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Was there any particular format you'd like us to buy this music on?

If the record industry reduced the average retail price to $10 or less, they would fly off the shelves. Piracy would come to a scraching halt.

Only reissues are any good, and prices on basic CDs are too high, but the real problems seem to be the Internet, computer and video games, and DirecTV.

$18.99 for a new CD when it costs $1.00 to make them and the artest gets pennies on the dollar??!! Can you say SUCKER!!!

All of the above.

It's clear that there haven't been many terrific groups lately. Add the down economy and -10% isn't all that bad.

This really isn't anything that hasn't been said before. But I believe, the Music Industry

Price gouging by the major labels has me cutting back bigtime on my music purchases! List prices of $18–20 for new titles? Forget that! If the majors cut their profit margins, they'd more than make up for it in volume.

If you gave most people the choice of having an MP3 or a CD, they would take the CD. The current price of a CD ($20 in most places) places them out of reach of the youth of the nation. I'm not yet 20 and I remember a time when an expensive CD was $15. That was the mid-nineties. Inflation cannot explain that. Lower the price of a CD, by any means, and they may sell better. Then again, you need to have music worth buying.

I frequently buy CDs at heavy discounts from online discount merchant BMG, and only once in a while at the regular $16.98-per-disc CDs from my local Tower Records for those newest and hard-to-find releases.

We are in a strange era where record companies have shrunk into a few conservative "multiopolies." They produce "product" that is engineered to sound similar to other commercially successful product. If the instrumentation isn't unnatural, then the processing through ProTools results in an unnatural product. The independent labels have gone to the opposite extreme. Anything goes in the name of art. No producer or label executive exercises any artistic control, and too much self-indulgent crap is released. The problem is compounded by the CD format. If we only get 36 minutes of music, we feel ripped off as consumers, so we get the 10 songs that would have been on an LP plus all the outtakes that weren't good enough to be released. As a consumer, I don't like to waste my money on an album that contains some good songs, but many I don't like. High prices and digital copying (through sharing CDs and MP3s) are also contributing to low sales, as is the recession, but if great albums were being released, consumers would want them immediately. The Internet gives us a wonderful opportunity to gain exposure to music that doesn't get commercial airplay. If good music was being released, we'd be buying it. Movies/home theater/DVDs are also cutting into music sales. As an audiophile, I don't own a television, and I have a hard time imagining people having enough time and money to be video buffs as well as music listeners. Like many other Stereophile readers, I'd like to see lots of great music reissued on LP and/or SACD. I don't think that will significantly help the recorded music industry, but remember that Sony introduced the CD format for that exact reason: record sales were in a slump because rock had died and nothing replaced it, so the dominant software/hardware manufacturer came up with a way to get people to replace their existing music collections. If they can't sell bad, new music, they have a way to resell good, old music. Contemporary music in every genre sounds "digital." Artists are overly influenced by technology, which results in minimalism and other styles that lack harmony and melody. Most of this music isn't bad, per se. It's too bland and indistinct to call bad. Much of what seems good doesn't hold up in repeated listenings. Many Stereophile reviews confirm my observation. The reviews usually allude to recent releases or recordings that are at least 25-years-old. The few '80s and '90s releases in R2D4 are selected by younger reviewers. To maintain their unit volume, major labels need to target all age groups. However, R2D4 is the wrong approach. Mr. Sony, Mr. BMG, and even Mr. Watermelon need to sell music that is so good I can't live without it.

Just listen to the crap on the radio these days. If the industry insists on delivering "disposable" music, why would anyone bother buying it?

I can only choose one, but basically I think it's a combination of high prices with others as bad music and MP3 swapping. Prices are too high, so people are looking into alternative means of obtaining the music.

I checked "bad music" but I believe it's "high prices" as well. When I can buy a blank recordable CD for $.60 I can't believe that a music CD _really_ costs $16.99 to get to market. I'm not saying every CD has to be in Naxos territory, but somewhere within shouting distance of it would make more sense. But it's mainly a lack of excitement on the music scene that's to blame. Everything's cynical—designed to turn the buck. It sounds it. Rap is (mostly) vile, hip-hop (the disco of the nineties) has had its day, and haven't we had enough of cookie-cutter "alt" bands (or whatever they call themselves) screaming and flailing in the standard way and jumping up and down and contorting their bodies in the standard fashion? Who can keep them all straight? Occasionally a one-hit wonder comes along (I think "Yello" is the current equivalent of "96 Tears") and a few of the bands out there now are finding interesting variations on the old themes. I'm never short of things to buy, so I'm not really complaining from my own perspective. But then, I really like music-listening as a hobby. I just don't think there's a lot that compelling happening to involve the "average consumer." I mean, it's not like yet another Beethoven symphony cycle is going to stir up a storm of public interest.

Lower the prices - and noone would bother to copy ! The price of a new CD should be no more than $10 - then instead of bying one, I would two ! Elementary - Dr. Watson And some more new original music - instead of bad copy

The Cd become more and more expensive. On top of that, it become more and more dificult to find a store with good salesman ready to share his experience.

Record company greed, with a complete disregard for the music-loving customer!

What about sheer ignorance of the music-buying public (including high prices,

Definitely, high prices are the problem in the UK—I don't know about the US. Over here we're being shafted at every level and I can't see the situation changing in the future. I've been mainly buying second-hand records for the last year or so, because it's so depressing to go into a mainstream shop and walk out with an empty wallet and just a tiny handful of CDs. The cost of making an unwise purchase is just too high.

Music today is all pressed from the same mold. It lacks creativity. It is not music.I only buy jazz/rock from the 50's, 60's and 70's.

come on now here in canada it costs up to $25 for you avge cd

It's very easy to blame technology. That way the record company execs get to keep their jobs. But my three teenagers don't find a lot to listen to let alone buy.

The music gets worse and the prices get higher-does not compute-

How come greed by the record industry was not a choice? I checked other. I would have checked them all except for 9/11.

It really is a combination of factors. (Also, I don't believe European sales are impacted to nearly the same level as North American sales.) Those factors are recession, record company disdain for their consumers (as witnessed through copy protection moves and their lobbying of congress), and the ability for the consumer to flip the bird back at the labels with CD-burners. The dinosaurs are starving! Such is the penalty for arrogance in the market place.

MP3 quality is poor. Get on with SACD and make the prices reasonable and I will buy. Why should I spend top dollar for old technology. Get on with it guys! We want quality! I am still waiting for the equipment/software issues to settle down, also. Equipment is expensive I don't want to buy again and won't have dollars left for software if the hardware changes over and over. Standardize and move forward if you want my money.

My son (20 years old) is in constant pursuit of music, but only infrequently from the main industies labels. I have a large collection of music and over 70% of my purchases last year were of reissues on LP of Jazz. An avid classical music lover my $12,000 of CD hardware still only gets close to the LPs I own. I kept a record of what I played last year and 60% was from LP despite a $8000 investmeent in CD Hardware during the year.

The industry needs to find out who their "real" customers are...the "buying" public. If the music they press (MFG) as show on the Billboard top 200 list is being literally "ripped" off the internet, then is that a legitmate customer base to go after? What age group is this "ripping" off coming from 15 - 25? If that is the case then I doubt that even a lower price of $5-$10 a CD would make any difference. If they are ripping down to MP3 quality what is the point of a quality level of CD RedBook. Go back to LP's and let them "rip" cassettes. The music indurtry is suffering becasue they produce artists that very few people 35 to 50+ years of age would buy. Plus I believe that this age group, in any apprecable numbers, cares very little about music enough in general anymore to spend say $500 to $1K a year on new CD's. This trend bothers me the most. It should bother equipment manufacturers more as well. The vast majority of people in this age group who could afford high end gear are not buying. The industry is suffering because this 35 - 50 age group has stopped really caring about music listening on a truly personal, emotional level. If even 5% of this age group got back into the music buying habit things could change. The music they would buy you can't even find on radio stations in major metro areas anymore to preview. Marketing is very simple, when you produce the wrong or bad quality product you suffer the consequences. Software is no differenct.

Pop music in the 1990s and today sounds more formulaic than the junk the industry turned out in the late 1950s and early 1960s for Top 40 consumption. We need a new movement in pop music like the British invasion music of the mid 1960s to revitalize pop music.

Bad music is another good reason as well as copy protection moves by the labels