MUSIC, AMBIENCE AND SOUND ART > Independent Music Reviews

August 2008 issue of Electroambient Space

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drone on:
I have always thought CD's were overpriced from the beginning (1986?).  It's my understanding they were never more expensive to make than records or cassettes, which were about, what, $9 in retail stores? Suddenly you had to pay twice as much for an album.  The prices have gone down over the years, but they are still overpriced.  At least they got rid of those big lunky longboxes they were packaged in originally.  Now if only they would do away with wrapping CD's in cellophone and putting that people proof sticker over the top that takes 2 hours to remove.  Especially annoying when you unseal the damn thing only to find a big SCRATCH on the CD! But I digress....The "music industry" (big record companies) I believe set this "standard" for how much CD's "should" cost.  Of course it only cost like 50 cents to make, $1 went to the artist, and the rest went to greedy record execs. in suits. No wonder stores like Tower Records had to close.  Nobody was paying $18 and $19 for a Def Leppard CD anymore when they could download it, get a burn from their friends, or buy it for $11 or $12 at a smaller record store chain.  Hypnos label prices have always been extremely fair comparatively, but I'd like to see them come down even more, to like $1. No I'm just kidding. But $10 still seems like a good figure.  Actually many Hypnos titles are under $10 in the online store (the older ones mainly, are those that I am guessing did not sell as well as others).  I don't mind paying $12.99 for Hypnos CD's, although when you add on shipping it works out to $16 per new Hypnos release.  I think if prices were lowered a bit it would encourage more people to buy CD's instead of downloading them (officially or unofficially).  Although now with the advent of the iPod, people are doing away with CD's altogether to save space and for convenience purposes.  In my own version of a perfect world, all CD's would cost $10, iPod's would not exist, CDR's would not exist, and downloading music wouldn't be an option.  I guess I am an old school music consumer.     

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