Poll after poll reveals that readers think that high CD prices solidly outpace even the mediocrity of the music offerings as the number-one symptom of what is wrong with the music business. Now that Universal is lowering the price on some of its CDs, do you think you'll buy more of its discs?
COMMENTS
When will the record company bozo's understand; it's not the price it's the music or lack of. If you guys issue CD's of music I like I will buy it. I do applaud the lowering of prices. The product has been overpriced for some time. I wonder if the price cuts apply in GB or the rest of the EU. Here in the US we have lower prices already.
I have always felt that the record companies were ripping us off at the prices they are charging. Especially considering how little they pay the artists who do the actual work. They are still making one hell of a profit considering a CD costs them about $1 to make. This price is closer to fair. Personally, I would like to see CDs at about $9.99 and the artist making bigger royalties. But this price will make me buy more CDs.
I've pretty much stopped buying CDs. In the pop realm, there's very little coming out these days of sufficient interest to justify spending money on a CD (as opposed to LP),and there are still plenty of older titles on LP that I don't yet have but would like tomany more than I can afford. Does this price cut include classical? It doesn't really matter though, since at the rate I'm going it will take a couple years at least for me to work through my stash of "to-be-listened-to" second-hand classical LPs. As it stands, I don't see myself having much interest in any digital format until such time as one that is truly appropriate for music is introduced, that is, one that doesn't require TV monitors or heavy manipulation to eliminate (or mask) digital noise and distortions introduced during the recording/mastering process. Such a format would probably not involve a spinning disc (an analog "solution," after all), but would be solid state. . . . If you look at the relationship between income (in the US) and the retail price of recorded music, you'll find that as a percentage of median family income, the price commercial recordings (CDs)is about as low as it has ever been--much lower than in the 1930s and 1940s, for example (and then you were typically only getting two songs), and lower than in the early '60s. By this measure, the lowest prices were in the early '70s, but current prices are not much higher (0.03% of the median income vs. 0.026%). OTOH, if you compare prices as a percentage of the Federal minimum wage, they probably are the highest they've been since the early 1950s, and significantly higher than in the 1960s and '70s. Of course, not everyone works for the minimum wage, but fully half the working population in the US makes less than $26K/year, so these are not insignificant statistics. The bottom line is that recorded music has always been a luxury item, but that for most people in the US today, as a percentage of income the price of recorded music is close to being as low as it has ever been. The real problem isn't price, it's quality (sound and content both, although the mass market doesn't care about sound).
My buying plan for the next 12-24 months will be focused ONLY on fairly priced records, even though it means approaching a narrower choice of items. Thus, should I found some "regular" Universal titles at the promised reduced price (which is still higher than my "cistercensis" aimed level of 5-10 Euros - I just bought 5 decent "classical" records/reissues, each at 5 Euros), I am going to buy those records, too, provided that: a) they are appealing records (i.e.:not just one good tune with 8 "filler" tunes), and b) this price policy will, of course, be practiced also in the EU market.
Lower prices can only help sales. But it can't compete with free downloads; At least not in the eyes of people who indulge in that kind of thing. But, that is not the record biz's problem anyway - the overwhelming majority of the "free-loaders" would not buy much music, anyway. The real problem is competition from DVD, computers and video games. Also, the aging of the baby-boomers, plus a real lack of compelling new music is a big part of the record industry's woe's. (After all, as time goes on, and more and more music has been recorded, at some point won't it be nearly impossible for anything truly new and fresh to be recorded? I think we're approaching that now.)
I like Jazz and club music. Unless I hear them or read about a review I will not buy them. Besides, my children are spending $45 a pop on video games in greater quantities than they ever bought CDs! Price is not a factor here at all.
Pricing any cd above $10 is a ripoff. With respect to music issued pre-cd, the music industry sold us the lp, followed by an awful sounding cd, a re-mastered cd, another re-mastered cd, perhaps another re-mastered cd, and then an SACD/DVD-A or maybe a 180 gram lp. That's a sweet little profit every few years for music issued twenty or more years ago. But corporate greed is, if anything, always unbounded. If these music executives have decided it's better to gouge the consumer until he stops buying cds in favor of downloading his music, who am I to oppose them?
Although it's heartening to see proposed price drops most of the new offerings I've auditioned are still crap. Maybe one of the reasons CD purchasing has softened is the proliferation of auditioning kiosks. Until some quality product shows up at reasonable prices I'm still going to seek out budget priced gems.
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