$26.99.
It took me about two seconds to make the decision: no way in hell am I buying the new Kristin Hersh CD for $26.99 at HMV. Not that I was all that keen about buying from HMV in the first place; support your local independent record store and all that, but it would’ve taken an extra subway token to get to one and the Arcade Fire album was really cheap—priced to sell at $13.99. But $26.99? How on earth does a non-import, non-special-edition CD cost that much, even in Canadian dollars?
I should’ve double-checked the CD imprint to see if it said 4AD, but at the time I just assumed Learn to Sing Like a Star was a 4AD release like all of Hersh’s previous albums. But it turns out that’s not the case: while 4AD handles distribution for rest-of-world, Hersh has turned to another label, Yep Roc, to handle U.S. distribution and promotion. Which causes a problem: who has the rights for Canada? And here’s where the $26.99 comes in: if 4AD doesn’t have American rights, they may simply treat the entire North American market as hands-off, even though they technically have Canadian distribution rights. Which may mean 4AD’s selling the CDs as though they were imports, since everything’s being handled from the home offices in Britain. This would also explain why Amazon.ca’s selling the CD at a still-princely $21.99.
Kristin Hersh’s U.S. label, Yep Roc, has an online store, which is great. They also give you MP3s of the album for free when you buy the CD, which is just about the best feature I’ve ever seen from an online music store—more stores need to do this! Unfortunately, shipping to Canada from Yep Roc is $6.95. Which gives me a total around $23 USD, or—yep, you guessed it—$27 CAD.
For most artists this would be the end of the road. Luckily, Hersh has been doing the web thing long enough to have a great site and an online store of her own, with far more reasonable postage rates and even a slightly lower list price to boot. So even though I don’t get to enjoy the album now via MP3, I now have a CD winging its way to me from throwingmusic. So what should you take away from this whole experience? Always buy from the artist whenever possible.
Update: Less than a week later, my CDs arrive. Yes, CDs—they popped a bonus 3-track disc in the envelope as well. Three more tracks of Kristin Hersh and nine bucks cheaper—take that, HMV!
3 Responses
If you’re not adamant about getting a “hard copy” version of your music, you should check out the online music store Bleep.com (http://www.bleep.com/).
They’re based in the UK, and sell MP3s encoded at 320kbps (no DRM!) from a lot of labels (including 4AD) for music that we’d otherwise have to pay import prices for here in Canada. Not everything is available for purchase by Canadian customers, and prices are in US$, but it still works out to be cheaper than buying the CDs from HMV.
Another option is eMusic (http://www.emusic.com/) — works on a subscription model, MP3s are encoded at 192kbps (more or less), and again not everything is available to Canadians (what’s up with that?), but they also offer music that would otherwise be only available here at import prices.
jen, March 16th, 2007 at 7:42 am“So what should you take away from this whole experience? Always buy from the artist whenever possible.”
Amen.
Chad, March 16th, 2007 at 8:31 amThis is probably also a good time to mention Audio Lunchbox, which also sells non-DRMed MP3s and was really handy for tracking down some really obscure stuff like the Halfby album.
Alas, I do have a thing about getting the hard copy of an album—call me paranoid, call me old-fashioned, but the only way you can “mistakenly delete” a CD is to smash it or lose it.
Wesley, March 16th, 2007 at 12:12 pm