Sony Music Raised Prices On Whitney Houston's Music… Less Than 30 Minutes After She Died
from the shameful dept
It’s no secret that the major record labels are a business where the bottom line is everything. However, they like to present themselves as something much more than that. They talk about lofty ideals of delivering culture, of sustaining art and of helping artists. But, when tragedy strikes… dollar signs seem to win over all. According to various reports, within 30 minutes of Whitney Houston being reported dead, Sony Music jacked up the prices on her Ultimate Collection album on iTunes and Amazon.
But instead of reverence in the wake of Houston’s passing, Sony chose to raise the price of one of her most popular hits collections. The Ultimate Collection album in the U.K. jumped in price by more than 60 percent from £4.99 to £7.99 within 30 minutes of Houston’s death, according to Digital Spy. The album price fell back down to £4.99 some time during the weekend, but it’s unclear when it happened.
Fans originally blamed Apple for the price hike on iTunes, but The Guardian is reporting that Apple automatically raised the price after Sony Music “lifted the wholesale price” of the album.
You have to think the price dropping back down was due to someone, somewhere realizing just how crass that looked.
Filed Under: death, music, prices, whitney houston
Companies: amazon, apple, sony music
Comments on “Sony Music Raised Prices On Whitney Houston's Music… Less Than 30 Minutes After She Died”
That is great news!
Now she’ll have plenty of incentive to create more art and…you know…not die.
Surprised? I'm not.
They profit at the artist’s expense while alive. Small wonder that they’d attempt to profit off of someone’s death.
Did the price go up, or was a special / discount / promotion removed from the wholesale price?
Is the wholesale price increase above and beyond the normal wholesale price for albums, or was the existing wholesale price abnormally low because of discounting of an artist who was (by most accounts) on the sunset side of her career?
Black March is coming.
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No see, they just raised the prices because they might run out of the album from all the frenzied buying after her death. If all those people buy the song, they wouldn’t be able to keep up with demand and iTunes would run out of files! So obviously those files are now worth more since they became scarce.
Trajectory pricing?
I know several computer parts sites (like Provantage) have trajectory pricing, where prices start rising if lots of orders for a particular item start rolling in. It’s an automated process for the most part. Don’t know if Amazon does something similar or not.
And I’m sure Sony will give every extra penny they charged during the price hike to the artist, right?
Oh who am I kidding, of course they won’t, they’re just greedy for cash.
Trajectory pricing?
But that’s different – there’s actually a scarcity going on with computer parts. I’ve seen several parts vendors who jack up the price as inventory falls below a certain threshold.
Now, for digital goods, this is a great strategy to destroy a swell of interest from the public…
Someone tells their friends that they just got Houston’s album for 4.99 a couple days prior, so they go to buy their own copy only to see that it’s nearly double the price now… “fuck ’em, I’ll just torrent a copy”.
It likely neutered the possible sales count potential by raising the price.
Remind me again. Who are the pirates?
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Would work, except that files don’t become scarce.
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the RIAA and MPAA, who else?
After all, they’re the ones stealing from artists.
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Nor does sarcasm.
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You may need to get your sarcasm detector serviced 😉
Trajectory pricing?
That makes sense for physical inventory, which needs to be restocked at a cost and that can run out if not managed properly. Not so much for digital files.
Trajectory pricing?
Hmm, speaking of neutering, maybe that is what needs to be done to all the executives at these companies. Remove their stupidity from gene pool.
Surprised? I'm not.
You have to be joking.
Whitney Houston was, by some reports, living on advances sent over and over again by the labels. Basically, she was not a song writer, only a performer. Many of her most popular songs were written by others, performed by others, and she was only a voice on her own songs.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2101014/Whitney-Houston-Dolly-Parton-set-rake-millions-song-I-Will-Always-Love-You.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Basically, Dolly Parton gets a little more rich because Whitney Houston died.
This is why it’s hard sometimes for people (especially Mike) to understand that the music business isn’t exactly a straight line affair. It’s not a single person writing a song, recording a song, and selling a song, but often a complex combination of song writers, studio musicians, producers, and singers to bring out a new finished product song to market. Because Whitney Houston was only a singer, her income from recorded music is much lower than many. Her only real income would come from performing live, something she had rarely done in the last decade.
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If we’re going to insist the shills don’t use the term theft incorrectly, we may as well follow the same advice. This isn’t stealing. Shameless profiteering and an example of how corporations act like sociopaths, perhaps, but not stealing.
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See above. The “artist” in this case is Dolly Parton.
Surprised? I'm not.
Then thank god things are changing.
10 years ago(maybe a little further into the past) this was going to be a non-story, today with the industry trying to increase its monopolies to beyond the absurd that it is today and gain super powers that harm everybody else and even themselves now they have to deal with the public scrutinizing every single detail of their operations, those people don’t like light.
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Doing this, they’re certainly ‘stealing’ from the customers…
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Files become scarce when Sony starts going the Disney route and locking stuff in their “vault”. In 20 years, they’ll release them again for a “limited” release thereby creating artifical scarcity..
/sarcasm
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When I was in high school I used to work in file mines. It was brutal, back-breaking work. I couldn’t imagine what it’s like now with the popularity of iTunes.
Surprised? I'm not.
I’m not surprised. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was found out that the MAFIAA killed her just to be able to sell a few more albums. They’re capable of that and much worse.
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Yep…Will be easy for me to participate. There’s nothing coming out that I’m just dying to go see. In fact, there’s absolutely NOTHING coming out I’m even interested in seeing in the next few months.
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Ah, so you were a data miner?
File Mines
I’ve seen it–the great iTunes strip mines–a desolate file strip-mining operations where third-world laborers with little to no human rights work for pennies per day… all just so iTunes’ll have enough files to turn into mp3’s for sale.
So sad.
Surprised? I'm not.
“This is why it’s hard sometimes for people (especially Mike) to understand that the music business isn’t exactly a straight line affair. It’s not a single person writing a song, recording a song, and selling a song, but often a complex combination of song writers, studio musicians, producers, and singers to bring out a new finished product song to market.”
I’m guessing Mike knows what a production studio is, and probably also a decent amount about the few remaining major labels.
Pop stars have been getting created/used by the major labels for the last few decades. If it wasn’t for the internet and new business models, it would be even easier today for record labels to take advantage of artists.
Surprised? I'm not.
And the labels have never ever unpaid the staff (song writers, studio musicians, etc) with the promise of royalties if a song becomes a hit. And then they have never ever used questionable accounting practices to make sure they pay little to no royalties to those same staff. The record labels are only interested in making sure everyone gets paid fairly, as long as everyone isn’t the people who actually worked on the music….
That is great news!
no rush. doesn’t have at least 75 years to do that?
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Actually the “artist” is both the composer and the performer.
Both get a cut, small as it is…
Surprised? I'm not.
Its a conspiracy I tell you, first Michael Jackson, now Whitney Huston. They are going to kill off all the old pop stars to create a short term profit. …
Trajectory pricing?
you have to catch them before they breed. by the time they become big executives they’ve already had a litter or two. the gene pool is already corrupted by their spawn.
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Dolly Parton wrote all the songs on the albums now? Whitney’s estate doesn’t get performance royalties now? The fact that another artist benefits as well makes this cash grab OK?
It’s not right, but it’s okay, there gonna make it anyway.
Thankfully, the internet responded by sharing her songs amongst those who felt listening to her in tribute was more appropriate.
I love you, internet.
Surprised? I'm not.
Who cares? That doesn’t justify anything and the market forces don’t care.
That said, I’m not actually broken up that Sony jacked the prices for a bit. Seems like a good response that the new distribution model allows for in this day and age.
Clearly artificial demand was going to be up and they responded to maximize profits.
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Well put. It may be immoral but it isn’t illegal (though it should be).
Surprised? I'm not.
“Her only real income would come from performing live, something she had rarely done in the last decade.”
So, you finally admit that artists need to work for a living instead of sitting around trying to get rich of stuff they did 30 years ago?
Interesting…
errrm… “wholesale price”, is that charged per kilobyte?
If anyone buys a single thing from Sony they are the cause of this continuing. This company continues to screw over its customers on a daily basis. Make the boycott stronger!
No BlueRay
No Games that contain Securom
No Sony devices whatsoever
No Music or Movies that they have their name on
Bankrupt Sony!!!
Bankrupt Sony!!!
Bankrupt Sony!!!
Bankrupt Sony!!!
Bankrupt Sony!!!
Surprised? I'm not.
“So, you finally admit that artists need to work for a living instead of sitting around trying to get rich of stuff they did 30 years ago?”
Fuck Paul, you are such a twit at times.
Read carefully. Because Whitney Houston was only a singer, performer, singing other people’s songs, she had to perform to truly make income.
Dolly Parton has made money (and will make much more money) as a song writer for those songs than Whitney made for only singing them on the recording.
Had Whitney Houston written more of her own music, if she had more song writing credits, and if she was in a position to obtain much more money for her work, she would have not been as obligated to perform as often – and could have dedicated more of her time to the craft of writing songs.
Sometimes you are worse than Mike when it comes to be obtuse!
Surprised? I'm not.
Odd note, the doctor that was prescribing meds to her, was the same doctor giving Mike his meds when he died…
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All of those blocks tend to wear on a person’s psyche. Then there are the creepers and zombies…
That is great news!
KISS MY ASS!
Surprised? I'm not.
A very telling use of language:
[…] to bring out a new finished product song to market […]
“Product”. Not music, not art, not creativity, just “product”. Bland, interchangeable, disposable product — whether it’s a trite pop song or a work of genius.
“Market”. Thus implying that the goal must be to sell it, that it not only has no value if it isn’t sold for profit, that it doesn’t even exist.
It’s sad that soulless profiteers like this exist. They don’t care about the music or the musicians: they only care about money. But they do exist, and it’s at moments like these that we get a glimpse into the vast, arid wastelands of their minds.
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Your immoral action is not my immoral action, hence why morality laws are shit laws…
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Music and movies from Sony, I can agree with you on.
They actually make decent electronics though. Since I’m not a big console gamer, I’ll never own a PS3. The TV’s, cameras and Blue-ray players are pretty decent.
Surprised? I'm not.
From the looks of it, looks a lot like a bunch of parasites that don’t want to work for a living and expect to live off of others works.
Why John Lock principals are not fallowed here?
If you did the work you own all the benefits that came from it is not that what copyright was supposed to do?
Instead people sliced and diced the market to create a lot of minor roles that they could use to rip off other and you call that a good thing?
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You mean the parasite?
Sucking money from others work is no way to go through life son.
You want to get paid you go do the work and get paid you don’t let others do the work and try to extract money from them.
That is great news!
How creative and original of you.
Funny, I seem to remember the price of Picasso artwork skyrocketing after his death. Shocking!!
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So, If a pedophile made a good TV you would still buy it? Sony is a shady company, No one should give them a dime regardless of the so-called quality of their products. It really makes no difference to my boycott. They are a crap company so I will not support them.
Surprised? I'm not.
How is that possible? He’s supposed to be in prison isn’t he?
Surprised? I'm not.
“if she had more song writing credits, and if she was in a position to obtain much more money for her work, she would have not been as obligated to perform as often – and could have dedicated more of her time to the craft of writing songs.”
“living on advances sent over and over again by the labels…. Her only real income would come from performing live, something she had rarely done in the last decade.”
Which is it? Was she laying around making money of Sony’s advances not really doing anything or was she too busy performing to write songs? Or do you just make shit up as you go?
Surprised? I'm not.
Dr. Spaceman never goes to prison.
Surprised? I'm not.
When I die, I hope my boss pays my kids for 70 years because I worked one time.
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Sarcasm
It even scales.
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There are a couple films from Relativity coming out – Acts of Valor and The Raven – that look interesting, but the only major studio release I’ll likely see in a theater this year is Avengers.
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Sure, after all every work by Picasso was unique, and there would never be way for someone to hold any new Picasso originals, so they became scarce – really scarce – and their prices skyrocketed.
Meanwhile, the files on iTunes are there for as long the service exists or sony decides to remove the files, and they’ll never run out of them unless that happens, so overpricing it right after the singer’s death looks immoral.
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Not so funny that you can’t remember the difference between a handful of physical paintings and unlimited digital files.
It’s just one more way of them ‘protecting the artist’…
Surprised? I'm not.
Read the story. Her estate is going to be effective broke, as the labels kept giving her advance after advance, which she was not selling enough product to pay for.
You don’t make money on advances. You live off of them, just like using your credit cards to pay for life. The bill does come due.
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Bring on the scarcasm!
why does anyone care?
It was a business decision, Sony is in the business of making as much money for their artists and investors as possible.
When Andy Warhol died, every gallery in the world raised the prices of his works dramatically.
Anyone who would run out and buy a Whitney album just because she died, is stupid enough to deserve being ripped off IMO.
big yawn on this story
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Paul, are you really this stupid?
No, Dolly Parton just happened to write her most famous song, her best selling song, and other writers actually wrote her other material. Whitney Houston wasn’t really a singer song writer, just a singer.
Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Your_Baby_Tonight
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitney_Houston_(album)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitney_(album)
Three examples, scroll down to the track listings and credits. Try to find “whitney houston” credited on any of them. You won’t find her.
Performance royalties are very low compared to songwriter royalties. The royalty money created for airplay / internet use is distributed to the song writer and the publishing company. Whitney would get a small amount (if any) out of the publishing side. She would get money per album sale, with the usual “against expenses, against advance”. stuff.
The song writers always do better on the recorded music side, because they have less upside (they can’t “take it on the road”).
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Ahh, so Sony execs are pedophiles?
Got it! I’ll let them know your opinion of them.
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ID10T error – Please seek treatment.
Tacky but I'm not at all suprised
As has been noted I’m sure Sony expected a burst of sales from Whitney Huston’s death and raised prices. It appears one didn’t come.
The irony is that I remember hearing years ago that artists are more valuable dead than alive. Their paintings, songs, books and all the rest come into more demand as people discover them from all the headlines about the death and the anguish in certain parts of the arts community about it.
Whitney may not have released a hit in years and may never have written a song but like Frank Sinatra she was a fantastic interpreter of songs. In the end, though, she wasn’t Sinatra. She became supermarket tabloid fodder and will continue to be when they get going on her.
She was a talented singer and interpreter of songs but like many her life collapsed around her due to bad decisions.
Sony’s move was tacky, distasteful but hardly unexpected. That doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to be called out for it. It’s another example of a RIAA member company not giving a damn about the artist or their family when there’s a back to be made. After all, there are shareholders to consider, you know!
Nor does it have anything to do with scarcity. It has everything to do with greed. And I don’t expect less from Sony in any of their business ventures.
That is great news!
I believe that comment was in reference to her outburst towards the camera on an episode of”Being Bobby Brown” that The Soup uses as a drop. I think she’s in a white hat and yellow exercise suit.
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Indeed, I probably do.
Too many ACs on this board, it’s hard to tell who’s the shill, who’s the sarcastic one and who’e the intelligent one.
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I usually sent the Lemmings in to do the data filing for me.
File Mines
I’ve seen it–the great iTunes strip mines–a desolate file strip-mining operations where third-world laborers with little to no human rights work for pennies per day… all just so iTunes’ll have enough files to turn into mp3’s for sale.
Now you know why Windows has a Recycle bin instead of a trash can. We need to conserve our natural resources.
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So you’re predicting more unique songs with W. Houston’s unique voice?
Ya think that strategy nudged some who would have otherwise purchased the compilation to obtain it from “alternate sources?”
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Yes.
Surprised? I'm not.
At least it wasn’t Dr. Feelgood. I’ve heard that he’s not what you’d call an “average man”.
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Picasso paintings are a limited resource, MP3’s are not. Are you new here?
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And hopefully more people will do what I have been doing which is to never allow Big Content a way into my wallet.I have been on a personal Boycott for years and I do pray that Mr. Normal wakes up and joins me.
I am on a permanent “Black March”.
Surprised? I'm not.
The only thing Masnick cares about is trying to rationalize all the music he’s stolen over the years.
Surprised? I'm not.
Is this your way of rationalizing all the small children you’ve molested over the years?
They had to raise prices! Her death shaved a good 30-40 years off the copyright term on her songs. They have to make that money up somehow!
As someone pointed out elsewhere I saw this covered….
At least they didn’t raise them 30 minutes before… because it is Sony and well Sony tends to mess things up… Now they don’t have to try and explain the hike just prior to her death.
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You left off a part:
They had to raise prices! Her death shaved a good 30-40 years off the copyright term on her songs. They have to make that money up somehow if they intend to have enough cash on hand to bribe lawmakers into passing the next copyright extension law to make up the difference! (But only to “protect the artist”, of course)
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Analogy goes to prints as well. Quit crying, it’s capitalism
Shameful
I never thought people would do such things like profitting off a dead person. And these are the people they say they protect?
I say people in Sony don’t respect the dead. What a bunch of vultures!
Vultures
Vultures
Surprised? I'm not.
Um, few? Try closer to the past century.
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It really isn’t. The system that we pass off as capitalism isn’t actually very close to theoretical capitalism at all.
1) People do not act as rational agents
2) People do not have perfect information
This means that the forces that would theoretically stop a capitalist free market being captured by the first internal force to gain an advantage don’t exist (ie people don’t know when such a thing is going to happen so they can’t behave rationally by choosing to stop purchasing from that company and buying from a competitor instead).
In theory market regulation is supposed to solve this by having a government act as a rational agent with information that is closer to perfect, in practice what tends to happen is regulatory capture (eg Copyright industries basically writing copyright law).
And in so far as it goes both Copyright and Patents, as they exist today, are inherently incompatible with free market capitalism which relies on alternative suppliers existing in order for people to be able to avert market capture by means of rational actions.
This doesn’t mean that copyright and patents are inherently bad though, or even anti-capitalist, you could theoretically have patents with mandatory licensing laws in conjunction with trade secrets for example (ie you can either share your work and get paid for it or you can keep it secret but get nothing if someone else reproduces it but you can’t try to do both).
Surprised? I'm not.
Shut up … just shut up!!! You are a paid shill and clearly have no clue what you are talking about.
Surprised? I'm not.
“Fuck Paul, you are such a twit at times.”
So, straight to personal attacks again. A class act, as ever.
“Because Whitney Houston was only a singer, performer, singing other people’s songs, she had to perform to truly make income. “
Exactly! Which is why people object when you go into other threads whining that singers can’t sit on their asses and make money from albums they recorded 20 years ago because “OMG piracy”. Let’s face it, you only launch your attacks as an AC so it’s not so easy for people to point out your blatant contradictions and misdirections.
“Dolly Parton has made money (and will make much more money) as a song writer for those songs than Whitney made for only singing them on the recording.”
How many songs? If it’s only the one, why do you focus on her? You seem to think you have a point, but yet again you’re deluding yourself.
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So then, why do you constantly try to attack people who say that artists should work for a living instead of selling copies of their old music?
crass?
realizing just how crass that looked?
Er … don’t you mean “realizing just how crass that was“?
Surprised? I'm not.
I don’t use a credit card unless it’s for kickstarter or other interesting things on the internet. If I could send cash, I would.
Surprised? I'm not.
You can steal music as you can steal an idea.
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mmm, sarcasm and god. Delicious treat when put together into a sentence 😉
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Paul, are you really this stupid? He does not do rationality – it’s not the trolls way…
(Disclaimer for ACs – I don’t actually think that Paul is stupid. In fact I believe in the opposite.)
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Boredom during downtime at work, it leads to assumptions that there’s an intelligent human being behind the trolling… (thanks for the compliment btw!)
crass?
Er … don’t you mean “realizing just how crass that was”?
No. They don’t mind that it was crass, they just don’t want bad PR. So how crass it looks is the right way to phrase it.
Surprised? I'm not.
This is, sadly one of the problems with Capitalism, and you prob. have heard this echoed in various ways, by others. If we lived in a world that put less pressure on things we need because the ‘basic’ essentials were given to us from birth, and therefore forcing us to work to get there, she might have lived a tad longer and comforted far more people , with that god given voice of hers. Capitalism causes so many issues, and this is a clear indication of just that. She was every bit as talented as Dolly Parton, but to think she got near nothing for singing those amazing songs, to me is tantamount to sinful and injustice at its highest level. No offense to Dolly, I like her too, but being human means showing love for all, not just the chosen few who have enough talent to ‘write songs’ for the rest to ‘sing’ to us.
One talent, is not worth more than another, considering it all came from god, this we know with no reservation, yet we treat them as non equals. I don’t know if all this is fact, that she was almost penniless , instead of the reported 35’ish millions in the bank, but if true, maybe that was pressing on her, causing the need to ‘escape’ through drugs and alcohol, which may then have stopped her from breathing on her own ( as in automatically). I guess we will know soon enough. Regardless though,I feel so bad for her daughter etc., though with god,family and great friends, she will recover with time. I did, and she /they will too 😉
Capitalism hurts many, was never the intent god had in mind creating the universe for , and its time it was abolished, much like ,- slavery. Im sure it won’t happen overnight, but if you think about it, the great thing whitney could have done, considering stress would have been diminished by leaps and bounds, crys for change. We are all gods children,and we deserve better. Her daughter she did, her mother and all else whom intimately knew and loved her directly.
Change won’t happen though unless we as a society, make it so, so get invovled and talk about it happening. What I refer to, is very similar to the ‘resource based’ economy you may have heard about.
Life should be a shared experience where no one person has more power than another, where we all exist freely though not with shared responsibility, stress free ( within a near perfect system, of course) and for the betterment of everyone else. Only then will true compassion and love be available for all, without having to pay the ultimate ‘price’ for it.
I don’t care who you are, you are no better than your neighbor, deserve love no less and the basic ‘rights’ afforded us by being children of god, and until society reflects that, sad stories like Whitney will continue to mount up on us all, and sadly reflect the current status of us as a species, meant for far greater things than this. Who among us really believes, that gifts like that from our creator, deserve this kind of outcome ? 😉
RIP dear soul- may your family and friends be comforted, as you comforted others , when hearing your god given voice.
We are all gods children, and are worth far, far more than the lump sum we earn everyday , just to get by in a world dominated by power and greed.