response 31 of 160:

Oct 2 08:11 UTC 2002

I can't see any reason why CD's should cost more than paperback books.
The "raw" cost of the CD proper is probably pennies.  It's certainly
less than $.20.  It's obvious that mass produced CD's are essentially
"free" - how otherwise to explain the drove of CD's companies such as
AOL have delivered to every american household with a postal address.
Clearly a naked CD is cheap enough to be a cereal box giveaway.  The
jewel case & artwork of a commercial CD may have cost more than the
actual CD.  The royalty due to the artist under most current contracts
is clearly not much more.  A few exceptional performers may actually get
rich, but they are just that--exceptions.

Most of the cost of a CD in a store should be the cost of distribution
and marketing.  That is not unreasonable; we pay similar fees for food
in stores with no qualms, and welcome being able to get tomatoes grown
in California in winter without the necessity of a plane trip to
negotiate with a farmer for purchase and transportation of fruit on an
individual basis.  The real question is what is actually a reasonable
fee for having a CD in a store?  In the paperback market, when you buy a
paperback, you aren't actually purchasing just one book, but several --
the ones you didn't buy are the ones that get pulped (curtesy of the
"magazine" model having overtaken the book industry in the 70's), so in
essence you are buying at least $1-$2 worth of paper -- and they still
manage to make a profit at "only" $6.95.

Another completely independent way of coming up with roughly the same
figure is to look at the cost of "naked" software bought in Taiwan.  In
this market, untrammelled by any real copyright restrictions, you can
purchase virtually any software title you please for only $5.  You
aren't paying anything to microsoft, so the costs you pay are 100%
production and distribution.  The major risk (ie, additional cost to you
the consumer) is that the police might stage a raid and seize some
product, but this is low because they usually telephone ahead and warn
the vendors.  $5 is close enough to the going rate for paperback books
that I think this is pretty obviously the "right" price.  If anything,
this is generous, perhaps the price should be lower.

So this $18 / CD is clearly a ripoff.  I found it annoying that in this
recent agreement in which the record companies and distributers did not
admit they had been practicing price fixing, that the corrective actions
agreed to did not include lower prices.  Apparently nobody representing
the real injured party, the american consumer, was properly represented
in court.