The Big Music Rip Off: CD Wow Breaks The Law

THOSE poor dears in the music industry.

After years of getting away with massively inflated CD prices, the Internet revolutionised the business and seriously ate into the industry’s profits, with peer-to-peer websites and cheap online shopping finally forcing music bigwigs, temporarily, to stop snorting their cocaine and start smelling the coffee.

However, in a ruling by the High Court yesterday, the industry hit back against websites selling uber-cheap CDs.

Website CD Wow, which sells chart albums for as low as £6.99, was ordered to pay the music industry £41million after their policy of shipping in cheap CDs designed for the Asian market was deemed to be illegal.

A delighted Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the British Phonographic Industry, says, “Illegal imports of this kind undermine the huge investments made by businesses here in home-grown musical talent.”

CD Wow, which is currently the third-most popular online music retailer, vowed to fight the ruling and plans to carry on its cut-price business.

Chief executive of the company, Henrik Wesslen, replies: “It shouldn’t matter whether we are buying from an official distributor in the UK, Europe or the Far East, what is important is that we are buying legitimate products from the record companies themselves.”

Legitimate top music products like Coldplay and, er, James Blunt…

Anorak

Posted: 30th, May 2007 | In: Money Comments (2) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink