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With the current state of the music, they'd have to pay me to take a CD home. Now, if, for some reason, good music were to be made, I might spend $9. But, as an audiophile, I will withold my money until I can get an SACD or DVD-A version for $10. In the meantime, I have more LPs than a small college radio station, so I'm very happy, thank you—and screw you, Jack Valenti!

Want to have a huge effect on piracy? Lower the price of CDs to a reasonable cost where people wouldn't feel ripped off.

For several years now, I've set a limit of $7 on CD purchases. Of course most of my CDs cost less«$7 is the maximum. I set that price when I found out that I could never buy all the CDs I wanted even at that low price, so why spend more?

In China, I can buy CDs at relatively lower price. Strangely enough, the price for SACDs or DVD-A is much, much higher—I have to pay about $35 US for a single Telarc SACD. For example,a German-made DG The Original reissue costs only $11 US, tax included. But in the US, it costs more. That's why I didn't buy CDs when I went to the US a month ago. Even though the price is lower in China, it's very high as compared to our incomes. So I have to be very careful so as not to buy CDs that I don't like very much. I need to save my money for my favorite music. I think $8 US for one CD, which is about half of the current price, is a proper price&$151;good for music lovers as well as music campanies.

Those of us who happen to be in the computer industry saw the price of blank CDs go from over $10 per CD to less than 50 cents. Then the gall of having to pay a copyright tax. I can't figure out why the cost of buying a CD should increase in price. Especially for generally crappy music.

Even the $7–8 range represents close to a couple of hours of take-home pay for a young person or other minimum-wage worker. Prices should be low enough that people are encouraged to buy, rather than steal, music, but high enough to force people to exercise taste in buying. Quality, not quantity, is what matters most in music. By getting people to buy what they really want, instead of CDs that people won't enjoy for more than a few months, the industry will create long-term buyers. Records peaked in the $7–8 range when mass production ended, and until CDs are as good, they shouldn't cost more. Charge us a premium for SACDs and DVD-As ($11–12) instead. Although high-end audio prices have inflated, mass-market consumer electronics have radically deflated, and the industry has survived. The CD industry can do the same.

Manditory price below ten dollars if sliding sales are to stop.

'Strewth! Even your top price looks cheap to us in Britain.

LP's used to cost $7-$8 dollars and no one was going broke back then! They told us that since CD's were new, they would be more expensive for a while but would come down eventually. Well, CD Player prices have came way down, but not the software. Wonder why?

The fullprice of CD should be around $6, that is for what you can buy a NAXOS album.

If you want to make your own official CD, total volume 15000 copies, each CD costs you around $4.00. And that includes production costs, copyright costs, artists fees and manufacturing. Where do the extra money that we pay go?

No comment.

These are much much cheaper to produce than cassette tapes!!!!! So why the higher prices? We have been getting so ripped off by the industry. I remember when CD's first came out -- the companies justified the higher prices by low economies of scale and cost of new technology. Well none of that is true anymore -- they are raking it in!

I would buy 2-3 times the number currently purchased. Hey Mr Music Mogul- are you listening?

At maximum, $7. This will let the air out of the piracy balloon. No one will spend time with a burner to save $6, just to have a copy with no booklet and label.

Since I have SACD now, I hardly can stand listening to substandard PCM garbage released on the obsolete CD format. I wouldn't be willing to pay any more than $8 for a regular CD, but I'm willing to pay up to $25.99 for a SACD.

Many CD's are offered at his price or lower. So it seems to me that $10 must afford a reasonable profit

For some inexplicable reason, it's the two-digit thing. Once it's $10 or more, it seems too expensive. Truth be told, though, it's impossible to figure out a "one size fits all" price. No doubt, some recordings are worth a lot more than others, regardless of how much they are being offered for.

Big Music knows $17.98 for Red Book is a rip-off. "How much is enough?" The music industry's answer is always, "More." Anyone paying top retail for a CD keeps these thieves laughing all the way to the bank and they're stealing from the artists as well as the consumer.

My answer: $11.88 for new product, $9.99 for deep catalog product, $5.99 for Naxos CDs in ALL stores, and $3.99 for record club and cut-out product. Use the radio and the Web to let people hear different types of music. People listen to the Web to hear music they would never hear on corporate broadcasting. CDs still sound better than MP3s to me, so I'm still willing to buy them, just make the pricing less prohibitive.

I think $8.99 and $9.99 list prices with store prices discounted to under $8.00 is about right. That's really all I ever pay anyway, what with club membership and an easily available metropolitan area to exploit. But there's always that one CD I've got to have and I'll never be able to get at a reasonable price (Bill Frisell last week). That's when I realize how hard it must be to pay full price for all my music. I would have to really curtail my purchasing habits.

CD's should cost whatever the market will bear. For the most part music just isn't very good any more and the recording even worst. But reality is almost no one outside the audio world cares. However new pop music is and always had been put out for kids, and now even with unemployment down just a little, lots of kids have lots of jobs and plenty of money. They grow up and tastes change and in a while the music companies will catch up. Overthink it all you want, economics is economics.

We need to strike a better balance between A&R costs and consumer demand. A ten spot should keep both the consumer happy & the companies able to develop new talent.

Many movie soundtrack CDs are more costly than the DVD of the movie itself.

Anything over $10 is a significant barrier to purchase of more than a few CDs. I think the farther under the price is the more volume would increase. But the major problem I have with CDs is that the majority of the ones I have purchased turned out to be a dissapointment from an recording quality standpoint. If I knew every one I bought would actually sound good, I'd buy more. However, that $10 price point looms large.

The music clubs can charge $7-$8 with the phony shipping & handling charges per disk and seem to make out just fine. I will gladly pay a $1-$2 premium to not wait 4-6 months to buy a popular or more common release at a retail store. I would pay $10-$11 for a off the beaten path CD not available through music clubs.

Assuming we are talking red-book I think sub $10. is a fair price based on what a disc cost and what I paid for records in there prime. Music for the masses should be affordable for the masses!The majority of music is released in the masses format which in turn is where the artist should get the greatest return however I will continue to buy high end recordings because why have a high end system and run sub par material on it. Might as well run mud tires on my bimmer in the summer if you know what I mean!

This is what I remember records costing when CDs were introduced. Inflation would be offset by savings in shipping and manufacturing costs. CDs cost practically nothing to manufacture (how else could AOL afford to carpet bomb the country with those free software disks?), so the original reason for CDs to cost the same as audiophile vinyl is no longer valid. Dump the Mariah Careys and get some artists with real talent and and reasonable expectations of compensation, and let's press some quality tunes for a realistic price (and let's use hybrid SACD for all future releases, please).

I don't think it's impossible,but the big labels are going to have to learn the hard way.

This represents the most I'm usually willing to pay, unless it's soemthing I'm really excited to hear.