The Cost Of A Cd Vs. Illegal Downloading
February 12, 2008 by Scott
With the last post I went back to the original article and looked at more of the comments people made. Someone went on to say that CD’s cost too much. Yes, most of them do especially depending on where you buy them. They guestimated that the average cost of making a CD is about 3 to 5 dollars. Let me break a few things down for the thick sculled few that don’t understand the whole concept of recording, and printing a cd.
The material cost of a CD may only be about 3 dollars but the process cost is much higher. I don’t know what that exact amount is but here are some things to think about.
CDs are made of plastics which requires petroleum. With the rising cost of petro comes the rising cost of material and rising freight fuel fees.
There is a lot of overhead when it comes to the manufacturing business. There is a lot of cost, profit and loss potential everyday in the manufacturing industry. Between labor, rent, utilities, transportation, employees, legal fees, shipping, material and waste cost, its a tough business.
With the material and manufacturing aspect aside lets look at what may go into it before it goes into print. Studio fees are not cheap, legal fees and label fees are not cheap. Put all these things into consideration, the price of CD’s are almost fair…but the person selling the CD has to make a profit too. It’s called a business. Start your own business and see where all the money goes or refer back to the last paragraph of my last article.
Quite being a bunch of cheap bastards and start paying for the things you love!
My comments on your last post apply here also. The reason I like Metal Martyr is that you care for the artists you love, and that shows through in your writing – and I like to think we have that in common.
And you’re right – studio fees, legal fees and label overheads aren’t cheap. They’re so expensive, in fact, that they’re no longer sustainable in a situation where the economics of abundance is in operation. The consumer gravitates to the lowest cost option that delivers the desired quality – if that prices CDs out of the picture, you can only blame human nature and mathematics.
And I’m not so sure that those overheads are as necessary as is claimed, at least not in those sizes. Remember that label I recommended to you, Small Stone? They sell their CDs at US$14 each – that’s half the price of the average high street purchase here in the UK, and every album’s a blinder. Of course, I expect Small Stone’s owner doesn’t park his Bentley outside his penthouse every afternoon … but that could explain why they can afford to run more cheaply.
In the short term, the new economics of the internet means tough times for a lot of people. In the medium to long term, it’s putting the control of music as a business back into the hands of those who care about music more than profit. And that’s not just good for us as fans, but for the musicians too.
If you want a real good crash course in the economics of abundance, TechDirt should be your first port of call. Highly recommended.
Yes, the price of CDs actually is pretty fair, considering how much is actually spent in order to get those things out. In fact, a lot of stores like Best Buy and Circuit City, sell many new CDs at a lower price than what they cost, in hopes that it draws more people into the store. However, the main problem I have with CDs isn’t that they cost 15-20 dollars…it’s that a high percentage of the time, I’ll find that I honestly don’t want all of those songs. There’ll usually be 3 or 4 songs worth listening to out of the fifteen songs on the album, depending on the album. I mean, if a band I really like, releases a new CD, usually I’ll go pick it up just to support them, but not a lot of people do this and most turn to digital downloads to save a few bucks or to download individual tracks.
LTC
ah, great point kevin…but you can’t tell me when you listen to This Darkened Heart Or The Fall Of Ideals that you don’t listen to it from beginning to end. ATR doesn’t screw around with fillers and that’s exactly what I love about metal these days. Very few metal bands have “fillers”.
Haha true, we’re definitely very lucky to have so many metal bands that put so much work into every single song to make sure every track on the album is great, with ATR being one of them of course! However, in my opinion metal albums for the most part, are an exception, and most of today’s “popular” music includes artists who might have only a few hits, with the rest of the songs being “fillers.”
For example, there may be a rap/hip-hop/pop song which doesn’t sound too bad and may be kind of catchy, but the rest of their songs sound like crap. I sure as hell won’t waste 15 dollars on their CD for one song, and in my opinion, this is the way a lot of people think. Like I said, there will definitely always be exceptions to this, like most metal bands, and a few other artists out there, but a majority of the “popular MTV” music follows this trend, and until this changes and all artists make their CDs worth the trip to the record store and a couple bucks, I believe that a lot of people will stick with downloading.
LTC