To which the average "music lover" says, "We like Free! Go find a new paradigm. Sell hats. Go stand in a doorway and jack people off for a dollar." And, "I'm retired. I'm on the government teat. What do I care about somebody else's problems? I'm having fun!" Here's a guy not having much fun. He's an eBay dealer who discovered a double slap in the face. You know, turn the other cheek and get THAT one slapped too? First slap: eBay took over a rival company called Half.com just to run it into the ground. Half.com offered books, CDs and DVDs for half price. What a nasty, creative idea.
Happily, Half.com is not out of business. The sellers have all fled to eBay, where eBay and its illegitimate sister Paypal charge DOUBLE fees. Ebay charges an insertion fee, then a final value fee, and then Paypal charges its own processing fee. This means that somebody selling a $2 CD will likely fork over $1 just for selling it. PS, eBay and Paypal do NOT like nickel-and-dime Mom and Pop sellers and so the fees are higher on bargain items.
Yessir, it's a LIQUIDATION. As in genocide. This guy who got bitch-slapped by Paypal and Ebay also got kicked in the ass by Internet technology. Yes, people LOVE their "streaming" services. Why buy anything when it can be "streamed" like piss through giant corporate bastards like Pandora and Google's YouTube? Mussolini-headed Fascist Amazon bastard Jeff Bezos made sure that Amazon could either stream or download most any movie book or music album you might need. Hooray.
The result? This guy is trying desperately to sell, at bargain prices, CDs and DVDs. He's not alone. Around the country, thrift shops can hardly get a buck each for CDs and DVDs. It's not just a "sea change" of a "new paradigm" that has rendered "media" obsolete. It's piracy. It's the ability to copy off anything and everything, and greedheads looking the other way from morality. "Normal" people who claim they are honest and don't steal, routinely chuckle and find the torrents and the blogs and the "sharers" who give everything away.
Lots of excuses. "It's freedom of speech." It's "I bought the DVD so I have the right to copy it for friends...and a thousand strangers." "Sony is a big company so why shouldn't I make a deal with a fat pig like Kim Dotcom, and get ten cents for every download I get on social media through one of his Mega link companies? I'm ENTITLED."
So this guy on eBay arduously listed every CD and DVD he has, hoping to MAYBE, after EBAY and PAYPAL fees, a buck each on them.
As the song says (Gary Alan's song, if you want to know), "Things are bad all over." Hardly an original thought. Accurate, though. We all know that nothing lasts. Vinyl gave way to 8-tracks and to cassettes and to CDs. That's a lot of landfill. Some say it's a GOOD thing that instead of "junk" all anyone needs is one small box, a 3TB drive, that can contain several shelves, if not an entire wall, of CDs and vinyl. The price is people going out of business with no new business to get into. It's people who used to MAKE CDs and DVDs now unable to make a living from their creativity and being told to toss their stuff on Pandora or YouTube for nickels and dimes and "go get a day job." Somewhere.
The music and movie and book "sharers" figure the Horn of Plenty will never stop, even as older acts like Steve Miller and Gene Simmons stop making music because they can't break even on it and find it insulting to sell thousands of copies instead of seeing their albums go Gold.
There's an unlimited supply of fish in the sea, too? An unlimited supply of clean air? Why worry about any of that when you can hide in a basement, tap into a stranger's file service online somewhere, and happily download and own an entire library of entertainment you'll never even get around to enjoying? "I got every Crosby Stills Nash and Young group and solo album on a bunch of links hosted by a Russian server from some guy in Ukraine or someplace that doesn't even have copyright! That's soooo great!" Then look out the basement window and see that climate change hurricane about to blow your house into the river. Check the sky for Kim Jong-Un's missiles or a plane hitting the ground because some Islamic idiot sent the pilot into a tailspin. And isn't it just too bad you can't download FOOD for free?
Phil Ochs sang "...and nobodys buying flowers from the flower lady." And this guy on eBay? Nobody's buying a Phil Ochs CD from him. And nobody cares if he lives or dies.
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