How to buy CDs

[Squeech]

This is in response to various threads about how Dems shouldn't buy things at Republican stores.

One issue that was raised was that, even though chain stores like WalMart and Circuit City are humongous Republican contributors (not to mention significant drags on local economies), the actual makers of CDs and DVDs are located in the blue states and are generally Democratic in outlook, and therefore it's okay to keep buying them.

In that case, buy direct from the artist.

If you pay $15 for a CD at the store, the store keeps somewhere between $4 and $6. Another chunk of money gets siphoned off by at least one level of distribution, many of whom are also Republican, if not Mafia. The record company gets somewhere between $7 and $10, roughly, and pays the typical recording artist a buck or two, depending on the terms of the various contractual agreements (and the companies' good faith adherence to them). No matter how heavily Democratic David Geffen leans, he can't change this business model all by his lonesome.

If you see the musician on tour, and if he's one of an increasingly large number of entertainers who supplement their tour income by selling their CDs along with the T shirts and concert programs, then he gets the share of the money that would otherwise get swallowed up by the faceless corporate entities.

Sometimes this is the only money the artist actually receives from his recordings. I was in a highly regarded semi-famous indie band that got to tour the country. We had 5 CDs out, mostly on a New York based indie label that was really bad at sending us our royalties, or any statements about them (or anything else they were contractually obligated to do). So the only way we ended up making any money off our records was by buying them from our own label, at the same wholesale price the distributors would pay, and carrying boxes of them with us in the van to sell at our all too infrequent gigs. (This extra money usually went to pay the van rental bill, otherwise we would have played every gig at a loss. Indie rock is hard work!)

Nowadays, whenever I go see live music, if they have CDs for sale (and if I like what they do) I make a point of buying one. One big reason I liked buying records in the first place was so I could think of myself as a patron of the arts, like the various princes and bishops that hired Bach to conduct orchestras and write masses for them, and what better way to show encouragement to a musician than to hand him the money in person?

[Jack_DeLeon]

1. I just get my music from....

Warez, Mexico.