Ultimately - even if that wasn't the wording of the law - thats what would happen...the big businesses would get the protection they thought they had in the first place.

Cd-Wow copped on that it was only ever on a losing streak here. Its only hope would be to get the Chinese government to intercede on its behalf with the WTO, and seek to get the unfair protectionism dropped.

This option, or the "fight it in the EU courts and lose" were both probably too expensive to bother with....so they went with option 3 : give up.

jc

sceptre

Originally posted by Samson
Surely that should read struck a mighty blow against consumers?
Bastards.

Might just be me but "mighty blow for consumers" reads as one of the most sarcastic things I've read all week, especially tied in with the general tone of the article.

Mind you, I'd have closed the article with "Thank you BPI.The world is a safer place".

Samson

Originally posted by sceptre
"Thank you BPI.The world is a safer place".

Touché.

On a related, but off topic note, can someone give me an alternative to:
http://www3.cd-wow.com.hk/index.php
as it seems to be just full of broken links.
If I use the cd-wow.com.hk url, I get redirected to cdwow.com

Mad Mike

Originally posted by Samson
What the fuck?

The British and Irish record industries have struck a mighty blow for consumers...

Surely that should read struck a mighty blow against consumers?
Bastards.

The technical term is ironing.

sunbeam

Originally posted by Samson
Touché.

On a related, but off topic note, can someone give me an alternative to:
http://www3.cd-wow.com.hk/index.php
as it seems to be just full of broken links.
If I use the cd-wow.com.hk url, I get redirected to cdwow.com

Seems to be redirecting now to http://www4.cd-wow.com.hk/

mollser

from the article;

forcing online retailer CD Wow to stop selling CDs imported from outside the EEA.

Something odd I noticed...

Fresh arrived today were 2 cd's, ordered only last Friday from the cdwow hk website:

The Thrills and Good Charlotte.

I had a little look as to where they were 'sourced' from, and low and behold, The Thrills was 'Made in the EU', and Good Charlotte was 'Made in Austria'. (granted, most other cd's i've bought from them were Asian, but thats beside the point

So, it really does beg the question as to how they were able to sell these to me so cheap at €10 odd each, when they were sourced in Europe. BIG BIG margins on these in the shops guys, if CD wow are selling the absolute identical product at half the price.

Kinda blows the Industry's argument out of the water there....:mad:

bonkey

Originally posted by mollser
I had a little look as to where they were 'sourced' from, and low and behold, The Thrills was 'Made in the EU', and Good Charlotte was 'Made in Austria'. (granted, most other cd's i've bought from them were Asian, but thats beside the point

So, it really does beg the question as to how they were able to sell these to me so cheap at €10 odd each, when they were sourced in Europe. BIG BIG margins on these in the shops guys, if CD wow are selling the absolute identical product at half the price.

Kinda blows the Industry's argument out of the water there....:mad:

There is no "industry's argument" other than that they sell CD's cheaper in Asia than they do in the rest of the world.

The "official" reasons vary from trying to combat the rife piracy over there, to lower per-capita income, to all sorts of other things.

At the end of the day, though, the CD companies have never claimed that they are selling CD's at the lowest possible price everywhere. Their fundamental complaint (and that of the BPI et al) is that someone is taking "unfair" advantage of them charging different prices.

Imagine if a petrol station in Dundalk was sold its petrol at 80% the rate that it is sold to Dublin garages....but only on the condition that it sold to Dundalk-registered drivers only....and most definitely not to Dublin drivers. Thats what the CD companies are doing with Asia.....and they have managed to get rules introduced that would also make it illegal for a Dublin garage or consumer to buy the petrol off said Dundalk garage....even though its cheaper.

jc

slave1

there is a time and a place for everything, so excuse my belief that profanity is allowed on this thread..

what a bunch of pricks those ****ers are, they can shove it so far up their arse if they think that this "mighty blow for consumers" will get me into the local store and pay the prices we are presented with, they can go **** themselves with a chainsaw

:mad:

slave1

er em I didn't type the **** bits

out of interest, how come earlier replies had f u c k allowed?

seamus

Originally posted by slave1
out of interest, how come earlier replies had f u c k allowed?

Because they are tricksy hobbitses

Mossy Monk

the BPI have done me a great service. it gives me more reason to shop online. they are a disgrace. everyone should spread the word about the cdwow's and play.com's of the world

seamus

Originally posted by Mossy Monk
the BPI have done me a great service. it gives me more reason to shop online. they are a disgrace. everyone should spread the word about the cdwow's and play.com's of the world

In fact, I'm going to be the annoying person who drafts an email and fires it off to everyone on my mailing list.

Mad Mike

I cannot understand why European retailers aren't putting pressure on the record companies to lower the distribution price of CDs etc within Europe. If people stop going into shops and move to buying online the record companies still make money but the high street retailer goes out of business.

savemejebus

the reason that most european retailers aren't putting pressure on the industry is that lots of them sell their cds and dvds at prices that are close to cd wow so they don't have to.

In germany you pay €10-12 for a new cd, and for the prices that HMV and golden discs charge here you can get SACD or DVD audio. Even in England CDs are regularly on sale for £9.99 in supermarkets. It's really only shi tty shi tty rip off ireland that gets the short end of the stick (remember even tescos used to do top 10 cds here for around €12 but not any more - i could be wrong about the any more bit).

They're trying to force us to pay inflated prices and just doesn't make sense. They may have a case if they were doing it to protect irish retailers and homegrown irish business but all they're doing is protecting HMV and Virgin, companies that aren't even Irish. And that bollocks about protecting the artists is pure crap, it's protecting record company profit margins not struggling artists.

I'd rather not buy CDs than pay the extortionate prices of the shops here:mad:

ixoy

CD Wow just sent me an e-mail on the issue: anyone get this? Here's the wording:

CD WOW! - An Important Announcement

Dear Member,

The UK Major record companies through their mouth piece the BPI* have unfortunately restricted the UK and Irish consumers right to enjoy the freedom of the World Wide Web.

As from this weekend, any CD ordered for delivery to the UK and Ireland will incur a surcharge as we are only able to deliver CDs manufactured within the EU (more expensive).

Delivery to the rest of the world will not be affected.

You only have a few days left - so order now!

Be quick to make the best of our current low low prices while you can still exercise your right to choose.

We will of course still be supplying UK and Irish customers but as of Sunday 25th January 2004 a surcharge of 3.00 Euros (£2.00) per CD will apply.

Please Note - our prices of DVDs and Games will remain unaffected

Warmest Regards,
CD WOW!

Glad to see the text of the mail says BPI are infringing our rights.

therecklessone

Received from CD Wow this morning:

Dear Member,

The UK Major record companies through their mouth piece the BPI* have unfortunately restricted the UK and Irish consumers right to enjoy the freedom of the World Wide Web.

As from this weekend, any CD ordered for delivery to the UK and Ireland will incur a surcharge as we are only able to deliver CDs manufactured within the EU (more expensive).

Delivery to the rest of the world will not be affected.

You only have a few days left - so order now!

Be quick to make the best of our current low low prices while you can still exercise your right to choose.

We will of course still be supplying UK and Irish customers but as of Sunday 25th January 2004 a surcharge of 3.00 Euros (£2.00) per CD will apply.

Please Note - our prices of DVDs and Games will remain unaffected

Warmest Regards,
CD WOW!

rubadub

who gets the £2? or is it that they are charged exactly £2 more to buy them in the EU. i have got some cds from them which were made in the EU so will it apply to them?
at least dvds are unaffected. and why is it not all of europe?
other threads have people sending email informing cdwow that ireland is no longer part of the UK.
are tehy going to go after play.com next?

sikes

i think it is time to start the emails. Could someone who is very good at writin arguments write an email that we can send to everyone in the world!!! i will go and check cd prices if you want, just a few examples.

i would write the email but me english ist nicht so gut

sprogman

I will never again buy anther CD/DVD in any high street store in this country - and I will try and persuade anyone who asks the same - if enough poeple to the same then they will need to drop there prices - HMV are/were getting a lot of bad publicity lately - Virgin are as bad or worse... Anyone see there brilliant offers over Xmas - they are taking us all for a ride..... and laughing all the way to the bank....

Johnmb

While I agree that the internet stores do offer the best value in general, people should still look around the high street stores for some bargains. Even Dunnes offer good deals on occasion. A couple of examples I recently came accross were "The Holy Grail" in one of the high street stores for €8.99 and "The Pink Panther box set" in Dunnes for €59.99. Both were cheaper than buying over the internet. While I admit this is very rare and about 95% of my purchases are from play or cd-wow, when the high street do give good deals they should be encouraged. Plus there's no point in paying more just to buy over the internet.

sprogman

I agree with you - though it is not very often that it does happen. But someday.....

sikes

why did the BPI get ireland included in the decision with cdwow. surely the irma had something to do with it

i think we shuold get mary harney after this as she is meant to look after consumers. i have compared prices as of today on cdwow.ie, hmv, and golden discs. will post them later. any1 goin to try to write an email and send it to everyone as a campaign.

surely the irma and bpi are takin away our consumer rights. maybe we could sue !!!

someone help, i need cheap cds!!

regards

Stark

why did the BPI get ireland included in the decision with cdwow. surely the irma had something to do with it

Maybe the websites are so closely linked that they need to increase prices across the boards, otherwise the UK people would just order off www.cdwow.ie

John R

CD-WOW typical prices

Jul-Dec 2003 (.com.hk) hkd94.99 €9.65
Today (.com.hk) hkd105.99 €10.75 (.com) £7.99 €11.60 (.ie) €13.95
Next Week (.com.hk) +£2/€3 €13.75 (.com) £9.99 €14.60 (.ie) €16.95

They have recently put up the prices by about €1 on the hk site (and the others i think as well) for some reason.

At the new prices the .hk store will still be competitive (just) with play.com but the .ie store is getting close to hmv/virgin territory certainly too close to make the rip-off happy Irish consumer storm out of hmv in disgust.

Genghis

k.oriordan - My reading of the CD-wow e-mail is that the surcharge will be applied according to delivery address, not necessarily to the store. Therefore I expect that even if you use the .com.hk version of the site you won't be able to avoid the charge. Therefore that is not a valid reason for 'including' Ireland with the BPI action. I also fail to see why the rest of the EU (or the Western World) are not being surcharged - perhaps this is a matter of time.

sikes

if any1 is going to write an email here are some prices of cds i checked in town today compared to cd-wow prices

Album Cd-Wow HMV Golden Discs

RHCP - Greatest Hits 13.95 21.99 19.95 (this is the one without the dvd)
Rollin Stones - 40 licks 10.95 29.99 28.95 (This is true!!!!)
The Darkness 13.95 17.99 15.95
Strokes - Is This It 17.95 24.99 21.95 (and the cdwow one is a special ed with dvd!!!)
Sheryl Crow - Best Of 13.95 21.99 17.95
Essential Springsteen 20.95 24.99 21.95
Westlife - Turnaround 10.95 17.99 16.95 (cdwow w/bonus vcd!!)
Damien Rice O 13.95 17.99 13.95
David Kitt Square 1 13.95 14.99 14.99
Now 56 13.95 26.99 19.95

kobrien_ie

My issue with all of this is that there is little or attempt by retailers here to "attract" me. All they want is as much of my money as they can suck out. I will never darken the door of a music retailer ever, ever again.

Stark

well said.

kida

There will always be another one to replace cd-wow.

Cd Jungles prices compare favourable with the cd-wow.com site, maybe not the hk version and also has free shipping.

CD Jungle

I am sure there are lots more to find also

Kell

Was listening to some guy from CDWOW on the last word the other night. The presenter made a very good point of "arent CD's surely priced then on what the market can support and not on fair policies?" to which the guy replied "of course they are".

In other words, CD's are more expensive here becuase the market can afford to pay the inflated prices for them. When the fúck are the government etc ect going to figure out that the celtic tiger died ages ago and that Irish punters CANT afford to be ripped off anymore.

K-

wiped

I'd love to think we live in a country that has Government with balls that acts in the best interests of it's people , but alas I'm not sure a place like that exists (although Canada has a good reputation)

I mean look at Mary Hearney for example , the mutated fat faced ugly bunny. That "thing" releases a statement saying that the we, the Irish public, are being over charged for everything because we don't shop around enough and we accept prices. Eh ... sorry ... is that a bit of a cop out Ms. Mutation ?? .. Are the Government not supposed to protect it's people from Monopolies , Cartels , Unfair Trading Standards etc ... yet we can see that Insurance Companies continue to charge us what the **** they want , as can Publicans (because it's regulated industry and therefore a closed shop - you'll find many politician with vested interests in the Publican Trade) and only recently there was an investigation into 12 main Citreon Dealers over Price Fixing .

That's just 3 I can think of off the top of my head but I'm positive there's thousands of examples in this country (feel free to post 'em here).

It's time people took to the streets ... something we don't do enough of in this country ....

It's time to get this joke of a Government OUT .... they don't even regulate themselves for ****s sake ... how has GV Wright still got a position in our Government ..... How can Ray Burke have the cheek to apply for Free Legal Aid - cos he is used to getting away with it ?
All the backhanders , no Governemnt project comes in on budget which just smacks of "Brown Envelopes" ... AAAARRGGGGHHHHHH

C'mon , let dig up Che Geurvara , sew his hands back on , pump 10,000volts through his body , spray on a bit of deo-oderant (cos he's gonna bang a bit) and start a ****in revolution ........................ BURN THE DAIL BAR TO THE GROUND for a start ...

SantaHoe

Rollin Stones - 40 licks 10.95 29.99 28.95 (This is true!!!!)

Good God... an extra €19, how many hours does the average joe have to work to make up that difference?
Taking minimum wage at €7, that's almost 3 hours wages that someone needn't have paid.

I have to say I'm also galled at that 'protecting the consumer' spin... are they suggesting that the likes of HMV would have to further increase their prices to ballance off all the lost business CD-Wow were incuring?
Perish the thought that the big retailers might actually have to compete on price.

Screw them.

cranoo

Lets FILESHARE all those Cu*ts out of business

Cranoo..

bonkey

Originally posted by cranoo
Lets FILESHARE all those Cu*ts out of business

Yes, because once you disagree with the way someone runs their business, its perfectly alright for you to steal from them.

jc

DiscoStu

Originally posted by bonkey
Yes, because once you disagree with the way someone runs their business, its perfectly alright for you to steal from them.

jc

give as good as you receive.

Vader

Originally posted by bonkey
Yes, because once you disagree with the way someone runs their business, its perfectly alright for you to steal from them.

jc

more words of wisdom from Jesus Christ