I had forgotten that about a million years ago, I got an email from my dad suggesting that I file an online claim in the Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation Settlement, a lawsuit brought by 43 attorneys general (how often do you get to use that phrase?) against all of the big record labels as well as Tower Records, Musicland, and some other distributors, for conspiring to illegally raise cd prices. I filed because I met these criteria: “You are a member of the Settlement Group if you are a person (or entity) in the United States or its Territories and Possessions who purchased prerecorded Music Products, consisting of compact discs, cassettes and vinyl albums, from one or more retailers during the period January 1, 1995, through December 22, 2000.” That’s a lot of people.

Anyway, yesterday, I received my settlement check, for a whopping $13.86, which was my portion of the cash settlement of $67 million. By my calculations, only about 4.8 million people filed; if enough people filed to make the claims go under $5 apiece, no settlements would be issued because it would be too costly. So thanks, I guess, for not filing. I’ll go buy us some gummi worms now.

I remember, now that I think about it, reading about the thousands of cds Massachusetts libraries will be getting as part of the other half of the settlement: $75.7 million worth of cds, to “not-for-profit, charitable, governmental or public entities to be used for music-related purposes or programs reasonably targeted to benefit a substantial number of persons who purchased prerecorded music compact discs, cassettes or vinyl albums from one or more retailers.” That’s cool.