Brian's Music Musings

The performance royalty legislation appears to be blocked in the house. NAB says they have enough members (220) which is two more than need to block scheduling a vote. Good news for Internet radio stations and others, especially small stations which include College and community radio. Every time a song is played, the composer or song writer receives a copyright royalty payment. The proposal was to have the artist receive a payment every time the song was played. Currently Sirus XM radio pays the performance fees, and I know we do at our local community radio station, for the Internet broadcast. We are also limited to 100 Internet "streams" at a time. I have always sided with NAB, and still do. One of the issues that is not often mentioned, is that the record labels are also left out of the payment scheme. I also don't have major issues with that either. But, what if........
What if the record labels decided to only debut their "records" to just XM, and organizations that paid that fee? I have seen the argument, but can't see why the labels would do that. They still need the airplay to sell the music. And they certainly have not stopped servicing the radio stations with promotional material.

Got a record set sale list from a very prominent record store near the east coast. There was not a record on the list under a hundred bucks. And there was several hundred records on the list. It got me to thinking, once again, about record prices. And then I start comparing, again, to Ebay, and to think about how Ebay has affected record prices in general. There are certainly a few well established record dealers that charge big bucks for their discs, and several of them can get that price from a small group of hard core collectors. This dealer is very respected, and I have had nothing but great experiences with him in the past, though I have not purchased super expensive vinyl.
One particular examples is the Gaytunes on red wax Timely. His price is 2,000. My last book showed 600.00 and it may be a little more right now, but he is likely double the high book. Fortunately, it's a free country and he can ask whatever he wants. Currently, the same record has the minimum on Ebay right now, which was 199.00. Condition is reportedly the same, and I will be curious to see where it ends up. The point is, that on Ebay right now, during the current economic times, prices are going even lower than they had been, in general. Some of the super collectibles are still getting the big bucks, but low to mid range records are just not selling anywhere near the prices of the record dealers. Again, not rocket science, but the trend is there. Price books have always been a guide, as are dealers lists (sort of), but selling prices are a pretty good indicator of what people will actually spend. The amount of unsold records on Ebay has never been higher. Several reasons for that. Many are boots, but the sellers don't know, it many are over-priced based on some of the previous issues stated, and some just read the guides wrong, many are priced as a mint record, but is VG, and one last reason - some sellers don't realize that hard core collectors are interested in what the label looks like! You can't sell a VG+ sounding record that has a G label. At least most of us won't purchase it as VG+. Ebay has it's issues, and grading is one of them. But Ebay also is a great indicator of record prices people are willing to pay.Super Rare collectibles by the usual suspects will probably continue to fetch amazing sums of money to the small percentage of us that can afford them. But prices for many records have gone down.

I finally managed to get the 4th record by the Travelers on Andex. Katie the Kangaroo/I'll Be Home For Christmas. A so-so record, not nearly as good as their other secular records on the label. My favorite of theirs might just be Teenage Machine Age. They did a bunch of gospel recordings as the Pilgrim Travelers, which are also quite good. That group included Lou Rawls. They also made a great LP called "Look Up", which I have.