I was in Borders yesterday for several hours, and browsed through the music department, picking up about twenty CDs to look at, or thereabouts. Once I sat down and looked at them, though, I was hit by major sticker shock. All the new discs were $18.99, and even several of the old (Peter Gabriel's "So", etc.) discs were marked at that price. I haven't been paying attention to "normal" prices recently, because everything I've bought has been on sale, or through the internet, or at a concert. So when did this happen? Why did this happen? And how are you dealing with it? Do you think CD sales are going to decline? Will everyone go to Best Buy? Or what?7 responses total.
i bought a miles cd there for 11.99 2 weeks ago
a clash cd from joes for 11 last week
<shrug>
Joes? Some CDs at Borders are reasonably priced, true. (Frex there was a best of alice cooper for $10 and the new-ish Maddy Prior was $12 or $13...) But all of the ones that I was seriously considering buying were much more.
The industry seems to be moving to more tiered prices. What I've been noticing at Tower in East Lansing is that the hot new releases which aren't on sale, and the most popular classic rock items, are now carrying $18.99 prices. The folk and world music is more likely to be $16.99 or $17.99; then there are lots of back catalog items (like the Miles Davis and Clash CD happyboy found) in the $12 range. It could be that Tower in East Lansing, and Borders in Ann Arbor, are raising prices in response to the wipeout of most of their competition, but I do recall vaguely reading that most new CDs are being issued with an $18.98 list price. Schoolkids-in-the-Basement is likely to undercut Borders by about $3 per disc, but of course their selection is sharply limited.
It's ridiculous, though. It's just going to drive more people to Napster and other places. I had a *HUGE* issue with buying the new Dar for 19. For 10 songs???? get real! (I did it, of course, but....)
I guess I'm being spoiled by being the Folk Writer. A lot of the discs I might have to buy for mucho dinero are being sent to me, and those that aren't, I tend to buy at concerts, so I haven't had to see the new stickers until now. Scary.
Hey, *someone* has got to pay for those giant-record-company mergers and you don't the Backstreet Boys fans are going to step up and volunteer, do you? What I would like to know is: is it my imagination or do all the majors tend to price their new releases at the same level and is there any reason to conclude from this that they are engaging in illegal anti-competitive behavior (such as price fixing)? Small labels seem to price their discs considerably lower in many cases but as far as I can see there is barely any (if, in fact, there *is* any) price competition between the big N record companies? (where N < 5 and changes from week to week depending on merger status..)
You don't need a conspiracy for that, though. It could just be that each of them independently decides it's in their best interest to keep prices the same. (Of course, it rather sucks either way.....)
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