krj
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The Twenty-Sixth "Napsterization" Item
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Oct 6 21:38 UTC 2006 |
The usual canned introduction:
The original Napster corporation has been destroyed, its trademarks
now owned by an authorized music retailer which does not use
peer-to-peer technology. But the Napster paradigm, in which computers
and networks give ordinary people unprecedented control over content,
continues.
This is another quarterly installment in a series of weblog and
discussion about the deconstruction of the music industry and other
copyright industries, with side forays into "intellectual property,
freedom of expression, electronic media, corporate control, and
evolving technology," as polygon once phrased it.
Several years of back items are easily found in the music2 and music3
conferences, covering discussions all the way back to the initial
popularity of the MP3 format. These items are linked between
the current Agora conference and the Music conference.
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krj
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response 1 of 87:
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Oct 6 21:46 UTC 2006 |
Tower Records, once the most prestigious national retailer of
recorded music, went to a bankruptcy auction sale yesterday.
Apparently the dickering is still ongoing, and is unclear whether
Tower will be sold to Trans World Entertainment Corporation,
which runs several chains of music retail stores which are
generally scoffed at by serious music fans, or if the Tower
chain will be completely liquidated.
Tower owed $210 million in its current bankruptcy, the second
bankruptcy filing in about three years, and the initial
round of bidding set a floor price of $90 million. So the
Tower owners -- who were the creditors in that last bankruptcy
round, and who took ownership in lieu of their debts -- are going
to be wiped out.
One culturally significant effect of the Tower bankruptcy is that
it likely marks the end of broad-scale classical music retailing,
in physical stores, in the US. Borders is the only other national
retailer stocking more than a shoebox-full of classical music,
and Borders has been cutting and cutting again on the classical
CD stocks.
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