lost last loss leaders

me 30
me 30 by Tim Caynes

ooh. I was just thinking yesterday as I downloaded about 4 mp3 albums from amazon in the uk for 3 quid a piece that it probably wouldn’t last. I didn’t buy everything I wanted and frankly I bought a few things I wouldn’t have bought at 7.99 or 8.99 but when they are so ridiculously cheap and are 320 kbps and are DRM-free then there really isn’t any reason not to. so I thought I’d get some more. I’d had second thoughts about the glasvegas album even though I’d been listening to it on napster but I thought I really couldn’t pass up the 3 quid loss-leader and so I headed back to amazon this morning to shovel a few more bargain-bucketfuls of coinageable purchases only to find that they had as was inevitable raised the prices on everything that wasn’t glen campbell or pendulum both of which I got anyway. I mean, they might have only increased some things by a pound or maybe 2 but in some cases they’d really exposed their primary loss-leaders such as the rihanna album which jumped from 3 quid to 7.30 overnight. I guess they’re pretty confident they can recoup large wads of cash on that one. maybe not so much on the simply red greatest hits which was rightfully stuck at 3 pounds which is in fact 3 pounds too much and does not really qualify for loss-leader status as they should be paying you to take it away and throw it in a virtual skip.

some things never really got the loss-leader treatment, of course. if you didn’t already have the duffy album, you weren’t about to get that cheap. or the coldplay album. or, um, the ocean colour scene album. not sure about that one. I did manage to pick a couple of things of my christmas wishlist at the 3 pound price tag, but, curiously, the 4:13 dream album by the cure remained steadfastly at a think twice price. and amazon don’t even have the late of the pier album so I snuck over to 7 digital for that one and the fabulous m83 saturdays = youth album at a knock-down price.

all-in-all if you were stuck for something to do between christmas and new year and happened to be sat at your computer, there were some fine savings to be had but they’re mostly gone now and mp3 downloads will undoubtedly match or approach regular cd prices on amazon from now on so there’ll be less chance of that girls aloud album finding its way into my library. well, the next one, anyway.

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