CD settlement delivers duds

Found on Stevens Point Journal on Saturday, 24 July 2004
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Wisconsin libraries have received more than 105,000 CDs as part of a national settlement with the recording industry to settle a price-fixing lawsuit, but few are choices most listeners would opt for.

The selections are raising a few eyebrows and unlikely to get a lot of use. Among the several hundred CDs given to the Charles M. White Public Library were many duplicates, including 29 copies of Handel's Italian Cantatas and 21 copies of Mozart's Le Nozze Di Figaro.

Among the 592 CDs shipped to the Marshfield Public Library, there are 22 copies of Ricky Martin's "Sound Loaded," 20 copies of Samantha Mumba's "Gotta Tell You," 16 copies of "The Three Tenors in Concert," 12 copies of Georg Philipp Telemann's "String Concertos/Musica Antiqua Ksln-Goebel," and 12 copies of Mandy Moore's self-titled album.

Milwaukee Public Library received 1,235 copies of Whitney Houston's 1991 recording of "The Star-Spangled Banner," 188 copies of Michael Bolton's "Timeless," 375 of "Entertainment Weekly: The Greatest Hits 1971," and 104 copies of Will Smith's "Willennium," and nearly everything in between.

Nice way to wiggle your way out of a settlement. Just ship your old stock which nobody wants and save the disposal costs. That shows how much the music industry cares about settlements.