Also, bear in mind that there may be NO truly accurate way to monitor this
information. I know FOR A FACT that the labels have, in the past, put one
artist's barscan information printed up under another artist's name on the
sticker they use at retail.
For instance, if you ship 100 units of a new unkown pop artist out and the
barcode says that it's one of you label's many catalog best sellers (i.e.
Kansas, Boston, Queen or even King Crimson) then every unit that unknowing
catalog artist happens to sell in that week goes on your NEW artist's sales
record.
Now imagine if you have some brand new, wanna-be Limp Bizkit releasing the
same week as your new Eminem CD, you can either make the new kids look good
by adding their scan code to a few of the Eminem CD stickers or, knowing
they won't do too much anyway, you can add Slim Shady's barcode on to their
CD.
That will just add to the hoopla when an artist that's already a slam dunk
swell up like Lane Bryant with triplets.
The Label's records are still tight, because they control the actual units
shipped. The retailers may not know, because barcodes are controlled by
whomever creates them and they are by nature very easy to manipulate.
I hope no one from any of the labels sees this. Better yet, I hope someone
is making this not happen any more. Sad, ain't it?
Good Luck all.
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jul 19 2001 - 04:20:38 CEST