Doug, Roger and Intrada do an outstanding job and are a class act in every phase.
There is no easy solution to this situation. We live in a world where nothing is really guaranteed to you. Oh sure you have certain rights and privilages and the opportunity to better yourself and collect things. But material things aren't something that every person has the rights to.
For every decision you make there's going to be someone who's not happy with it.
These would be my ideas:
1. Limit the number of quantities a person can purchase.
- How many copies per purchase do you limit it to? What about the person who buys them to give out as gifts to friends and family? Or what about those who buy for friends who can't get to a computer? Do you limit the amount vendors can buy as well?
2. Have a 2-4 day window for regular customers to purchase before you open the sales up to vendors and hoarders.
- A good idea but what about those who only buy from vendors other than Intrada? For whatever reasons there are those who only wish to purchase all of their CDs from either SAE, BSX, Moviemusic.com or Intrada. Do they miss out or do you force them to start buying from the various labels? And what about the vendors? Now they can't service their customers.
- We saw that fiasco when SAE's site went down the day FSM's Superman box was announced, people started ordering thru moviemusic.com and according to the site SAE asked them not to take any orders until they got their website up and running. Needless to say there were grumblings from moviemusic.com about not being able to service their customers because SAE put a hold on orders.
- Now imagine what would happen if labels started doing that with regular releases that didn't cause the websites to crash.
3. See who is buying large #'s of CDs who aren't the normal vendors and limit their purchases.
- Do Doug and Roger have the time to watch eBay and track every large sale? Would someone raise legal objections or issues over this?
4. Announce CDs but don't list the quantities.
- Might be the way to go. Hoarders aren't sure of # of pressings, don't want to buy stuff they'll be stuck with. However the regular customers may panic and all rush to buy at once.
5. Have a limited run of 200 to 500 copies if it sells out within 24 hours.
- I don't care about the value of my CD, I buy it for the listening pleasures. So if I buy something that says #5 of 1000 and then Intrada presses another 500 copies, it won't bother me.
- The only thing is can Intrada do it? Will studio license agreements allow them to?
6. Bring back the charter clubs.
- I earn a comfortable living however I cannot justify buying every single release. I don't want everything. I'm 40, have a family, work 45-50 hours a week, have other interests outside of film music and have over a 1000 CDs. I'm already running out of time to listen to what I have. I don't want to make it mandatory that I have to buy every release nor do I want to miss out on something because club members get priority over the regular folks.
- Does Intrada make a policy of all sales final and no returns?
Personally I like things the way they are, Intrada has an announcement time and they give clues. They need to move products, the more they move the better our chances of getting more goodies.
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