CaptShadow and Sgams used our newssubmit to tell us about an article on PCmag.com, it's an editorial that describes the history of the music industry and how is has now become one of the most unpopulair businesses that is known for their greed and not for good products.
According to the writer of the article, has history learned us that music can be sold for a much lower price then currently available on the market, and according to the writer the price of a CD should be dropped to $1.40, so it can compete with pirated music and still gives good profits:
The music industry began to act like a monopolist. With the advent of the CD, it found that it could continue to gouge its customers. While the industry lectures the public on illegal copying, it gets busted for price fixing. So much for the morality argument. |
When Edison first released his prerecorded cylinders, they sold for $4 each. With mass production, he eventually brought the price down to 35 cents, nearly a 90 percent reduction. If the same ratio held true with $16 CDs, the cost of which has been perpetually propped up by price fixing, they would cost $1.40. Since it costs less than 25 cents to mass-produce a CD, $1.40 is reasonable and profitable.
Of course, the industry would need to adjust from extravagance and sloppiness to frugality and normality. Less Dom Perignon, for starters. And it's not as if record companies and artists won't make money. 45-rpm singles used to cost 50 cents each, and it was a big deal to sell a million of them. Elvis Presley led a good life, it seems to me, by leveraging his career with those old profit margins. Heck, he was giving away Cadillacs.
It's a matter of competition. A manufactured CD for $1.40 can compete with a bootleg copy: Manufactured CDs generally play better and come with nice packages and liner notes. The industry can still make millions of dollars, just not billions. And many artists can go back to making money the old-fashioned way'”by working harder and performing more. Things change, folks! The gravy train has left the station.
$1.40. Sounds good, but it's very very unlikely this will ever happen. It would be certainly a price I would a lot of CDs! Read the entire article here.
Source: PCmag.com
