Thursday, November 12, 2026

From Singin' in the Bathtub to the Star Spangled Banner: Pennsylvania Libraries and the CD MAP Antitrust Settlement (2000-2004)

Thursday afternoon, during the global shut-down of Microsoft Office 365, I turned to research tasks that I could accomplish without e-mail, Word, or workplace cloud storage. I turned to some digitized historical documents from Meadville Public Library (MPL) that the library's director, Dan Slozat, had graciously shared with me over the summer. I've been chipping-away at them whenever I have spare time.

While scrolling through some materials from the early 2000s, I came across a news story that jogged a memory: "Local Library in Unusual Scramble for CDs," published in the Lancaster New Era in 2004. MPL's director, John Bryce, had shared it with the library's board as part of his monthly effort to keep them informed of events in the wider library world. The piece described how library staff were readying themselves to log on to a website to claim their share of music CDs that the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office had received as part of a class-action settlement. John Lithgow's Singin' in the Bathtub was one of quirky albums the journalist mentioned, and it reminded me of a moment more than 20 years earlier when I was working at Enoch Pratt Free Library.

John Lithgow's children's album, Singin' in the Bathtub.
Copies were sent to public libraries nationwide as part of the CD MAP settlement.
Album cover image courtesy of Amazon.com

I was retrieving a title from somewhere in the bowels of Pratt's subterranean stacks when I passed by a few colleagues who were joking about a motherload of donated CDs that the library had just received. As they slit open the boxes and sorted the contents onto book carts, they held up and laughed at some of the cheesier and more obscure titles -- including a few that were duplicated by the dozen. Lithgow's children's album was one of them. Back then, he was better known for his Emmy-winning role on 3rd Rock from the Sun, and for Oscar-nominated performances in The World According to Garp and Terms of Endearment. But, at least to my hipster colleagues, the idea of Lithgow singing children's songs was about as goofy as imagining him naked and covered in soap suds. When I reminded them that he'd had a supporting role in Shrek and was starting to publish children's books, they rolled their eyes. One pointed to the track list and asked, "'At the Codfish Ball'? Really? What kid today sings that?'" I shrugged and gave up the fight -- I was just about to resign for a new job at Penn State anyway. 

I hadn't realized that this workday moment was part of a much larger story that had touched libraries throughout Pennsylvania and in dozens of other states. Having not-much-else I could do on a Microsoft snow day, I dove down a rabbit hole of periodical databases and government databases. Here's what I've uncovered:

In 2000, the States of Florida, New York, and Texas, subsequently joined by Pennsylvania and most others, filed an antitrust suit against a slew of music distributors -- BMG, Capitol Records, EMI, Universal, and Virgin among them. The companies had set a "minimum advertised price" (MAP) for their CDs, and punished retailers that sold their products below that price by cutting them out of advertising and promotions. Since the companies named in the case generated an overwhelming majority (like, 85%) of the albums that were sold in stores, major retailers such as Musicland/Sam Goody and Tower Records went along with the price-fixing (and were also named as defendants in the case). Although it was estimated that the average overcharge per CD sold was only about 23 cents, over a 5-year period (1995-2000), MAP inflated the cost for millions of consumers nationwide to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. In doing so, the companies violated the Fair Trade Commission Act, the Sherman Antitrust Act, and other regulations.

As part of resolving the CD MAP case, the companies agreed to pay consumers more than $64 million and a claims site with the apropos URL musiccdsettlement.com was set up. Anyone who filed -- which ultimately included some 243,000 Pennsylvanians -- got a whopping check for $13.36. I don't recall whether my husband and I were among them. 

MusicCDSettlement.com, where consumers could file their claims in the 2002 CD MAP case.
Image courtesy of the Wayback Machine / Internet Archive.

Knowing that millions of affected consumers would never come forward, the court also ordered that the companies distribute $75 million in free CDs to libraries, schools, and other nonprofits that would share them with the public. The number of discs was pro-rated by population, and upon receiving them, each state decided how it would distribute them to relevant institutions. Maryland, it seems, received a shipment of about 100,000 CDs. Its Attorney General office simply surveyed libraries about which genres were of greatest interest and then divided the lot as best it could. Baltimore County wanted rock; Carroll County asked for pop, including Christmas music; and Howard County need musicals. But who knows if anyone wanted the 1,200 (!) copies of Whitney Houston's rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" that Sony shipped out.  

[Don't get me wrong, it's a super recording! But for a state that has fewer than 200 libraries, 1,200 of any Whitney Houston single is probably a bit much. At any rate, I doubt Pratt needed all 66 copies that it eventually got.]

Sony's reissue of Whitney Houston's version of "The Star Spangled Banner."
An avalanche of copies were sent to public libraries nationwide as part of the CD MAP settlement. Album cover image courtesy of Amazon.com

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a complete list of all the music that the companies offered to public libraries. Both the Federal Trade Commission and The National Association of Attorneys General provide open access to case documents (here is the FTC link and NAAG link). Within a Decision that reviews the fairness of the settlement, I learned that Judge D. Brock Hornby reviewed the list and was "satisfied" that they were "not bargain basement CDs," but "good product covering diverse artists and genres." Supposedly there were 1,960 titles in all. However, a list doesn't seem to be included within the materials on FTC's or NAAG's sites. I also tried Westlaw Campus, a subscription-based database I can access through Penn State. While it indexes dozens of documents that I didn't see elsewhere, the full-text is "Out of Plan" (meaning: behind an additional paywall). Pfffft.

I had more luck when I combed through news articles. A June 2004 piece written by Associated Press journalist Peggy Anderson states that the CDs were "selected by experts and educators for the lasting significance," and that the state attorneys general had "signed off" on the list. Anderson quotes Washington State's AG Christine Gregoire who asserted, "we did not give carte blanche to the recording industry to provide any CDs they had left over in their warehouse." To pass muster, they had to have been "on industry charts for 26 weeks or to have peaked in the top half of the charts." 

Here in Pennsylvania, it seems that our Attorney General tried hard to connect libraries with recordings that they actually desired. The PA AG's office received 240,000 CDs. By September 2004, the office sent out a title list and created a secure website that librarians and school officials could use to select the items they wanted. Aiming for some degree of equal opportunity and fairness, the AG decided that if there were 100 or fewer of a particular album in stock, libraries could only request 1 copy each. An article describing Pennsylvania's selection, written by Theresa Boeckel of the York Record, breaks down the offering by genre: 705 classical, 331 rock, 304 jazz, 160 roots, 115 country, 86 Latino, 42 Christmas, 35 soundtrack, 18 children's, and 10 blues. 

After many years of underfunding which had been briefly relieved by an influx of state funds, only to be slashed again, Pennsylvania librarians -- at least the ones who spoke to the press -- seemed grateful to have any CDs that refreshed their beat-up and small collections. In an interview with York Daily Record  reporter Teresa Ann Boeckel, Dover librarian Debbie Van de Castle mentioned that she'd started her collection just 3 years earlier. While she had about 300 titles, she hadn't be able to acquire any new ones that year because she lacked funds. In September 2004, after the AG pick-list went live, Chris Chilcoat, a librarian at Southern York County Library, told Boeckel "the choices in general are better than what we feared." In addition to Mozart, Louis Armstrong, Etta James, and the Jaws movie soundtrack, albums from Celine Dion and the Dave Matthews Band were on the list. For what libraries were getting, Chilcoat quipped, "the price was very good." 

I doubt that the CD MAP case figures prominently in the big scheme of Pennsylvania library history. But I also think it's more than a Friday Fun story. For one thing, it points to a shared understanding, at least among attorneys and government officials, that public libraries were vital partners for community resource-sharing and for achieving a measure of justice within an imperfect capitalist system. The case also demonstrates how, throughout the 20th century, governments had increasing reach and influence in library operations and collections. Not just in terms of providing vital funds, but in funneling equipment and content for libraries, and in setting rules for how it could be obtained and used. 

As I read coverage in the music industry press, library professional journals, and Pennsylvania newspapers, I also mused at how local information provides valuable nuance to national stories. To be more specific, early articles focusing on other states often framed the giveaway as a "bargain bin" dump -- a kooky hodge-podge that the record companies probably wouldn't have been able to sell, and that libraries beleagueredly accepted. While I don't doubt that savvy corporate types sent items that were less likely to hurt their bottom-lines, Pennsylvania sources seem to show that the offering was valuable, at least within the context of a state where libraries were starving for support and had limited audiovisual collections. If I had been one of hundreds of librarians logging in to the PA AG's web site, I can't say whether I would have chosen John Lithgow's Singin' in the Bathtub. But my cart would probably have been chock-full. 

For more about the CD MAP case:


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