Today, I am unhappy with the record companies. More specific, I am very unhappy with EMI and Virgin. And here is why: they effectively rendered my CDs nearly useless for me personally.

Here is the story: I got some nice CDs from Belgian artists.Yes, I'm one of those people that still buy CDs from time to time. I like to listen to those CDs too, and the time I can listen to them most is when I'm driving in my car. Now I have had to buy a new car, and those of you that know about the copy control protection on some CDs will already know where this one is heading. My brand new spiffy car CD player cannot play those CDs. It tries to, makes some weird noises and spits them out again. So I am in effect stuck with a couple of useless CDs now (I rarely get the occasion to listen them anywhere else but the car). I can't be the only one who's got a problem with that. So who is responisble for this customer being unhappy? I don't think it is my car manufacturer, because I can play all my other CDs fine, so according to me it's not their fault.

So I blame the record company, and the resellers that sold it to me. After all, it clearly says on the CD: "this disk incorporates copy control technology" ... it doesn't say "this CD will not work in your nice new car CD player" (oh, for those who are interested, it does state that the Copy Control logo is a trademark of IFPI).

I tried contacting the record companies over the Internet: EMI/Virgin Belgium (seems to be the same company now?) ... I could only subscribe to their newsletter and leave a comment there. Good job guys ... They probably got so many complaints already about this and other issues that they removed all ways to get their e-mail address. So I tried the vendors... after all, they sold me those CDs, without telling me I could run into problems. Free Record shop at least can be contacted ... they promised me a reply in three days max. On the subject of Media Markt... well, that's another story. I cannot find any contact on their site, so no good job there! I wonder when some companies are actually going to start listening to their customers, and giving those customers the chance to actually get in contact with them.

I'm not going to give my opinion on whether it is good that they want to protect their artists from having their CDs ripped onto MP3s and shared over the Internet. That's a discussion/battle I don't want to get involved in for the purpose of this post. What I do have a huge problem with is the impact this has on their brand and their customer satisfaction ratings. I am wondering if they are so short-sighted that they rather have unhappy customers unable to play the CDs of artists that they bought, instead of looking into a solution that just plain works. I now have some money that I threw away at them because they did not do their jobs properly in my opinion. And I am not alone, judging from this article:
"What we've seen so far is troublesome and cumbersome," said Gerry Wirtz, general manager of the Philips copyright office that governs the CD trademark. "We worry (the labels) don't know what they're doing."
And another, even more worrying quote: "Even when the protection technology works as intended, Wirtz said that normal wear and tear could eventually overwhelm the error correction for the altered discs, causing them to become unreadable within a few years."

To find out more about copy control, go to the "Campaign for Digital Rights" site. All in all, this is a worrying evolution. To what extent can a company alienate its customers to protect its assets? And what will be the backlash?