Come on guys, with the price reduction it will only be $13 at the crappy music stores in the mall. The prices at best buys and circuit cities of the world will be $9.99 at the most...just like the good 'ole days. I would be ecstatic if this happened. Call me old fashioned, but I still enjoy actually going to the store and buying the full CD with packaging and everything.
That's what I hope as well but the article doesn't really say whether or not that will happen. Also, I get a lot of indie stuff...this doesn't seem to affect them, does it?
Just a technicallity, price does not affect demand, the demand curve stays the same, more people will buy, but that's not an increase in demand. A lot of people would like to buy Plasma T.V.'s, if they all of sudden cost $500, of course more units would be moved, but the demand was always there. Actually, the demand curve for C.D.'s has been affected from downloading music, another alternative to purchasing C.D.'s, the same as the demand for cassettes being eroded when C.D.'s were introduced.
I don't think we're dealing here with a pure free market. Besides the record companies' monopolistic practices, the nature of their product tends toward monopoly. Because they are dealing in "art", each album is unique. If you want to listen to Britney Spears (because you've gone insane or whatever), a different singer can't replace her. And, since the bands have exclusive agreements with the labels to be their only distributor, they are not directly competing with one another. You won't have a start-up label selling Britney Spears for cheaper. So the market is monopolistic and encourages an informal collusion. And, given that production cost is such a small percentage of the sell price for a CD or a tape (though I imagine tape is more expensive), I don't see how it'd much impact the final price. The more important part is paying for the intellectual property, the marketing, and of course the labels' profit margin.
When I first got my new computer (with CD burner), I burned CD's for all the records and cassettes I have left over from the 80's. Then I burned CD's for all the stuff I've been meaning to check out. I listen at work for a week, then usually end up buying it. As an example, I burned all of DMB's albums and later ended up buying every single one. Same goes for Coldplay. I'm not sure if I would have bought any of them without hearing them first. Just too expensive to take a chance. If the music is good, people will still buy.
I have to admit I just bought some CD's, but I can't spend more than 10 bucks w/ a coupon at Best Buy... However, I made an exception and paid $11 for Norah Jones, a great love making CD...
Actually, the demand curve can shift to the left or right depending on a number of issues. Increase in music quality, more songs per CD, better bands, ect.
This is true. Usually the only truly free market in the world is a commodities market. Crops, metals, oil, and the such...even then, you have to split the commodity by grades to freely market them.
I think the record companies and artists have been making a huge killing over the past years since the CD came out and a channel called MTV became part of pop culture. The CDs were cheaper to make and they were able to sell at a higher cost due to increased demand for music from things such as MTV. Now the record companies are screwed because of online sharing. They want to keep making their big bucks. Well, they can't. They can't make the same money they made before. Just like all the dot-coms that came out in the late 90's, the music industry needs to come down to earth and realize that their huge profits from CD's came from an overvalued product. Of course I have not crunched the numbers, but I would not doubt the record companies and artists would still be millionaires even if CDs were sold at 5 bucks. The problem is that these people are so greedy. And consumers believe that the record companies are greedy. Greed will always come back and bite you in the butt.
Because you are flat out stealing the music if you only burn CDs and never, or very rarely buy CDs. I have no problem with people who download music onto their computers, and even burn random CDs from time to time as long as they buy their fare share of CDs from the stores. I download a lot of music, but on the same hand I buy a lot more CDs than I used to. Saying that CDs cost too much is a bad excuse for trying to justify downloading and burning every CD that you own.
not that i own a record company or don't think they're greedy or don't download a ton of songs myself but i always love to hear two justifications for how much downloading occurs: 1) cd's are too expensive 2) music sucks now so, since i think rolex watches are too expensive, can i now go steal them and justify it like that. well you see your honor, i simply thought it was too expensive and so i decided to steal it. "i see your point son, case dismissed." and if the music sucks so much or the artists suck so much, why are you downloading it? is that extra hard drive burning a whole in your computer? and finally, from what i've read and understand about making cd's, it ain't cheap. actually printing a cd is cheap, but all of the production, paying songwriters, paying the artists, and marketing that goes into getting a cd released is expensive. most albums lose money and the companies use the really big ones to make up for all of the lost money. i can't say how true that is, but i've read it more than once. and finally, it's good that they are cutting prices (if they do). while they have a right to make money, when we're talking $20, that's a lot for just one cd and it definitely does drive people from legitimately purchasing the cd.
Does anyone freaking realize that maybe just MAYBE part of the problem with declining sales is the fact that USED CD's have become a HUGE seller first at stores like CD Warehouse, etc, and more recently on EBAY? That and CD burning are 2 very big reasons the record industry has declined over the past 10 years or so. File sharing has only become popular over the past 4 years...... If we start seeing $6-10 CD's, people will start buying more. Duh.... drop the freaking prices......
Just to play devils advocate, it could be argued that downloading music isn't stealing at all. If you record a song off the radio and listen to it (without selling it to someone else), is that stealing? Stealing would be if you walked into a CD store and stole a CD. Theoretically, what's the difference between downloading music from the 'net and recording songs from the radio like we all did 20 years ago? Good point, but how many times have you heard a cool song, then went and forked over 15 bucks for the CD only to find out that the rest of the CD blows chunks? Now people can sample the whole CD before they buy it. No more risk. I think that worries all the crappy artists out there. Of course, the good artists have nothing to worry about IMO. For the record, I use downloading as a way to sample a CD before I buy it. Like I said earlier in this thread, downloading music has caused me to buy more CD's than I would have if not for downloading. So the RIAA is actually making more money from me thanks to downloading. However, I'm sure I'm not the norm, so I can see both sides of this issue.
Since I've been able to download and burn music, I have stopped buying CDs altogether. I don't remember the last time I bought a CD. But, I also haven't taken the time to download a song in quite a while either. So, somehow the free music download phenomenon has actually completely killed my music consumption. That isn't an argument for anything, just a story.
