Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Angry
You have no substantive evidence to quantify that assertion and it is easliy disproven by the almost total collapse of the UK music distribution market.
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This isn't necessarily totally true. A lot of the issues have been largely down to retailers' laziness to deal with the labels direct, preferring to deal with one company who supplies them totally, and then deals with the record labels - e.g. Entertainment UK and Zavvi. Whereas a local independent dealer here will order directly from the labels themselves, or their UK distributors, often on personal terms - with a far less turnover than a major retailer, and yet still survive? Why? Mainly because they order what they can sell and don't rely on funding their existing stock on credit. When Zavvi went into administration and it transpired how their business model worked, they were somewhat alarmed they operated in that way.
It's a fine balance, but if you hold small amounts of stock, and order in what you can guarantee to sell, or if you own your stock then your liabilities are more easily tied up in your business than if you don't own the stock - Zavvi didn't own the items in the shops because they hadn't paid EUK for them, hence when EUK went into liquidation, they caused a payment on the assets held by the likes of Zavvi, who since they had little they owned and didn't own the stock could either send the stock back, in which case they had no income, or go through themselves.
It's simple economics, and has little to do with illegal downloading. People have and always will pirate copyrighted material, and a lot of those who do will end up buying it.