Wal-Mart flexes its pecses…
Rolling Stone reports that Wal-Mart has decided that it’s paying too much for CD’s. To which the average music consumer replies, “You’re just noticing this?”
Less-expensive CDs are something consumers have been demanding for years. But here’s the hitch: Wal-Mart is tired of losing money on cheap CDs. It wants to keep selling them for less than $10—$9.72, to be exact—but it wants the record industry to lower the prices at which it purchases them. Last winter, Wal-Mart asked the industry to supply it with choice albums—from new releases from alternative rockers the Killers to perennial classics such as Beatles 1—at favorable prices. According to music-industry sources, Wal-Mart executives hinted that they could reduce Wal-Mart’s CD stock and replace it with more lucrative DVDs and video games.“This wasn’t framed as a gentle negotiation,” says one label rep. “It’s a line in the sand—you don’t do this, then the threat is this.” (Wal-Mart denies these claims.) As a result, all of the major labels agreed to supply some popular albums to Wal-Mart’s $9.72 program. “We’re in such a competitive world, and you can’t reach consumers if you’re not in Wal-Mart,” admits another label executive.
I grew up on action cartoons in the 80’s. Shows like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, G.I. Joe, and The Spiral Zone. That’s basically why I dig websites like X-Entertainment, but that’s neither here nor there. I bring it up in this context because when I read this story, I flash back to a scene that appeared in practically every action cartoon of that decade.
It goes something like this. The two major villains who appear in the series (every cartoon that ran long enough had at least two major villains – it helped to sell more toys) have two separate plots that happen to fall on the same day. As a result of their conflicting plans and the hero’s strength and bravery, both are vanquished. Then, in some super-villain moment of lucidity, it occurs to them that they can avoid this situation in the future by actually co-ordinating their evil plans.
“Yes!” they say. “We will work together! A team until [name of hero] is no more!”
Then they each turn away from the other and mutter under their breath – simultaneously – “And, then, I will destroy you....”
The rank bastards of the RIAA have been doing everything in their power over the past few years to confirm their reservations in Hell. They’ve filed countless John Doe lawsuits, treated all of their customers like criminals, and meanwhile continued to cheat, exploit, and devour the very talent they depend on for new product – and they’ve gotten away with it because they’ve been a band of the biggest, meanest kids on the block.
Now the biggest, meanest kids on the block are going to be forced to hand over their lunch money to a new kid – one who’s been doing steroids. The monopolistic, cut-rate, small-business-decimating, worker-exploiting, union-bashing juggernaut that is Wal-Mart.
This could get very interesting.