Universal Music dropping all CD prices to under $10

Won't hold my breath for them to drop download prices accordingly.

Hopefully this will cause other labels to drop their CD prices to match across the board. Going to be a lot easier for me to get CDs now, at any rate.

How will this affect the Mom-and-Pop record shops still standing? Hasten their demise?

I figure alot of Mom and Pop stores make money reselling.

At prices below $10. If I can get a new disc for the price of a used one, that eliminates a lot of the appeal.

They will end up selling their CD's for much less meaning their buy back prices will be way lower.

I was just in a shop today and the teller's response was "Oof". I think they're concerned about whether or not they're going to have to mark down what's already in stock. I figure if the CDs are priced lower, that means stores pay less to get them in, right?

Well, hopefully this doesn't kill the store near my house, because that will leave me with taking the Metro to Amoeba any time a new album comes out.

One thing I think we can all be sure if is that Borders will continue to sell CDs for $18.00 for absolutely no reason other than fuck you.

Where are you downloading from? I've been comparison shopping on the last few albums I downloaded and haven't paid more than 8 bucks for any of them (generally going through Lala).

Right, but that's based on paying $12 to $16 for a CD. Seems like a download shouldn't cost almost the same as buying the actual physical product, given that they're not having to press a disc and print packaging.

Those are fairly negligible costs in the grand scheme of things. You're paying for the making of the record which includes studio time, an engineer's time, the producer, studio musicians, if needed etc. Studio time can run upwards of a thousand bucks an hour on its own. That's the equivalent of printing and pressing 5000 (at .20 each, which was the going rate for packaging last time I heard) discs per hour.

Ryan: What about logistics? I imagine that's pretty expensive.

Yeah, that's actually where the real costs come in - the advertising, the warm bodies in suits needed to secure the various deals, etc. The cost of recording isn't that expensive and neither is the cost of physical production*. I mean, especially when you figure they're charging the same price for albums by artists who spend months in the studio working with studio musicians and paid writers as they are for albums by indie artists who self-produce albums in their home studios.

The big lie of the music industry is that the livelihood of the people who actually make the music is tied up in sales on an item-by-item basis. It's a convenient ruse because "when you download illegally or sample without permission, you're screwing these people out of their hard work and intellectual content" is a better appeal to emotion than "when you download illegally or sample without permission, guy-in-office who has little direct connection with the music and whose role probably won't make much sense to you won't get a raise this year."

* Although I wonder if those costs of production have just been shifted in the wake of downloadable audio. Sure, there are now unlimited copies of everything, potentially, but you still need people to assign metadata to the files, make sure they get to the necessary outlets in the right format, etc.

Yeah, artist don't really get paid shit for their albums, most bands are lucky to be able to support themselves solely by touring.

This is good for someone like me because I still buy lots of CDs, but I don't know if it will help the industry very much. I hope it does help ensure there will still be a physical version for me to own, but I feel like I am in the minority. Most people I work with, who are about 5-10 years younger than me, are perfectly fine with digital copies only. That's fine as that's the way things are headed (or already there,) but I still like to buy CDs and would buy even more if they were priced between 6 - 10 dollars. I'd actually buy a lot of back catalog stuff for $6 of things I may have missed and want added to my collection.

I was keen on buying physical media (even at a slightly inflated cost) when it was going to support a wonderful local record store, but when they closed up shop last year, I kind of lost the urge, aside from the occasional album I want to own on vinyl.

There's another local chain, but their selection has gone to shit lately, so I don't feel as invested there. At this point, I'd probably be throwing money at the big chains, anyway, and if that's the case, why not just go through iTunes, Amazon, or Lala?

I always buy used CDs though Amazon's marketplace.

I've investigated certain digital download sites that offer lossless quality, but none of them carry what I want to buy.

I'll also buy deluxe editions where available. Because they usually have a DVD with behind the scenes stuff, music videos, etc.

It's a shame CDs are becoming relics. I have been purchasing digital copies of albums more and more lately, but when I'm really enamored by a specific album or artist, I'll go out of my way to get a physical copy, no matter the cost. You can find some decent prices for out-of-print material on eBay. A few years ago I had trouble finding a physical copy of Debbie Harry's Koo Koo, but was willing to shell out a nice chunk of wallet for a factory-sealed copy I found on eBay. And I just bought a physical copy of Girl Talk's Feed the Animals on Amazon when I could've downloaded the Mp3 album for 14 dollars less.

I'll always be a CD fiend.