Price Rise Hurts CD-R Culture

From the 1st July here in Sweden all blank DVD’s and CD-Rs will go up in price. Go up in price by a very large amount. A CD-R will now cost 18 kronor if the retailer passes on the full tax recommended under law. Apparently this is a strategy suggested by the Anti-pirate Bureau to attempt to stem the flow of illegal copying of CD’s from downloads.
I can understand this strategy and I wish them luck with it. Although I don’t think making a product more expensive is going to stop an activity that is based around the Mp3 file format which is supposed to be transferred to the Mp3 player which almost everyone in this country owns one of (not me…But man do I want one).
The thing that hurts me in all this is that I am part of the CD-R culture which is basically musicians making their own CD’s, and selling them through small labels they run themselves. This movement is growing by the day and is a very beautiful thing. This new law will make it very difficult for the Swedish grassroots home studio culture to develop.
Of course there is just ordering CD’s on the internet from Germany by the hundred.

Written by Jim Barrett. Visit his blog Soul Sphíncter for more interesting stuff about digital art & culture.