How many did you sell, and how much cash did you bring home?

how much does a cd cost in stores these days anyway?
i think the only time i've bought a CD in the last 5 years is if a band comes through town with tour only, hand made CDs.

i dont remember the last physical cd i bought.

Around here they go for between $18 - $26. Around a buck of that might make it back to the band.

Shocking that the industry is in trouble.

really there seems to be quite a range. i saw the new Vampire Weekend at Borders (usually a store that overprices cds) for $9.99.

best buy and hot topic usually have the "hot indie hits" for $7.99.

but, when there's not a sale/promotion going on most stores have you paying $12.99+

i usually buy from the local indie store (sometimes used) and by mail order.

interesting that there really hasn't been a change in price since the medium came into being. downward pressure on pricing generally hasn't taken hold at all. it's not shocking that the industry is in trouble when you consider the cost of selling a CD.

CDs came on the market costing at least 400% more than they should have, so it's not surprising there hasn't been much of a change in price.

The industry deserves to die. I'm quite happy to be part of their problem.

i agree. it's especially ...strange when you compare it to dvds. a hot dvd will sell for 20 bucks but after 8 months it'll drop to 5-10 bucks at target. a cd at 13 bucks will always be 13 bucks, even 8 years after release.

that's good of you.

consider the cost of production, manufacture, shipping, promotion, marketing a cd, and then tell me that they should have always been a quarter the price and the artist should still receive at least dollar royalty. inflation would suggest that prices should have increased 400% since inception. so maybe no change is the result of downward pressure.

i'm not defending the CD as a medium that was ever sustainable/not disposable. i just think you're quite happy to be a part of anyone's problem.

waitwhat


did cd's come out in 1913?

CDs were cheaper to mass produce than vinyl, and yet when introduced they cost more than twice as much to buy. That was the main reason the industry switched - it wasn't sound quality (take a listen to those early analog-digital transfers and tell me the industry remotely even CARED about sound quality) - nope, the industry forced a digital revolution upon the consumer because they saw huge profit. And now they're getting killed by the revolution they started. Fuck 'em.

There are CDs that follow that same pattern, but it definitely doesn't work the same way. And a lot of old DVDs still sell for upwards of $20 especially if they weren't huge blockbusters and there's not a huge surplus of them lying around. Or at least they did until very, very recently when all the retail chains finally noticed huge drops in DVD sales.

I think DVDs only sold for $5-$10 as part of sale, not as a permanent drop in price, until very recently. Blu-Ray marks the death of DVD much more definitively than mp3s mark the death of CDs. But then most most major chain stores have already had massive markdown sales to unload most of their CD inventory, anyway. And Target never really devoted as much space to selling CDs as they have DVDs, either.

CDs aren't a bad format. Unfortunately, there could have been a higher quality physical-digital format, but there was never enough interest to support it. (DVD-Audio, SACD, etc.) Now people would either rather have nothing physical or go all out with physical media and get vinyl. Vinyl's neat and all, but there's nothing more inconvenient and cumbersome. It almost seems laughable to call CDs "portable" nowadays, but they really still are. A large CD collection can still be moved with relative ease compared to a large vinyl collection. And I actually like the size of the album artwork with a CD, but that's probably because I grew up with them.

This isn't really true though. CD's were more expensive when they first came out. I recall US prices for popular new releases being $17-19 and now they are more commonly $11-15 at good stores. You never saw anything approaching the 8-9 promo price. Cut-outs used to be $11-12 and now those are more like $6-8 or less. And more UK releases for bands that aren't even that obscure (eg New Order, Joy Division) get stateside distribution rather than having to be special ordered for $25-30 each.

Its the price for legal DL's that really seem out of line with the production costs. I'd imagine that if they'd lower those significantly, they'd really destroy the market for CD's.

As to the original question, I still buy CD's all the time.

I haven't purchased a new CD for a while, I think I probably purchased one at a gig sometime last year. I download a ton of music, none of it legally. For a while I was hitting up the used record stores here in town once a month, since we no longer have any quality brick and mortar stores, but I wasn't finding much that I really wanted to buy. I was essentially wasting a few bucks on something old or something that piqued my interest.
I go to a gig at least once a week, and rarely miss a notable indie touring band when they stop here, so I'm comfortable with ripping off record companies.