Prices

[Briain]

Excellent; thanks folks!!

I'll call him over the weekend and tell him it's available with some technical trickery and a small twist of nefariousness.

It's such a great pity that you have to go to such lengths to buy an album; does anyone actually know why are we not permitted to buy Steely Dan - Gaucho at 24/96 in the UK? It just seems like total and utter madness, to me; you'd think the record companies would like our money, but it would seem not.

Bri

[moomintroll]

(2012-04-20 18:31)Briain Wrote:  Excellent; thanks folks!!

I'll call him over the weekend and tell him it's available with some technical trickery and a small twist of nefariousness.

It's such a great pity that you have to go to such lengths to buy an album; does anyone actually know why are we not permitted to buy Steely Dan - Gaucho at 24/96 in the UK? It just seems like total and utter madness, to me; you'd think the record companies would like our money, but it would seem not.

Bri

I can almost understand a US based outfit not being able to sell to the UK if a UK outfit was already selling it here, but there isn't. Will this be Linn in future?

However, what I find even more bizarre is that the 24bit version of King Creosote and Jon Hopkin's Diamond Mine is available from Qobuz in France, but not to us in the UK and both countries are in the EEC, or whatever it's called these days.

It's just crazy that I can import physical media (if available) but not, legally, download noughts and ones.

Grumpy 'troll

[peter@57m]

(2012-04-20 18:21)NickP Wrote:  

(2012-04-20 18:09)peter@57m Wrote:  Steely Dan - Gaucho is available on HDTracks, its their search engine and menus that appear to be lacking. If you navigate to Browse Music and The Classic 100 you will find it

Ah yes! At USD17.98 - but the geographic filter stops me from putting it in my basket.

I reckon the "hiding" of albums is to prevent us either from being disappointed, or from making a fuss.

N

OK did a little playing around on HDTracks. If you search for Steely Dan or The Who, it finds something and shows a picture which I, at least, took to be an album cover. When I did not see the album I wanted I started looking at different ways of finding it. In fact what its showing you is an "artist" picture. If you click on that, then you see all the albums by that artist. So search at least seems to work. The artist letter navigation does not seem to work for me...

This was the same behaviour when using a US proxy or not (I am in the UK).

I ran into all the problems other people mentioned about not being able to add things to my basket. It was not until I saw NickP's post today that I saw how to do it.

I had registered on HDT a few days ago and downloaded the sampler - worth doing - you get a 20% discount off your first purchase by doing this (and you don't need to use a proxy to do it). And as already mentioned proxy solutions have a 3 day free trial.

So thanks to NickP I am currently listening to The Who's Tommy at 24/96 :-)

[Lefreck]

(2012-04-20 18:50)moomintroll Wrote:  

(2012-04-20 18:31)Briain Wrote:  Excellent; thanks folks!!

I'll call him over the weekend and tell him it's available with some technical trickery and a small twist of nefariousness.

It's such a great pity that you have to go to such lengths to buy an album; does anyone actually know why are we not permitted to buy Steely Dan - Gaucho at 24/96 in the UK? It just seems like total and utter madness, to me; you'd think the record companies would like our money, but it would seem not.

Bri

I can almost understand a US based outfit not being able to sell to the UK if a UK outfit was already selling it here, but there isn't. Will this be Linn in future?

However, what I find even more bizarre is that the 24bit version of King Creosote and Jon Hopkin's Diamond Mine is available from Qobuz in France, but not to us in the UK and both countries are in the EEC, or whatever it's called these days.

It's just crazy that I can import physical media (if available) but not, legally, download noughts and ones.

Grumpy 'troll

They even sell Steely Dan in studio master quality at qobuz, but I guess it will not be available for the uk neither... Silly sh...

[NickP]

(2012-04-20 18:50)moomintroll Wrote:  I can almost understand a US based outfit not being able to sell to the UK if a UK outfit was already selling it here, but there isn't. Will this be Linn in future?

When I first looked at HDTracks' Hi-res store's Ts & Cs, I seem to recall that they said that the copyright owner required them to restrict sales to the USA. I speculate that HDTracks is quite happy to sell to anybody, provided that HDTracks can claim "credible deniability". They certainly made no issue of the fact of my .co.uk email address when I had a couple of problems with Hi-Res albums.

(2012-04-20 18:50)moomintroll Wrote:  However, what I find even more bizarre is that the 24bit version of King Creosote and Jon Hopkin's Diamond Mine is available from Qobuz in France, but not to us in the UK

Again, license restriction apply; Qobuz is not licensed to sell into the UK.

(2012-04-20 18:50)moomintroll Wrote:  and both countries are in the EEC, or whatever it's called these days.
It's just crazy that I can import physical media (if available) but not, legally, download noughts and ones.

I don't think the law is stopping you; I'm sure WTO accords forbid the USA, UK, EU etc to erect trade barriers of this sort. But equally - and here's where I'd like a lawyer to contribut to this thread - this whole situation reeks of anti-competitive practice.

(2012-04-20 18:50)moomintroll Wrote:  Grumpy 'troll

Sniff's usually pretty cheerful - maybe spend some time with him & Snufkin, if he isn't away on his travels?

N

[Briain]

(2012-04-20 19:33)Lefreck Wrote:  They even sell Steely Dan in studio master quality at qobuz, but I guess it will not be available for the uk neither... Silly sh...

I've just looked, and I see that Steely Dan - Gaucho 24/96 is now on the Linn Records store, but that it's for sale at their 'one-price for HD' £18 (compared to the HD Tracks price of £11.51) and assuming it's not just an unfortunate mistake, I'm starting to get a little concerned at the way this looks to be heading (from a consumer perspective).

As that Steely Dan album is a Universal release, and as Linn Records have recently secured a deal to sell future Universal HD content on their site, I wonder what exactly that means for now, and what it means going forward. Does it mean Universal (or their UK distributors) are the ones preventing HD Tracks from selling it to the UK? If so, does that mean HD Tracks are going to continue to release the Universal 24 bit albums at £11.51 in the USA (via HD Tracks) whereas we have to buy them at £18.00 in the UK (via LR)? Of course, it could be that HD Tracks will not get any future Universal 24 bit material and thus that everyone will have to pay £18 for future Universal 24 bit releases; I wonder if that's where we'll end up.

Don't get me wrong, I most certainly don't mind paying Linn Records a little extra for their HD download service; it is a fantastic service and I'd expect that you'd get a satisfactory resolution should a duff album appear on the LR site (think of these truly dreadful Talking Heads - Remain in Light and Nirvana - Nevermind albums from HD Tracks) but it is rather a big jump from £11.51 to £18 and I'd really like to know how that can be justified (particularly for an existing release like that 24/96 Steely Dan - Gaucho). I can’t help but wonder who’s pocketing excess margin; is it the record label, an intermediate party (maybe a UK music distributor), the UK government (via some additional taxation mechanism that I'm not aware of) of is it just an unfortunate victim of LR’s single price HD strategy? I assume HD Tracks are in business to make a profit, so their £11.51 price will already include a margin (otherwise they'd be reading up on 'chapter 11' by now), so in this case, it is a pretty significant price discrepancy.

In general, my view of the music and film industry (and this is most certainly NOT a criticism of Linn's part in it) cannot get much lower. What with things like Hollywood trying to ensure HDMI is the only video interconnect format, their financing and lobbying to try and force the US government to introduce SOPA's proposals (and thus break the internet for everyone), the lack of downloads faculties from record company sites (and their continual whinging about how hard done-by they are because folks then use Pirate Bay instead), the recent Kaleidescape farce and now this 'anti-competitive' situation where you can't download certain material from the USA.

Sorry if I'm inappropriately 'pointing the finger' at anyone who is a victim of commercial circumstances – that is not my intention – but purely from the customers’ perspective, it all seems like a bloody shambles (with the poor old customers being the losers), where the media companies look to be basing their commercial strategies (e.g. no download availability for new albums) on models they conceived in the early 1990's (when CDR's were the perceived threat) and from them apparently promoting anti-competitive behaviour by enforcing regionalized unavailability.

Incidentally, I have just spotted that HD Tracks have now released The Doors - The Doors in 24/96 (again for £11.51) but when I try to add it, I get the below message:

This title is not yet available for download from HDtracks in your territory due to current contract restrictions. We are working hard to soon be able to offer this title and many others in pristine high resolution quality. Please continue to check back for further updates. We apologize for any inconvenience. We look forward to having your business.

That one is on Rhino/Elektra and thus I wonder just who is putting the stop on that release in the UK? Looking at the HD Tracks site, I don’t see any other Rhino/Elektra releases (available in the UK) so I guess either Rhino/Elektra, or some UK distributor has told HD Tracks to block all Rhino/Elektra content until they can work out a way to get a cut from the sale. It would be okay if this were some brief delay (as implied by the HD Tracks message) but when you think about it, that album came out in 1967, so you’d think that there would be a well developed process in place already. It leaves you picturing some antiquated Rhino/Elektra UK distributer who likes to pocket the proceeds but is unwilling to rock the boat in case it impacts on their CD distribution business. I wonder if they just don’t realise that anyone wanting to buy that download likely has the CD, or whether they’re just not able to build a model to cover old HD downloads without it encompassing new 16/44.1 releases (and thus they think they’ll lose new CD sales via download file sharing).

I’d love to know the answers on who is causing all this HD Tracks chaos and why it's all looks like such a mess to us consumers (or more correctly, I’d love to hear their reasoning behind making it so).

Briain McRantalot

[peter@57m]

I cannot agree more, this is a most frustrating situation. I had been hoping that there would not be too large a difference in pricing between the US and UK.

Until 18 months ago, over a period of 20 years I used to visit San Francisco on business once a quarter. In the early days CDs were much cheaper in the US than the UK. Towards the end the pricing was very similar, with some CDs even appearing to be more expensive in the US. This was not scientifically done but just observed as I bought CDs in both countries. And now, of course, it is hard to know what the “list price” for a CD is as you can nearly always buy them at a discount.

Unfortunately what is happening with HiRes seems very similar to books on eReaders. It amazes me that a book written on a PC or Mac is more expensive to buy electronically than it is to buy a physical book in a store which has to be printed, shipped to the store, put on a shelf and then sold. The eBook takes out so much of the cost but ends up costing more – who is making the money? I know who is suffering, the consumer.

It seems that rather than the reduced costs being passed on to the consumer, the publishers, music and book, are using the electronic versions to take pricing control away from the retailers and set artificially high prices. Retailers do not appear to be able to offer discounts for electronic material in the same way as they do for physical goods. But this does not explain the pricing discrepancy between US and UK. I could accept the UK pricing being 10% to 15% higher due to tax differences, but not the apparent 50%.
I would obviously accept a higher cost for a HiRes new release album than a CD. But I would expect to buy older HiRes material at a lower cost, same as for older CDs. At £18 a pop I am unlikely to buy much HiRes material. I may buy a few more at £12 from HDT. However for older albums, I am nearly always buying albums I already own, and often have on both vinyl and CD. So I will have paid three times for the same album.

I do hope some global retailer takes this on and fights for the consumer to harmonize pricing and offer retailer deals. At the moment though, I think the market is too small for this to happen.

[NickP]

(2012-04-21 21:23)peter@57m Wrote:  However for older albums, I am nearly always buying albums I already own, and often have on both vinyl and CD. So I will have paid three times for the same album.

And of course, this is doubly insulting since, if it were software, we'd pay the price to upgrade. But, when it come to music, our previous purchases count for nothing.

N

[linnrd]

AFA The Doors is concerned, I would recommend picking up the Perception box set and then ripping the 24/96 from it. As a bonus, you have a disc backup, physical booklets and, if it tickles you, decent 5.1 surround mixes. Riders on the Storm in 5.1 is rather nice, imho. The thunder rolls from the back to the front.

[Briain]

(2012-04-21 22:22)linnrd Wrote:  AFA The Doors is concerned, I would recommend picking up the Perception box set and then ripping the 24/96 from it. As a bonus, you have a disc backup, physical booklets and, if it tickles you, decent 5.1 surround mixes. Riders on the Storm in 5.1 is rather nice, imho. The thunder rolls from the back to the front.

Yes but it would cost a fortune as I'd also need to buy another set of 350's for the rear, so for financial reasons, I'll just stick to the stereo version and have some baked beans on toast 30 minutes before I wish to play it.