A Music World Full Of Assholes

Not only record-collectors are assholes, bands and record-labels are assholes, too. Not that it's a new discovery, I just got reminded again. I stumbled across the official Mummies news from last August that they would release a new 45 but sell it ONLY at their show in Portland the same month. Now how uncool is that?! Did they ever give a thought about their fans who don't live within travelling distance to Portland? Did it ever occur to them there might be people living overseas who would like to buy that 45 as well? Obviously not, otherwise I don't know why they came up with this stupid idea. Unless they don't give a fuck about their fans.

But they are not alone. More than once I read bands' announcements saying something like 'We recorded 4 new songs which we will release on an EP, but it will be available on our Japan tour only!' or 'There will be a special Japan release with 2 songs not on the European version'. Well, fuck you very much!

Remember the times when CDs were released with bonus-tracks(or is it still a common practise? I don't know. I don't buy CDs if there is a LP version. In fact I bought only 1 CD this year but tons of vinyl - just for the record)? Why do you get a bonus when buying a crappy little disc? Because the label makes much, much more profit than when you buy the LP version, as CD production costs are a joke compared to LP production costs. Still they (used to) cost around 50% more than a vinyl album. Nowadays things seem to have changed. Often LPs are released with bonus songs or new versions/mixes.

But worse than that are those labels(usually very small one-man indies, run by record-collector assholes) who put out releases on formats the average record-player is not able to play(fekkin' 5" or even smaller singles - records which play on 78 rpm - both incredible stupid ideas). But they don't stop there, they get their kicks out of releasing records in very, very small quantities, somewhere between 10 and 150 copies. It's okay if it's a record of some 3rd rate Blues-Rock band's rehearsal room recordings and only family members would buy it anyway, but often these releases would appeal to a much larger audience. So my question is: What the fuck is this about? Is it done so they are able to jerk off over the fact that they are part of a very small, exclusive group of people who own these extremely rare records? Could be. What ever  sick reason they have, it doesn't change the fact that it is an artificial market and that makes the ownership of these records insignificant.

And it doesn't stop there. Some labels run vinyl clubs you have to join to be able to buy limited and overprized releases. But even sadder than this 'idea' is the fact that  many bands/artists work together with these labels and support the idea that only a small circle of wanna-be elitists is able to get and listen to their new releases  Bravo!