Music buyers who applied for a share of a price-fixing settlement involving major U.S. record distributors and retailers will receive about $12.60 apiece if a judge signs off on the deal.

Roughly 3.5 million U.S. residents who purchased music between 1995 and 2000 registered for claims by last Wednesday's deadline. The deadline was pushed back two days because a last-minute barrage of online applications caused the settlement's Web site to crash. More than 95 percent of claims were filed online.

Claimants will split $44 million allocated for individual claims if the class-action settlement is approved by U.S. District Judge D. Brock Hornby on May 2.

The lawsuit, signed by the attorneys general of 40 states and consolidated in Portland, accuses major record labels and large music retailers facing competition from discount retailers like Target and Wal-Mart of conspiring to set minimum music prices.

The defendants — Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music Distribution, Warner-Elektra-Atlantic Corp., Universal Music Group and Bertelsmann Music Group, as well as retailers Tower Records, Musicland Stores and Trans World Entertainment — have denied any wrongdoing.

However the Federal Trade Commission in May 2000 issued a statement in which they said "The FTC estimates that U.S. consumers may have paid as much as $480 million more than they should have for CDs and other music because of these policies over the last three years. These settlements will eliminate these policies and should help restore much-needed competition to the retail music market, consisting of $15 billion in annual sales. Today's news should be sweet music to the ears of all CD purchasers," said Chairman Robert Pitofsky. The settlements with the Big 5 Record Labels were handled independently in the FTC charges.

In addition to the $44 million in cash, the deal's terms would provide 5.5 million CDs valued at $75.7 million to public institutions and nonprofit organizations. It also would prohibit major music distributors from tying cooperative advertising efforts to retailers' advertised prices.

The settlement money has been collected from the defendants and is in escrow. Payments should be mailed out within weeks of the settlement's approval.

Under the proposed settlement people who applied could have gotten as much as $20 each or a little as $5, depending on the number of people who had applied.

Kind of interesting don't you think? They say "we did nothing wrong, and we won't do it again. "Oh and just to prove it, "We'll pay the consumers millions of dollars, but we did nothing wrong" Meanwhile they consider a downloaded MP3 file worth $150,000. (the amount they always use when filing lawsuits against accused copyright violators which is the maximum allowed under law).

Two quick observations here: 1) They got off very light. 2) Major label artists better be looking at their royalty statements very closely to be sure they aren't the ones paying for this settlement.

The May 2000 Statement of the FTC

It's nice that people are getting the money, but the sum of money is very insulting if you ask me. As Bill pointed out, it's just a small slap on the hand to the labels. Oh well, it is a small victory for our side.

In a 15 billion dollar industry, 44 million is cash is not a slap on the wrist. It's a slap that missed the wrist. This was no punishment.

Just think how much it would help the cause if everyone donated there 15.00 dollars to boycott-riaa or to buy music from a independent label or artist. Thats exactly what im going to do, dontate. anyone else?

Excellent. And the RIAA is probably damning this site, as well as zeropaid, cdfreaks, slyck, unitethecows etc. for reporting it! It was even in my local newspaper. I think next thing that needs to be done is breaking the 5 major labels' monopolistic orginization. Go KaZaA!

Shark7
Do you think we can prove it's a monopoly? It has to be airtight.

I think we can. If we do, Hilary gets a new retirement home.

Insulting? kneo, you're being too kind! Between 95 & 00 I was buying a MINIMUM of 2 CDs a month, which comes out to 120 discs over 5 years. Under the settlement all I get back out of the money I was overcharged is 10 1/2 cents per disc (roughly a penny a song) but the RIAA wants me to pay them $150,000 for downloading a single song??? Seems like the bastards oughta be sending us all a jar of vaseline with those checks...

great idea ill.. I'll even donate BEFORE I get my check, just to make sure boycott gets the money LOL...
ttmmm

We should take lets say 10Billion dollars from them, then that would be a kick in the @$$ for them I hope...

What's more sad is at todays prices we couldn't even take this money and buy another cd with it. I'm giving mine to boycott-riaa as well. At least then it will go to something worthwhile.

Wow! A whopping $12.50 for getting ripped off for YEARS! That amount barely buys a new CD from one of the heavilly hyped (& equally talentless) acts (won't call them musicians) the RIAA is crying crocodile tears for over this p2p thing.

Howabout this for a settlement:
Everyone gets to fileshare as much music as they can for 5 years without fear of the RIAA nazis kicking in your door or blackmailing the company you work for.