Omaha rockers Cursive are selling their new album for just $1... No wait, it's $2... $3... $4... WTF?? In yet another twist on the whole, name-your-price (
Radiohead), fan-financed (
Jill Sobule), take-shrooms-and-cruise-hollywood (
Josh Freese) tiered pricing experiment being carried out by what's left of the music industry, Cursive are increasing the price of their new record by $1 each day until its "official" release. Given the popularity of sites like
Did it Leak (and the corresponding file-sharing forums that I won't link to here) it seems to me like this is a pretty good way to reward well-intentioned but impatient fans who might otherwise resort to less honorable means of getting the latest stuff from their favorite bands. Or maybe it's just another hare-brained scheme that will only hasten the end of record labels as we know them. Either way, they got my $1... And that was after I already got my hands on the mp3s!
posted by idontlikewords
on Mar 2, 2009 -
23 comments
Petroleum Industry Christmas Wishlist Conservative pundits are quick to point out that no "
new refineries have been built since 1976", and even quicker to blame "environmentalists". But the facts just don't support that. Refiners have chosen the environment that they do business in, and in some cases have willingly contributed to it. (
Plenty of data here.) Here's why:
- The government has allowed the industry to merge, consolidate, and restrict refining capacity, thus impacting pricing, supply, and demand.
- The quest for profits has caused the need to run extremely lean supplies (ie. no stockpiles of crude - it arrives when you need it, not before) and has resulted in susceptability to wild volatility in prices, but has allowed refiners to operate at very high efficiency but with no margin of excess capacity for temporary shortages, disasters, etc.
- Oil refiners trimmed back capacity after the Oil Crash of the early 1980s and have been unwilling to reinvest in new technologies unless environmental restrictions and local fuel cleanliness mandates are reduced.
As one would expect, Bush's solutions nicely match up with the wishlists of
OPEC and
US refiners, who in the past few decades have largely undone the breakup of Standard Oil (
via) via mergers and joint ventures. Representative
Joe Barton, (R-TX), Chairperson of the
Energy and Commerce Committee, incidentally up for reelection and
well funded, by "
the industry" through various
Political Action Committees, has released a draft of the predictably named (to be
found here when released)
Gasoline for America's Security Act of 2005 (committee discusion and
webcast are scheduled for 9/28 at 8 am.) Given that new refineries are years away, there is still no solution for current prices or the (90%?)
increase in prices since January of 2001.
posted by rzklkng
on Sep 27, 2005 -
22 comments
A sign of Global recession? For the first time I can remember, it's cheaper to buy a console in the UK than it is the States. Over here, we're used to seeing straight dollar to pound conversions ($299 = £299), so this is a first.
Do you think it's sign of recession or just Sony developing a conscience?
posted by jiroczech
on Sep 28, 2001 -
10 comments
