CD Prices

I hate when they do that on ebay. Like, they'll list something for $3.99 and then shipping will be $5.99 and they won't let you combine orders. It pisses me off super hardcore.

I find $10 is a psychological barrier for me on CD pricing. At $10 or cheaper I'm generally going to buy whatever I want. At $11-14 I'm more hesitant, and after that it becomes fairly unlikely I'll buy something even if I want it. In part it's because I know that CD production and packaging is super fucking cheap. I mean my own band was able to get beautiful full-color gatefold packaging and disc pressing for less than $2 a CD, and that was a very low order volume. Most of the costs for big labels are in marketing, and I think they throw away too much money on that.

I think pricing is too often overlooked as a cause for the slide in CD sales, and I think there's too often an assumption that a person who downloads music wouldn't buy the CD if it the price was a little lower.

One other thing - I think internet sales have been a double-edged sword for CD sales. On one hand they make everything available to everyone, which is probably lead some people to buy more CDs overall, at least for a while (I know it did for me at first). OTOH, it kills off the enormous marketing/impulse-selling opportunity that record stores provide, and then it also adds shipping charges into the mix which can ultimately make some people more hesitant to purchase.