Sprinkles v. Sprinkles

As usual, the lawyers will likely walk away with the frosting in this dispute over business names.

Hat tip: Charlie Brown

Life at Goldman

Goldman's desire to control its employees even outside work hours is pretty creepy.

Hat tip: Charlie Brown, who notes that this is one compensating differentials regression that would yield the correct sign.

Bankrupt bookstore

Borders boldly braves bankruptcy.

More on Borders

The WaPo on the decline of Borders. The article includes some interesting history that I had not read before.

Borders

Megan McArdle says farewell to Borders.

I've reconciled myself to the end of Borders as well. I ordered three items from borders.com in an effort at corporate charity a couple of weeks ago and they had to cancel the order for one of them, presumably because their supplier had cut them off for non-payment.

I just hope that the original Borders store in Ann Arbor, which is in walking distance of my office, will stay a bookstore of some sort. Unlike Megan, I still really like the in-person bookstore experience, and often find interesting books that way. Having said that, most of my new book-buying happens on amazon.

Addendum: a reader sent me an email to correct a bit of looseness in my post. The original Borders store was a block away from the current one on State Street.

Economist on the music industry

An interesting status report on the music industry from the Economist.

Here is a teaser:

In a sense, the recorded-music market is not so much dying as greying. In 2002 people aged 12 to 19 accounted for 16.4% of all spending on albums in Britain, according to TNS Worldpanel. That was almost double the share of people aged 60 or over (8.8%). The two groups have now switched positions. By 2008 teenagers accounted for just 12% of spending on albums, whether digital or physical. By contrast, the older fans’ share had gone up to 13.8%. The over-60s do not just spend more on music albums than teenagers. They spend more on pop-music albums.

The consequences can be seen in the pop charts. America’s bestselling album since 2000 is “1”, a collection of Beatles hits from the 1960s. At one point last year four of the top ten albums in Britain were Beatles recordings and the number-one album was a collection of songs by Vera Lynn, who was then 92 years old. The bestselling album worldwide last year was “I Dreamed a Dream” by Susan Boyle, a middle-aged Scot. Universal Music’s bestselling album in Japan in the first half of this year was “Vocalist 4” by Hideaki Tokunaga, Japan’s answer to Harry Connick Jr. If most of your fans are middle-aged, CD sales are holding up well.

Via Marginal Revolution

Great moments in customer service

Sony will generously replace my out-of-warranty freezes-every-few-minutes DV-FX930 portable 9" DVD player with a factory refurbished unit for only $142.23.

Price of a completely new unit on Amazon: $138.88.

On redisorganization

A spot of pointed humor from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

Hat tip: Genevieve Knight