In economics, a cartel is an agreement between competing firms to control prices or exclude entry of a new competitor in a market. It is a formal organization of sellers or buyers that agree to fix selling prices, purchase prices, or reduce production using a variety of tactics. Cartels usually arise in an oligopolistic industry, where the number of sellers is small or sales are highly concentrated and the products being traded are usually commodities. Cartel members may agree on such matters as setting minimum or target prices (price fixing), reducing total industry output, fixing market shares, allocating customers, allocating territories, bid rigging, establishment of common sales agencies, altering the conditions of sale, or combination of these. The aim of such collusion (also called the cartel agreement) is to increase individual members' profits by reducing competition. If the cartelists do not agree on market shares, they must have a plan to share the extra monopoly profits generated by the cartel.
Cartel is a German hip hop album released in 1995 featuring various artists of Turkish descent. The compilation contains five tracks by Nuremberg artist Karakan, three songs from the Kiel group Da Crime Posse, three songs by Erci E. from West Berlin and a communal recording by all of the artists entitled Cartel.
Spyce Records facilitated the recording of this album under the supervision of their manager Ozan Sinan. Cartel was initially released by Mercury/Polygram, and by RAKS/Polygram in Turkey. The Turkish market consumed over 300,000 copies, providing for widespread notoriety for each of the contributing artists. The German-Turkish community also received the album enthusiastically, although only 20,000 copies were sold within Germany.
The album cover is a blatant allusion to the Turkish flag in that the "c" is manifested by the crescent of Islam. Album manager Oznan Sinan justifies this symbolism by stating that "Our targer-group are the Turks not the German society". Similarly, the beats were enriched with samples from Turkish folk music and attempted to unify an ethnic minority within Germany.
Cartel is the second studio album American rock band Cartel. It released in stores on August 21, 2007 despite being announced by the band's lead singer as coming out on July 24, 2007. It was officially completed at sometime around 8:00 p.m. on June 10, 2007 and features "Lose It" as the first single.
The album was completed in 20 days inside a giant glass bubble as part of the Band in a Bubble program sponsored by Dr Pepper, MTV and KFC. The band was forced to live inside the bubble for 20 days without being able to leave. The first single, "Lose It", was performed from the bubble live on June 1 for TRL's Spankin' New Music Week. Throughout the recording of the album, the band was watched constantly by fans through 23 webcams that were positioned all through the bubble. The album was finished two days before the set time and was completed with 13 songs. The album was performed by Cartel after they left the bubble on June 12, 2007 at 8:00 p.m.
The album received mixed reviews by critics.
Retrograde may refer to:
Retrograde is a 2004 science fiction action film directed by Christopher Kulikowski and starring Dolph Lundgren. The film was released theatrically in South Korea on 14 January 2005. It was shot in Italy and Luxembourg.
A musical line which is the reverse of a previously or simultaneously stated line is said to be its retrograde or cancrizans ("walking backward", medieval Latin, from cancer, crab). An exact retrograde includes both the pitches and rhythms in reverse. An even more exact retrograde reverses the physical contour of the notes themselves, though this is possible only in electronic music. Some composers choose to subject just the pitches of a musical line to retrograde, or just the rhythms. In twelve-tone music, reversal of the pitch classes alone—regardless of the melodic contour created by their registral placement—is regarded as a retrograde.
Retrograde was not mentioned in theoretical treatises prior to 1500.Nicola Vicentino (1555) discussed the difficulty in finding canonic imitation: "At times, the fugue or canon cannot be discovered through the systems mentioned above, either because of the impediment of rests, or because one part is going up while another is going down, or because one part starts at the beginning and the other at the end. In such cases a student can begin at the end and work back to the beginning in order to find where and in which voice he should begin the canons." Vicentino derided those who achieved purely intellectual pleasure from retrograde (and similar permutations): "A composer of such fancies must try to make canons and fugues that are pleasant and full of sweetness and harmony. He should not make a canon in the shape of a tower, a mountain, a river, a chessboard, or other objects, for these compositions create a loud noise in many voices, with little harmonic sweetness. To tell the truth, a listening is more likely to be induced to vexation than to delight by these disproportioned fancies, which are devoid of pleasant harmony and contrary to the goal of the imitation of the nature of the words."