Nothing to sell ...
Dear friends of Caribbean and South American Music!
We do not want to sell anything today. We are going to give away CD gifts instead and we are a surprised. There have never been so many cancellations of the newsletter registrations as following the last newsletter (which was only available in German). In that letter, we had to inform our customers about the price increase of shipment prices within Germany. We suppose, there was a kind of migration wave to other companies which apparently offer better shipment terms.
Of course, everybody can decide to spend his money where it supports the big monopolies. There is a simple rule: Every Euro given to a company dominating the market is a Euro supporting the growing monopolization. The diversity gets lost, the repertoire becomes more and more one-sided and boring...
As we said, we do not want to sell anything today, but we would like to inform you a little bit, to whinge a little and to explain a little bit those things which are on our minds.
Some days ago we received an e-mail we have to tell you about. A certain Chris from Russia actually wrote (no spam!)
“Hi, We san offre to you CD's, origen from Russia. The CD's and poligrafia have excelent quality.All CD's are silver. We have more 5000 titles (hard, heavy, rock, progressive , etc). The price is from 3.50 until 5.00 USD.
We may make CD (from 500 copies) from your original.”
First I though to tell the IFPI about that. This is the international music police. (They really exist! From time to time they discover a “music pirate” somewhere.) Anyway, even if Russia is just around the corner, they do not even protect intellectual property within the EU successfully. In Spain, policemen are right there, when somebody sells CD clones right infront of the CD shop window.
And the German music wholesellers seriously believe that everything would be better if the price for every CD was 9,99 Euro. Seriously, there is an article stating that opinion in the last issue of the magazine “Musikwoche”. They really have to be wrong in the garret. One also has to consider the fact that Germany has the lowest prices of all industrial nations world-wide.
Talking about prices: One of our clients actually accused us of profiteering a few days ago. Our (now probably former) client used a catalogue from 2001. He converted the DM prices accurately by 1,95583 into Euro prices, and then he was surprised that his package was more expensive in January 2003 than in Janury 2001. If he had chosen different CDs, the amount might have been even cheaper, but his order consisted of CDs which were price reduced in January 2001. Quote at the end of the letter: “If you do not transfer the difference to my account, I will send a copy of my letter to the consumer council and to the press (tangodanza).” Just to show you what we have to deal with.
If the customer would have been a little bit friendlier - anyway, maybe he should register for our newsletter and thus get the chance to win a CD from time to time...
By the way, this reminds me of our shop: We are looking for a person who can translate our CD-shop into FRENCH. Important: This person should be a native speaker or he or she should have lived in France for quite a while. If you would like to do it or if you know somebody who does, please send me an e-mail.
Finally we will give away the promised CDs. Everybody who receives our newsletter and who is registered as a client in our shop (- if he or she buys or not does not matter ...) can win (logically we can only send you a CD, if we have your address in our system...). The winners of February are:
Michael Kasper from Offenbach (a Tango - CD) Carol Auerbach from Flourtown / USA (a Tango - CD) Jürgen Rockahr from Hannover (a Salsa - CD)
We are going to send the CDs to them shortly. Enjoy them!
Many regards from Danza y Movimiento in Hamburg. Matthias Möbius
