Fwd: weekly update friday the thirteenth of september two thousand and six

This week, brilliant indie record store Norman Records offered Max Richter cd for cost price. here's their explanation:

This week you may have noticed we put the Max Richter up on the site very cheap 'n all. In fact we are selling it at cost price so we're not making a bean on this. The reasons for this crazy phenomena are twofold:

1) It's a great album and you all need to hear it. Selling it at cost is a great way of spreading the music

2) Errr... we had no choice as Boomkat managed to get it a week early as they had struck up an exclusive deal with Fat Cat. I called Fat Cat who were very nice but they couldn't really help us in the way we wanted to be helped (ie we all get it at the same time to create a level playing field). This kind of behaviour is going to be the downfall of indie music stores as the big corporate style of said online store slowly takes over. It's fine for stores to have exclusives but on big properly distributed releases like this it just isn't fair at all. If everyone buys it from them, then no one buys it elsewhere thus taking important key sales away from the smaller indies. You can say what you like about the indie stores but without them you have no independent music. Thus, to support independent music you need to support the little stores otherwise both small labels and artists will suffer. Eventually it will get to a stage where there are no indies left and the lesser known artists will struggle to get their releases into the handful of stores left (they may not see it worthwhile as they won't 'shift enough units for them). I am not just romanticising here, this will happen! So we thought the only thing to do in this case was to sell it at cost price which may be suicidal but this is an important release for us this year. You may notice other shops have done this too so it is not just us who are aggrieved. The independent music store is the lifeblood of music. Without that you have a load of bland corporate places telling you what you should own. As indie stores shut down there will be less choice available and those in need of their fix will go straight to labels which is what kind of happens anyway. Only time will tell what will happen eh....

Fat Cat have released some of my favourite albums lately, and this behaviour is fucking ridiculous. I've sent them a rather rude message asking them how they like being a coporate gimp, and I'll let you know if I get a reply.