No More Mr. Nice Price
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Midlines are older titles whose sales have dropped off. By reducing a record’s list to the “nice price” of $11.98 or $10.98–which a large retailer can reduce further, to $8.98 or even $7.98–a label can keep its back catalog in stores even as more and more product competes for shelf space. Midlines are a boon to consumers (who can buy CDs for the price of old LPs), retailers (who can score impulse sales on inexpensive oldies), and artists (whose older albums might stay in print longer). But UMG seems willing to contravene that logic for the same reason a dog licks its balls–because it can. As Jim Urie, an executive vice president of Universal’s distribution arm, explained to Billboard, “When midline was first conceived, it was for products that weren’t good enough to be sold at full price. Over the last 15 or so years, that somehow evolved into moving a massive number of titles down in price, regardless of selling strength. The records that we increased are all excellent pieces of product that deserve to be at the higher price and will continue to be consumer favorites at full price.”
UMG probably doesn’t care whether Reckless stocks Songs You Know by Heart; most of the midlines it promoted to frontline status are the sort of stuff my mother listens to while she’s ironing. “Generally you’ll see jazz, classical, easy listening, that type of thing, go up in price,” says David Hoeltje, vice president of purchasing for the huge distributor Pacific Coast One-Stop. “They feel that those are being purchased by middle-class people with higher incomes that generally go out and buy, not necessarily infrequently, but not as often as somebody who’s 17 or 18. So they feel that there’s gonna be less resistance at that level.” And if Marvin Gaye’s Every Great Motown Hit or the sound track to The Big Chill (a whopping 31 minutes of music) really can sell for $18 or $19, UMG will turn a greater profit on two copies than it used to turn on three. “They don’t care if they sell Marvin Gaye records or not, as long as they make money,” says Kvidera. “That’s the bottom line–as long as there’s more money at the end of the day, they don’t care what happens.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Rebecca Jane Gleason.
