Expensive Albannach CD

[javasaurus]

Why is Albannach charging $20 at Fest for their live CD? It's cheaper (including shipping) to get it on their web site...

Comments

[dawntreader]

they are charging $20 for all their CDs. ... aren't they?

anyway, i suppose it's for the instant gratification people who want it on the spot.

[dawntreader]

like me i guess, since i bought one and now feel like a big dummy.

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

I, too, bought one. Liked it. Was considering buying more, so I checked out the web site.

[dawntreader]

maybe they just charge $20 so they don't have to deal with all the $1's they'd have to give out as change.

i bought Eye of the Storm (album 2). which did you get?

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

I don't know what they were charging for the studio CDs. I assume $20.

Their online store charges $15, plus $4 for shipping, so it's not a huge difference overall. It's more the principle...(or is that "principal"? I never was good at spelling)

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

principle .... and they probably had to pay shipping and/or customs to get the CDs here.

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

that's a good point.

[dawntreader]

or pay for their own bad selves to carry them!

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

actually this is highly likely it. there are limits to how many CDs can cross the pond and get through customs before the charges go WAY up, laws that originally were written to protect u.s. businesses from cheap bootleg flooding from the far east (and have no exceptions built in).

when you buy from them direct, you can buy at one price and add in shipping and a small import duty, but the duty goes up dramatically based on weight and quantity, especially if you're actually honest about saying you're selling them.

on top of that, ALL merch is marked up in person, to a degree, but you *should* see that as acknowledging that the ticket price doesn't really pay all of the bills involved in getting a foreign band across the pond and into the states (just in visas, equipment shipping and insurance, band travels and rest stop). the merchandise is, really, all the profit the band receives outside of a pre-allocated per diem worked out by the manager.

Fish's recent tour of the U.S. cost about $45,000 (26k GBP) before a single note is played. A King Crimson week of rehearsal costs Fripp about $10,000, and that's with the housing already paid for by being on Adrian Belew's property. Work permits are horrendously, insanely expensive to get for performing artists. A band's budget works out to have the ticket income, plus a little money from advertising sponsors, to break even, so ALL merchandise sales is the only actual income the band members themselves actually get.

So when you buy a horrendously overpriced t-shirt or a CD at $5 over the web site, you're helping to make sure the band can actually afford to come back.

Touring at a loss in hopes of CD sales from record stores (or the web site) is an old 70s tactic that bands LONG ago realized was something only profitable to the record label. It simply doesn't work. If you don't sell on the tour, you can't tour.