Loads of websites seem to ignore bad news like this or good news depending on who is making the money.

They prefer uncommentable articles about how we need to shoot all pirates or at very least hang them as they are starving the Sony’s of this world of their god given right to squeeze until there is nothing left.

Question is will they refund those that paid the higher price?

I read somewhere that she was broke.

Which would make the act of raising the price of that crap even more unethical, because it was going to show that the label was going all out to recoup what they “lost” financing a has been singer that couldn’t write her own songs, was a diva, drug addict that had no self control/respect.

I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that she died of overdose and the label paid for it.

Well just another indicator of how much the music industry cares about their artists.
‘ Gee guys, shes dead , jack the price up quick ‘
Don’t you just love em ! ?

Why should they? Like one shill said yesterday, Whitney Houston wasn’t a real ‘artist’ to begin with.

Typical MAFIAA Corporation !!!
Boycott MAFIAA !

It could be as simple as a demand based price adjustment system gone wild.

Much of the older, back catalog stuff is in permanent discount, such that the wholesale price is reduced to try to encourage a little demand for it, allowing retailers to “sell it for less”. It’s just up from the bargain bin, if you like.

Then Whitney drops dead, sales instantly pick up (and they did), and the system goes “run on this stuff, pull off the discounts”. That removal of discount gets transmitted back to the retailers, who in turn move the album up from one price point to another.

Automation… it’s deadly at times.

Are Sony and Apple to blame for Whitney Houston’s album price hike?

The particular 1997 album, The Ultimate Collection, was priced at ?4.99 (or approximately $8) in the Apple iTunes Store before Houston was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m Pacific time from unspecified causes. At roughly 4 a.m. the following day, the price bumped up to ?7.99 (or approximately $12.60), leaving millions of fans who wanted to commemorate her death scrutinizing the music giants for attempting to profit off this global tragedy.

But was it all just an interestingly-timed accident? Apparently, when news of the singer?s death broke, Sony Music, which owns the rights many of Houston?s back catalog, was prompted to review its catalog of Houston?s albums. There, it realized its wholesale price of The Ultimate Collection had been incorrect in the first place. During this price change, the digital album became entirely unavailable for download for several hours, and when it came back online, the retail price had increased by more than 60 percent. However, since Apple technically has the responsibility of setting the selling price on the iTunes Store, fans are unsure of who to blame for this seemingly exploitative move.

Message to Sony and Apple from your customers: No matter how sorry you might claim to be, bad decisions will turn you into bad press magnets, and will not bring you profit.

…how else will she be incented to produce more content? Isn’t that the idea?

Hooray for joining the list of SONY-free households. I take it a little step further, and drop SONY a note every time I buy a TV, stereo, etc from someone other manufacturer, and remind them in my note just why I continue to be SONY-free.

In an article I read, there was a manager that straight up told Whitney that she was worth more dead than alive.

Notice they’re not apologizing for themselves, they’re apologizing for you. As if you were the one you was wrong. Fuck you Sony.

You’re right. They lie to the artists, so why not lie to the customers too? It’s what they do best.

This song perfectly includes all the standard lines (lies) the big execs tell all their artists, just before they are robbed blind.

Pink Floyd – Have A Cigar

Come in here, Dear boy, have a cigar.
You’re gonna go far,
You’re gonna fly high,
You’re never gonna die,
You’re gonna make it, if you try;
They’re gonna love you.
Well I’ve always had a deep respect,
And I mean that most sincerely.
The band is just fantastic,
that is really what I think.
Oh by the way, which one’s Pink?

And did we tell you the name of the game, boy?
We call it Riding the Gravy Train.

Sony is dirty and petty, I will bet my left nut they did it on purpose. I wonder how many bought it and have since received money back from Sony? Of course there is no mention of that, right.

But they are being held responsible. They are the ones who have to engage in damage control.

BTW, individual screw-ups are not limited to customers. If you work within a company think about how many times you have seen employees screwed by someone more interested in their advancement than the interests of the employees, all in the name of making a few pennies that cost dollars in terms of goodwill and employee morale.

Senior execs bemoan the fact that people with milliradian FOVs lose sight of the big picture.

SOPA would not add to any of the provisions contained in 17 USC 106. Additionally, the Supreme Court’s decision in Feist long ago shut the door an “facts” being elegible subject matter under US copyright law. Unlike many countries in Europe (and perhaps elsewhere), the US has steadfastly refused to create a database right because such works lack “originality”, a necessary condition for elegibility under Title 17.

That would only apply (currently as the Supreme Court has interpreted it) to the U.S.A., and as others have so frequently pointed out, these kinds of law get exported to other countries without such protections.

Taking over the world doesn’t seem to far fetched now.

Obviously, you are familiar with the prices of ALL music on iTunes’ UK site

A nice try – an attempt to broadly imply that there were many other albums that changed price as well as a sweep at implying that you are familiar with the UK ITunes site and know what you’re talking about. Except that even after the sweeping implication, the sarcasm and the pointless ad-homenim attack I still spotted, as I’m sure did many others, that you offered not one shred of corroboration. Also, since I bothered to read the link to the apology article, I find that:

Sony says it?s sorry it raised prices on two Whitney Houston albums at Apple?s U.K. iTunes store the day after the singer?s death.

and

Sony’s Statement:
?Whitney Houston product was mistakenly mispriced on the UK iTunes store on Sunday. When discovered, the mistake was immediately corrected. We apologize for any offense caused.?

You’d have thought they’d have mentioned a good excuse like a faulty exchange rate affecting multiple items and not just those two at that point wouldn’t you?
So I’m afraid your exchange rate “explanation” looks a little thin.

To understand the matter at the most basic level, we are shifting away from industrial mass-production technology to a post-industrial system, based on computers. In many respects, the post-industrial resembles the pre-industrial, as I have developed in a previous comment.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091210/0529417288.shtml#c431

If one looks back before the industrial revolution, there were big concert halls, but they catered to an upper/middle class audience.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111229/16024817230/us-box-office-revenue-finally-drops-not-because-infringement.shtml#c1079

But these did not cater to the working class. Music for the working classes was provided by street musicians, who, in the nature of things, could not be famous. There is the famous Gustave Dore print, circa 1860, of a bunch of little girls, dancing around in a circle, barefooted, in a London slum street, to the accompaniment of an organ-grinder, with a monkey on his shoulder. Working-class life in general was lived in the streets. The remote ancestor of McDonalds was a man selling baked potatoes from a little oven built into a handcart, which he dragged around with him. Under the circumstances, it was very difficult for a working-class person to possess celebrity. Working-class life was relentlessly driven down to the human scale.

There was one big exception– public execution. In the eighteenth century, the city of London might have hanged about a hundred people a year, some every few weeks, before an audience of thousands. Public executions were a popular entertainment on a large scale, with all the usual side businesses of a modern football game, such as selling food, drink, seating, and souvenirs to the audience. The condemned persons were taken in procession for a mile or so, from the prison to the gallows, and on this journey, they had their fifteen minutes of fame, or probably, more like an hour or two. The prisoners were given enough drink to be more or less drunk, and depending on their natures, they put on some kind of performance. The London Hanged were the ancestral rock stars. In the 1780’s, due to concerns about public order during the procession through the streets, the performance was scaled back. This was shortly after the Gordon Riots of 1780, in which a political march had become an outbreak of mass arson and looting (*). A new gallows was build on a porch adjoining London’s main prison, the Old Bailey, and this had the effect of scaling the performance back to a few minutes. Finally, in the 1860’s and 1870’s, executions were moved out of public view. That was about the time that the first phonographs began to make it possible for individual musicians to be famous. The classic literary representation of public execution was the Newgate Calendar.

http://www.exclassics.com/newgate/ngintro.htm

(*) The Gordon Riots were at one level a working class phenomena, but the leader was a duke’s son, Lord George Gordon. The urban working class was not yet capable of generating its own natural leaders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Riots

The recording industry is dependent on fame, not on music. When the recording industry comes under sufficient economic strain, with the collapse of the mass-market for sound recordings made by famous artists, it will tend to revert to its roots. We can see the beginnings of this when the fact of a rock star’s overdose or suicide, or whatever, leads to a surge in sales.

Error??
The sony has the novel and movie albums WH hands.
Who benefits from her death?
Who is winning big with the death of Michael Jackson?
Sony
Sony kills the music, it was this phrase that MJ exhibited to his fan club in London.
The sony is desperate to for profit, as it is on his knees before the advances of which she does not participate, only accumulated losses due to their incompetence.
The sony is killing artists to steal your work.
The death of Michael Jackson is generating an extraordinary profit to sony, and Whitney Houston, with his death, the cashier will fill them.
Eager for profit, are worse than vultures, because they do not expect the “carrion” cool.

This whole thing is being painted like it was immoral to raise the price. I don’t see anything wrong with it. And I generally find something wrong with almost everything.

It is a free market. The seller simply tries to maximize profit, which is exactly what they should be doing. If you (the buyer) are uncomfortable with the price, you can: 1. wait for price to come back down as demand dies, or 2. download the free version.

If I was Sony I would have left the price high and said, “Yes, we jacked up the price because of higher demand. As a company we always try to maximize profit.”

By trying to claim it was a mistake now, Sony has lost even more of my respect.

And Bill Clinton should have said, “Yes, I had consensual sex in the oval office.”

Why do public officials and companies always lie when confronted with something everyone knows that they did and that isn’t even close to as bad as the subsequent lying about it?