CD price fixing settlement, cont’d

Ted Frank reported Aug. 23 on the Compact Disc Antitrust Litigation Settlement, in which music distributors and retailers agreed to donate 5.5 million CDs to libraries, valued at 20% below retail, as part of the rationalization for a multi-million-dollar payment of fees to plaintiff’s counsel. Now the Washington Post has more details about how the […]

Ted Frank reported Aug. 23 on the Compact Disc Antitrust Litigation Settlement, in which music distributors and retailers agreed to donate 5.5 million CDs to libraries, valued at 20% below retail, as part of the rationalization for a multi-million-dollar payment of fees to plaintiff’s counsel. Now the Washington Post has more details about how the musical selections — by and large, unpopular stuff that had been sitting unsaleable in warehouses — were stuffed randomly into boxes for shipping, so that libraries wound up getting large multiples of CD titles they would not have greatly coveted in the first place (Karin Brulliard, “An Influx of Outmoded CDs”, Washington Post, Sept. 6). Alex Tabarrok also comments (Sept. 6). Coming up next: will Newsday and other newspapers plagued by circulation scandals agree to make it up by shipping libraries bundles of week-old papers?

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