"Apathetic bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all..."

[drcuriosity]

This started as an LJ comment but quickly turned into a rant, so I'll post it here in case anyone else feels like commenting/contributing.

I was talking with ledaire and elissa_carey about my "current music" in the last post, and how damned hard to find it is around here. Licensing issue, or availability..?

<rant>
No licensing issues at all, as far as I know. Availability - New Zealand is one of those weird places that either has rare stuff all over the place or mildly uncommon stuff that's as rare as hen's teeth. Ironically with respect to FLA, Delerium CDs are pretty common - the same people making the music, but more "mainstream" appeal (and distribution via EMI rather than Metropolis), so it actually gets here.

As far as the big music publishing companies (or their NZ branches) are concerned, there's no profit margin in stuff that's not going to sell a lot of units, so they only ever get a few and most of those would never leave the Auckland area (where around a third of our population lives - on the other side of the country from me). And of course, since there isn't any available to listen to even casually, there's never much of a market for it. Catch-22. Taking the example above, Delerium only ever got play here because of that one song that had Sarah McLachlan in it.

Music is relatively expensive here, too. The prices ramped up citing our "weak exchange rate", but never lowered again when the exchange rate became a lot more favourable. New releases you can expect to pay around NZ$35 (US$22.62) for; older stuff typically goes for around NZ$25 (US$16.16), while for "specialist" imports - most of the stuff I'd like to be listening to - you're generally looking at NZ$45 (US$29.09) and up for something that'd cost US$10-$15. That's a bit more than just shipping and handling, even to this little backwater country on the far side of the Pacific.
</rant>

So, if anyone can come up with a good explanation for why we pay so much for a relatively limited selection of music here, I'd like to hear it.

I'm glad we've got a bit of decent local talent.

Comments

[beagl.livejournal.com]

Do you have a Real Groovy in Christchurch? They have a far better selection than anyone else.

I note that Sounds tends to do the "All CDs under NZ$25" thing which is nice.

As for the music industry - it sucks. I think both musicians and listeners would be better off if the current form of the music industry ceased to exist.

Finally, why not just order from Amazon? If you're ordering more than few things (or can get together with friends) it works out cheaper and generally faster than ordering through your local music shop.

[drcuriosity]

No - I wish we did. About the best selection is the Galaxy and Echo Records second-hand bins, which seem to get a few imports once other people have finished with 'em.

Amazon does seem to be the way to go, yes. Even with "people who bought this also like these" things, it's not quite the same as having a selection of stuff to browse through, though. I like the physical act of browsing through music collections, but I guess I'm not in a position to be picky, am I?

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Real Groovy do online shopping (but I don't know the URL offhand). So do Echo, for that matter.

[jexia]

www.realgroovy.co.nz


They also have their second hand stuff online, which is very handy.