Antitrust Theories for Giggling and Crying
The San Francisco Chronicle has the following story: "Green Day lashes out at Wal-Mart policy"
Wal-Mart will not "stock any CD with a parental advisory sticker." Instead, it requests a censored "clean" version. Green Day -- affronted by the request -- refused to provide one. Hence, Wal-Mart refused to carry Green Day's new album.
As open and shut as that seems, Green Day is outraged. "Guitarist Mike Dirnt said: 'As the biggest record store in the America, they should probably have an obligation to sell people the correct art.'" Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong: ""If you think about bands that are struggling or smaller than Green Day ... to think that to get record your out in places like that, but they won't carry it because of the content and you have to censor yourself . . . I mean, what does that say to a young kid whose trying to speak his mind making a record for the first time? It's like a game that you have to play. You have to refuse to play it."
The "correct" art? I assume he didn't mean it. "A game you have to play"? I suppose. Like not cursing at work or wearing clothing in public? We have to play those games too.
I think the nub of Green Day's complaint is that they don't consider their album offensive, and they cannot fathom why anyone else would, and that the policy is therefore unfairly applied to them. But it's Wal-Mart that gets to make that call. Wal-Mart has to answer to its customers' expectations and shareholders' values. And even if Wal-Mart is a dominant music retailer, I find it hard to articulate a theory of how this policy "harms the competitive process." It strips no one of access to Wal-Mart's retail channels, expect perhaps an artist with Tourette's.
In the end, I have trouble understanding why the Chronicle ran this story. What is there to it beyond "Green Day's upset"? I suppose Wal-Mart bashing is a bit of a sport, but this seems particularly vapid for front-screen news. Then again, when I compare SFGate to the Washington Post's home page, I am shocked at how vapid the Chronicle's reporting and syndicated republishing has become. "Hobbit House"? "A night of erotic restraint"? "Lost some weight? Here's $20"? Those are current front-screen headlines. I note this so that when the Chronicle goes bankrupt, we remember that product quality was a factor.
Wal-Mart will not "stock any CD with a parental advisory sticker." Instead, it requests a censored "clean" version. Green Day -- affronted by the request -- refused to provide one. Hence, Wal-Mart refused to carry Green Day's new album.
As open and shut as that seems, Green Day is outraged. "Guitarist Mike Dirnt said: 'As the biggest record store in the America, they should probably have an obligation to sell people the correct art.'" Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong: ""If you think about bands that are struggling or smaller than Green Day ... to think that to get record your out in places like that, but they won't carry it because of the content and you have to censor yourself . . . I mean, what does that say to a young kid whose trying to speak his mind making a record for the first time? It's like a game that you have to play. You have to refuse to play it."
The "correct" art? I assume he didn't mean it. "A game you have to play"? I suppose. Like not cursing at work or wearing clothing in public? We have to play those games too.
I think the nub of Green Day's complaint is that they don't consider their album offensive, and they cannot fathom why anyone else would, and that the policy is therefore unfairly applied to them. But it's Wal-Mart that gets to make that call. Wal-Mart has to answer to its customers' expectations and shareholders' values. And even if Wal-Mart is a dominant music retailer, I find it hard to articulate a theory of how this policy "harms the competitive process." It strips no one of access to Wal-Mart's retail channels, expect perhaps an artist with Tourette's.
In the end, I have trouble understanding why the Chronicle ran this story. What is there to it beyond "Green Day's upset"? I suppose Wal-Mart bashing is a bit of a sport, but this seems particularly vapid for front-screen news. Then again, when I compare SFGate to the Washington Post's home page, I am shocked at how vapid the Chronicle's reporting and syndicated republishing has become. "Hobbit House"? "A night of erotic restraint"? "Lost some weight? Here's $20"? Those are current front-screen headlines. I note this so that when the Chronicle goes bankrupt, we remember that product quality was a factor.
posted by Tom Fletcher at 6:38 AM
18 Comments:
IMO, you're absolutely right that the Chronicle runs vapid news stories. But I think you're wrong that this is one of them.
Green Day's censorship complaint is valid. Perhaps a little misguided, but not unimportant. Sure, Wal-mart can choose which albums to carry and which not to -- a right of which it is clearly availing itself. But asking artists to rerecord a different, "cleaner" version of their album so that Wal-mart can keep up its facade of family values? Come ON. Maybe we should have asked Francis Ford Coppola to make a less gory version of the Godfather, or asked Tony Kushner to write a version of Angels in America where no one's gay.
I'm not the hugest fan of Green Day, but I appreciate that they're trying to make incendiary protest music. And, sure, Wal-mart's welcome not to sell it. But complaints of unwarranted censorship are not bogus, and it is news.
I'm getting a bit tired of the overuse of "censorship". I think it might be time for some type of Godwin's Law for this word. Actually, maybe we can apply this to a few other words too (e.g. fascist, intolerance, etc). In the meantime, keep on crying wolf Green Day.
maybe the larger issue here is how wal-mart improperly throws around their market share (among their many other despicable, if not always illegal, employment practices and business models). forcing musical artists to alter their content is not the only example. to get such cheap prices on electronics, for example, they force manufacturers to build them a special model using lower quality components, which of course results in a lower quality final product. most consumers don't the difference in what they're buying, until their new tv craps out. then they have to go back to wal-mart to buy a brand new one. no one should ever defend wal-mart.
Speaking of antitrust, here's why Shelanski probably left Boalt:
FTC Chairman Appoints Willard Tom as General Counsel and Announces Four Other Senior Appointments
Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz announced the appointment of Willard K. “Will” Tom as General Counsel for the agency, and the appointment of Peter J. Levitas, Mark W. Frankena, Howard Shelanski, and Judith Bailey to senior positions in the agency’s Competition and Economics Bureaus and the Office of Congressional Relations.
“We’re very pleased to welcome, and in two instances to welcome back, this group of extraordinarily talented professionals who will help ensure the continued effectiveness of this agency in protecting American consumers,” Leibowitz said. “With these appointments, we have a very deep bench.”
Will Tom, who has been practicing antitrust law as a partner in Morgan Lewis’s Washington, D.C. office, is rejoining the Commission, where he was Deputy Director of the Bureau of Competition and led the Bureau’s policy office under former Chairman Robert Pitofsky. He previously served as counselor to the head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, responsible for intellectual property, vertical restraints, and telecommunications matters. As the Commission’s chief legal officer and adviser, the General Counsel represents the agency in court and provides legal counsel to the Commission and its bureaus and offices. He graduated, cum laude, from Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
Howard Shelanski will become Deputy Director for Antitrust of the Bureau of Economics. Since 1997 he has been a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, where he co-directed the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology and was an affiliated professor at the Haas School of Business. He recently joined the Georgetown University Law Center faculty. Shelanski has served as chief economist for the Federal Communications Commission and as a senior economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers. Shelanski has a J.D. and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Haverford College. He served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, U.S. District Court Judge Louis H. Pollak, and D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen F. Williams.
Tom, good points. I think there's an obvious parallel here to conservatives always whining about "speech codes" at private colleges and universities. My response to them is the same as my response to Green Day: "Yeah, so?"
Armen, as a legal matter re: speech codes I agree 100%. As a policy matter, I must state that it is ridiculous that a university -- that bastion of free thought for more than a millennium -- has a "speech code." It's not illegal, it's just obnoxious and silly.
Onomotawha,
What is "improper" about dictating the price of what a person is willing to buy? What is "improper" about stating what should be used in making what a person wants to buy? Why is it "improper" for a person to refuse to buy music with foul language?
I agree the third is artless, but it strikes me as eminently proper, i.e., legal.
i'm no economist. i think it's b.s. so i can't really base logical real world arguments on it. also, i don't understand your questions, because we aren't really talking about a person. we are talking about wal-mart. in the real world, there is a difference, economics be damned.
and maybe improper wasn't the right word. i sure didn't mean it as illegal. maybe nefarious is better. because the point i'm trying to make, which there is really no denying, is that wal-mart systematically drives local businesses into the ground and provide consumers with inferior products without their knowledge. it sucks money from local (and national) economies like a hoover and contributes to cycles of poverty. i think it has a less than steller environmental record as well.
yes, you read it right. wal-mart is satan.
onamatowhata -
You have clearly never been to a Super WalMart. It's amazing.
I think the problem is Wal*Mart's ridiculous market share. Because they control such a large portion of music sales, they exert an inordinate amount of control over what that market looks like. They are also known to censor for content as well as "vulgarity."
They do the same thing for movies.
If it was just a case of one retailer saying to take it elsewhere, it would be one thing (lame, but not newsworthy). When Wal*Mart does it, it means they can inflict their tastes on the whole market (movies have been edited for general release based on what the producers knew they could get into Wal*Mart).
what's the market share of walmart? what's the hhi concentration index?
Wal-Mart's market share of music sales: The number I've seen repeatedly is 22%, but I don't know where that comes from or how that breaks down (e.g. whether this defines the market as all music sales or as just CDs).
Onomatowhata: You rock. Any discipline you haven't studied is probably b.s. And Lord knows no economist would perceive a difference between a natural person and Wal-Mart.
Call me a skeptic, but I want to see evidence that not putting your album at Wal*Mart drastically decreases your sales. I know we can reason that people won't be able to just walk by and pick up the album if they're at Wal*Mart, which certainly must constitute some percentage of total sales. But I have doubts (unsubstantiated, perhaps) that this is a large percentage.
I also wonder how many new artists get placed in Wal*Mart stores as well, and whether not being placed because your album contains profanity actually affects the likelihood that you'll be successful.
As you are probably recognizing by now, these are all empirical questions that may bear considerably if your objection is that these bands are experiencing de-facto censorship--i.e. that the art will never make it to the people.
If not placing your album at Wal*Mart demonstrably reduces sales numbers drastically (e.g. it was like your album never even existed), maybe we can get down to brass tacks and start arguing about whether this is a problem and/or what should be done about it.
Did Onomatowhata just get fired by Quinn Emanuel?
Seriously? People are arguing that Wal-Mart is unfairly using its market power in music sales to influence content?
This is preposterous, and definitely not newsworthy. Why has nobody mentioned iTunes or Amazon.com in this discussion? Or this magical set of "internet tubes" that is available which provides innumerable possibilities for music distribution? This seems pretty clear to me - Wal-Mart can sell whatever it chooses. Green Day can swear in their albums. If consumers want the explicit version, go to Amazon.com or iTunes or that Sony website (I hear rumors that it exists, though I've never been there) and download it!
If you think that only the younger generation is capable and willing to use online venues rather than brick-and-mortar shops, you are just plain wrong. (At best, you aren't completely wrong, but you certainly are becoming more wrong by the day.) Because I love speaking in absolutes: Not a single person who wants explicit language in their music is even slightly inconvenienced by Wal-Mart's failure to carry it.
This isn't news.
Define news. We're talking about this, aren't we? Green Day is a local band with a big new record, aren't they? It's a little strange that the biggest record of the last few months won't be sold by the nation's biggest retailer, isn't it? People want to know why. Of course that's news.
As for Green Day's reaction, it's part of the story. And I don't think Billie Joe is saying Wal-Mart doesn't have the right to do what they're doing, he's just saying they shouldn't do it. I guess you can agree with that or not, but I certainly do.
I do disagree with Billie Joe's assessment of the size of this problem. Although the death of the music industry has made Wal-Mart and Best Buy the two biggest music stores in the country (which sucks), the decline has been accompanied by a rise in access to music through the internet. So yes, random local band will have a hard time getting on the shelves of a big box store, but they can always release something online. If it's good enough, they'll get paid for it eventually.
On the same note, the fact that Green Day won't be in Wal-Mart might force the vapid tasteless zombies who get their music there to venture elsewhere, and maybe they'll actually find something good. (Just to clarify before someone calls me classist, "vapid tasteless zombies" was referring to people who get all their MUSIC from Wal-Mart, not Mart shoppers in geneal. I might still be a classist.)
A bit off-topic, but I don't understand the love for WaPo. It's a fear-mongering publication that revels in stories about swine flu and terrorism.
I'm not sure what your issue with "the correct art" is.
I took it to mean that he wants his music to be sold in the way that it was recorded, which is the "correct" way. Maybe it was a poor word choice, but I don't see what your issue is with him wanting people to listen to the music that he recorded and not some edited form.
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