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Look what I got in the mail today! It's a check for $13.86. It's part of a settlement from a class action lawsuit against a bunch of music distributors accused of basically doing music price fixing.



You can read up on the whole thing at the official settlement website if you want but here's the basic point.

I copied this right from the website:
The Plaintiffs filed a lawsuit alleging that the Defendants conspired to illegally raise the prices of certain prerecorded Music Products by implementing Minimum Advertised Price policies, in violation of state and federal laws. The Defendants are five music distributors and three music retailers. (A list of the Plaintiffs and Defendants can be found on Page 3 of the Notice of Proposed Settlement.) The Defendants, in agreeing to settle the lawsuit, have denied all allegations of wrongdoing.

So simply put some people finally got fed up with the high price of music and sued a bunch of companies for illegally jacking up prices to gouge consumers. They haven't actually lost or admitted they did it but agreed to settle to end the lawsuit. In all total they're only settling for a few million so it's really just a joke and they still win in the end.

Last year the website was setup and you could file a claim to the settlement. So, some 5 million others and I took advantage of the offer. As a result we're all getting a check for $13.86. Along with the money they're giving a bunch of music CDs to charity and the likes.

Of course I'm not complaining but $13.86 is nowhere a fair repayment for the years of paying way to much for music. I think something in the range of $100 would be more appropriate. Anyways here's to getting a half take of gas free from the music industry!