Continuing with CDs?

every new cd ever sold on earth should have been $9.95 as of jan, 1, 2000. i'd still be buying CDs if that had happened. also, every top 40 single should have been available in stores for $3.99 on CD too. would have bought a TON of those.

They should have been priced that way for economic or for philosophic reasons?

in the 90s it was probably more moral to pirate music than actually buy it off the record companies.

No it probably wasn't.

they should have been priced that way so that people kept buying them! people - myself included - got so sick of those 16.99 CD prices. and those are still standard prices in the 3 or 4 CD stores that still exist. i would buy 5 ten dollar CDs any day, but i have a problem buying ONE $17.99 cd. in a lot of cases, i would end up not buying any at all. the 2000's were not the go go 90's when people were spending hundreds of dollars on CDs at stores. huge stacks of CDs going out the door.

x-post

i was buying tons of records (both new and used) AND tons of CDs in the 90's. i bought so many CDs it was crazy. anything that wasn't rent/food/beer money went to records and CDs. mostly cuz i would go to tower or wherever in philly and be stunned by how much stuff was finally available. there was an electronics/record store in philly back then that had like 20 shirley collins CDs in their shirley collins section! they had a shirley collins section! so, i went a little overboard back then.

every new cd ever sold on earth should have been $9.95 as of jan, 1, 2000.

I'd put it earlier, like starting around 1989. That's when manufacturing costs of CDs were lower than those of LPs, but of course the price of CDs was nearly double.

Since everyone was buying CDs -- new shit and, most crucially, re-buying old shit -- what incentive did the labels have in 1989-1998 to lower prices? Not only did they go in the opposite direction -- I think retail prices topped out at $18.98 for a single CD -- but the majors colluded on price-fixing.

also, every top 40 single should have been available in stores for $3.99 on CD too. would have bought a TON of those.

Ditto. And that's why the majors killed the single. Why make a $3.99 single available when it's vastly more profitable for the $18.98 album to be the only way to own the song?

i was buying tons of records (both new and used) AND tons of CDs in the 90's. i bought so many CDs it was crazy. anything that wasn't rent/food/beer money went to records and CDs. mostly cuz i would go to tower or wherever in philly and be stunned by how much stuff was finally available. there was an electronics/record store in philly back then that had like 20 shirley collins CDs in their shirley collins section! they had a shirley collins section! so, i went a little overboard back then.

― scott seward, Sunday, April 26, 2015 2:42 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I did this, too.

re: the Shirley Collins section!, I vividly remember when the ESP-Disks were first reissued. Tower in Chicago had a huge display, complete with the usual Tower huge mock-ups of the label logo, dedicated to ESP-Disk (which a friend told me about, and I didn't believe him until I saw it). It was completely surreal.

xp

Clearly they had an incentive not to lower prices - but in retrospect it's just as clear that any short-term gain they got from jacking prices up to near $20 was more than outweighed by what happened after those prices became uncompetitive.

I was thinking about the excessive price of CDs the other day, along the same lines of how the biz might have been saved. Wonder how it could have gone differently though, really. I mean in such an overheated market, what shareholder at any of the companies would have nodded along with charging less for something that's clearly selling like hotcakes at the inflated price? And what if the retailers just kept the prices of Company A's discs up at the level of Company B and raked it in? I don't know how that stuff really works though. In hindsight, they definitely might have experimented more... offer simultaneous bare-bones and 'deluxe' versions of big releases, see which does better, see if the low price gets made up on volume, see if you can dial back some of the big marketing expenses too.

I 100% agree that a lot of albums that got pirated would have been purchased had the price been lower. Downloading + burning was a hassle, even with Napster etc. It would have slowed the shift, at least, or given them time to harden fence-sitters into staunch anti-pirates.... or more importantly, to establish and nourish the habit of buying a record via an even-cheaper download system before everybody got used to doing it through piracy. The industry was just such a lumbering machine, though, and they happened to be selling something that was, by bad luck, incredibly easy to pirate even by 56K modem: 2-3 megabyte MP3s, in an industry largely built around the use of two or three songs to induce buying an entire CD, without half as many lost aspects of the experience as would keep people from pirating books (for example).

As well, outside of the reissue market, the CD as a package didn't offer other inducements, simply because of how they had come to be used socially. The fancy booklet was nice to look at once, or twice, but basically irrelevant once the disc makes its way to the rear-view mirror, the binder, the disc changer. The jewel case was convenient but ugly, fragile, and unsatsifying to manipulate in many ways. Future generations will never understand the small irritations of jamming a thick booklet back into a case and having the edges caught and torn up by the ugly little plastic tabs. The vinyl resurgence ultimately benefited a bit from having this convenient negative examples of things no one had previously rhapsodized about with regard to LPs. Meanwhile, everyone was ready to believe the pirate ideology because they'd already been grumbling for ages about paying $16 for a CD with three good tracks and a bunch of filler and skits. The Napster-Limewire era has many of the same roots as the short-lived boom of dedicated used-CD stores in depreciated strip malls.

Same experience when Tower opened a store in fall '98. Columbia House used to do a decent job of offering John Cale, Funakdelic, and Raincoats records, and I recently discovered Amazon, but the Tower was a big deal -- suddenly everything I wanted.

Don't underestimate the CD selections at Barnes & Noble too, also the home of hard to find stuff like Ryko reissues.

(Ground covered better by others, sorry for the long post!)

As a teen with a $5 weekly allowance it was pretty obvious to me that the action was in budget-priced catalog titles. There WAS plenty of $9.95 stuff available, but they were mostly Paul McCartney reissues. Which was fine for me! Actual 90s albums I got at the used CD stores or off of friends, nine times out of ten, unless I'd gotten a gift certificate as a birthday present. So I do think they missed out on a lot of sales they could have made at, say, $12... but I don't know if it would have made up the difference, or postponed the end by THAT much. There's an alternate history where the Internet doesn't come along for a few more years, and the market finishes adjusting to the CD, and the 'album' actually fades away as the primary unit. I doubt I'd have bought many $3 or $4 singles, but I'd have bought a lot of $6 or $8 EPs if it was clear that they were all killer, no filler.

I remember Best Buy, of all places, having a decent selection (I bought Tim Buckley's Starsailor and a bunch of the Sun Ra reissues on Evidence there), and everything was $11 or lower.

Best Buy had a decent selection until, like, four years ago.

I bought two Yoko albums and X's first four in Best Buy a decade ago. No complaitns.

Yeah, Best Buy CD section was a pretty big part of my teenage life, even just for window-shopping things. And that's definitely where those cheap Paul McCartney discs came from! I think generally things were a little cheaper than at mall stores like Sam Goody, which I went into very rarely and mainly for the small used section. I guess that's just in the nature of big-box stores with more shelf space and bigger volume discounts (maybe?). Anyway, it was a store that my parents would be going to for other reasons so I was more apt to end up there.

$16.99 CD's was nothing compare to £16.99 CD's in the UK! generally discounted CD's cuz they were in the charts were £12.99-£13.99 which was far too much. Tower,HMV,Virgin sometimes had £18.99 CD's.

rip off

Sam Goody's, Record Bar, Camelot -- their prices through the early 2000s were INSANE, even cassettes at the dawn of the nineties. But I bought most of Bowie's Ryko stuff at Record Bar in 1993 when my local record store didn't stock them.

Basically, any record store in a mall was fucking eyes-popping-out-of-my-skull expensive in the 90s and 00s. But Tower always had decent prices, especially for Prestige/Original Jazz Classics and Blue Note reissues. Impulse titles were more expensive. For rock stuff, Best Buy was at least tolerable, plus there was a place on the highway, the name of which I can't remember, that was $2-5 cheaper than any mall store in NJ.

Yeah, I avoided mall stores like the plague. They were the only places I ever saw that actually sold CDs for list price.

Tower Records here was by far the most expensive. about £5 more expensive sometimes. It was great for imports though or the mid-price CD sales like 3 for £15

I guess that's just in the nature of big-box stores with more shelf space and bigger volume discounts (maybe?).

CDs were loss leaders for stores like Best Buy so that people would buy TVs and washing machines.

Really? How lossy? I mean, they were a ton of square footage. Not saying I don't believe it, but my first guess would be that it's more like movie theaters (as I understand them!) - just about cover overhead on the ticket sales, make the profit on concessions. But I really don't know.

I may have bought a couple dozen titles from mall stores when i was in my teens, but once i found the key indie stores (in just about every college town) they were the only ones that got my money. And they usually had fair prices, or at least, a fair used section to peruse. Sure, i took advantage of pricing in the early days of CD Universe (where i think i bought like 8 Fela two-fers when they came out) and a few years at Best Buy (early days of Dick's Picks got me in a bunch of times). But still, most of my cash went to the indies.

Anybody else remember the Planet Music chain from the mid 90s? I spent so much money at the Memphis location when they first opened. A CD store the size of a Walmart...that was a dangerous concept to me. I don't think they lasted too long.

Planet Music was part of Border's, whom they were folded into around '97 or so.

I think I wrote about this on the ask the old-timers thread, but I got my first CD player for 8th grade graduation in spring '97. At the time both Best Buy and Circuit City had promotions where no single disc album would be priced more than (iirc) $12.99. By that winter Best Buy had quietly done away with that, with much catalogue material getting bumped to $14.99.

Didn't the price of cds drop quite a lot in early 00s? I recall a lot of £15 cds in the late 90s then very few things being that high in the 00s. Especially with Fopp, Music Zone and similar cheap stores that followed.

I'm struggling to think when I stopped buying new CDs. Maybe Reveal (spring 2001)... in the $15-16 range feels right. At that point, I was pretty much switched over to vinyl. I only bought the CD in that case because IIRC the vinyl was available mainly as some expensive dumb novelty edition, like $26 for two ten-inches on colored vinyl or something. Or maybe it was just a regular record and really overpriced.

the F.Y.E. store closed across the street from me in january and the son of the guy who started TRANS-WORLD (who owned FYE and which used to be Strawberries) came in and told me that 40% of their business had been video games. which i already kinda knew. son of TRANS-WORLD looked like he really wanted to get out of town. he said they maybe should have paid more attention to the location. oops!

part of me wants to call Gamestop HQ and tell them to move into the space. no place anywhere near Greenfield that sells video games. or CDs now. you have to go to Newbury Comics in Northampton or the mall in Hadley to buy a new CD or DVD.

this is what TRANS WORLD owned at one time. almost all of them became horrible shells full of crap and feeding troughs of cheap DVDs and CDs.

Camelot Music

CD World: New Jersey and Missouri

Coconuts: Chicago area, Indianapolis area, New Jersey, New York, and Mid-Atlantic States (some stores still operate as Coconuts)

Disc Jockey: Southern U.S. (mall-based)

Incredible Universe: Nationwide (17 stores; closed in 1996, six stores sold to Fry's Electronics)

Media Play: Nationwide (closed in 2006)

Music World: New England states

On Cue: Nationwide

Peaches: Nationwide

Record Land: Nationwide (mall-based)

Record Town: Nationwide (mall-based)

Record World: Mid-Atlantic and New England states (mall-based)

Sam Goody: Nationwide (mostly freestanding; most mall-based stores have been re-branded as f.y.e. stores)

Saturday Matinee: Now only one location at Rockaway Townsquare in Rockaway, New Jersey; other locations closed or converted to Suncoast; previously operated in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania

Spec's Music Inc.: Florida

Square Circle: Nationwide (mall-based)

Strawberries: Texas, Maryland, New England and Mid-Atlantic States

Tape World: Nationwide (mall-based)

The Wall: Mid-Atlantic States

Wall To Wall Sound & Video / Listening Booth: Mid-Atlantic States, later converted to The Wall

Planet Music: Virginia Beach

Wherehouse Music: Arizona, California, Colorado (formerly Rocky Mountain Records), Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington

Streetside Records: Missouri

Vibrations: South Florida

the son of Trans World also thought he was doing me a big favor by closing and i had to tell him that there was almost zero crossover. the people who wanted fye stuff don't want my stuff. maybe if i filled my store with used DVDs. or if i sold attack on titan beach towels.

the Record World in my town in the late 70's and 80's was a godsend. they would have the weirdest stuff. import cut-outs. they carried every Homestead record in the 80's and SST too and all kinds of stuff you wouldn't think a suburban connecticut chain store would have. the only other option was Caldor and that wasn't the greatest option.

really digging the phrase "the son of TRANS WORLD" for some reason

xp

I also remember prices moderating somewhat in the early 00s. They weren't back to the $11.99/$12.99 of the early 90s though, and it was far from across the board. Desirable stuff was still $16.99.

Anyway some price drops were inevitable once this started happening: http://stopmusictheft.wdfiles.com/local--files/music-sales-analysis/UnitSalesIndex600.png (love the URL)

Price drops also a likely result of the outcome of this:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2002-09-30-cd-settlement_x.htm

"This is a landmark settlement to address years of illegal price-fixing," New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said in a statement. "Our agreement will provide consumers with substantial refunds and result in the distribution of a wide variety of recordings for use in our schools and communities."

The companies, including Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Bertelsmann's BMG Music and EMI Group, plus retailers Musicland Stores, Trans World Entertainment and Tower Records, admitted no wrongdoing.

The companies have not practiced the pricing agreement since 2000. At that time, they agreed in settling a complaint by the Federal Trade Commission that they would refrain from MAP pricing for seven years.

Former FTC chairman Robert Pitofsky said at the time that consumers had been overcharged by $480 million since 1997 and that CD prices would soon drop by as much as $5 a CD as a result.

this is what TRANS WORLD owned at one time. almost all of them became horrible shells full of crap and feeding troughs of cheap DVDs and CDs.

Curious how many of those stores/brands began life as head shops.

For a while there in the early 2000s you'd could get new vinyl for $9 where CDs were $12

It was heaven for a vinyl buyer; I was in college with not a ton of extra cash for stuff like that. I would love to go back in time and snap up all these awesome $8-11 records that I remember seeing and passing over. Or even stuff like, I mean, I've seen exactly one vinyl copy of Beck's Mutations in my life, for $18 at Low Yo Yo Stuff in Athens, skipped it because $18 was too much for me back that. It goes for over $100 on Ebay these days. And don't get me started on This is a Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About, or the second copies of Lonesome Crowded West I could have snapped up had I had any notion they would become high-priced rarities. Sigh.

Very timely - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/27/the-man-who-broke-the-music-business

On August 10, 1996, CDA released to IRC the Scene’s first “officially” pirated MP3: “Until It Sleeps,” by Metallica.

indie rock on vinyl in the 90's was definitely the way to go. so cheap compared to CDs. i don't think anyone had any idea what stuff like that would be worth in the 21st century. how could you know? i would have bought 30 original copies of bee thousand instead of one if i had known. i still go back in my head to the dozens and dozens of copies of paul's boutique on vinyl at strawberries in philly. in the dollar bin! nobody was buying records. all those copies of the dead man soundtrack for 2 or 3 bucks at 3rd street jazz....oof. it makes sense though. the lack of demand meant they only did limited pressings. and they STILL hung around stores forever.

yeah that new yorker article is amazing even if it raises as many questions as it answers. paints a picture anyway.

reading that article made it seem like none of those people had any fun! so dreary.

and yeah... god the discs i passed over. knowing me though, had i even had it in my to buy extras of things as 'investments' they would have gotten dumped at some point for space or the weight or something.

kudos to those labels/artists that've kept stuff in print and cheap that they easily could have jacked up CRAZILY. like, in the aeroplane over the sea was $12 circa 2002. it's $15 now. that's less than inflation! if they wanted to, they could have forced all latter-day arrivals to this band to buy some horrifying super-edition for $32. really a bummer when something that's been long unavailable finally gets reissued, but it's only in this narrow little niche edition for a million dollars, making it effectively as unavailable as before. o well, can always walk across the street and rifle the dollar and $5 bins of all the endless music from the 60s through 80s that i've not heard yet.

the 90's vinyl pressings were good too. nothing fancy, but i'll take them over all the new stuff that comes out now.

i have "Continuing" on cd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9JzxBFP3Ck

Really? How lossy?

having worked in the media department at Best Buy for a year or two, we barely made pennies on each cd sold, and in some cases (especially with new releases) lost money; this is why our employee discount often wasn't jack shit on cds, if anything at all (we got items at cost + 5%). we were expected to upsell to every customer for this reason - anybody coming in for the new Alicia Keys had to have one of us assholes hovering over their shoulder trying to sell them expensive CD storage cases, cleaners, and other bullshit with high margins.

mizzell is otm about the washing machines too. the margins were the highest on appliances. but really we made our money fleecing people with shitty performance service plans.

so glad I got out of that shit hole.

wow. that's really revealing, thanks. not surprising as such, but fleshes things out quite a bit.

Very timely - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/27/the-man-who-broke-the-music-business

I like that all that was made possible thanks to a questionable fashion accessory.

MikeTD I'm interested in the Jazz Loft cases; I don't suppose I could be cheeky and ask for a loan of a couple to try out, if you have any spare? Will return relatively quickly, obviously.

Will you bother trying now to sell off your existing CDs?
Will you leave them as a record of 80s/90s to early 00s buying?
Will you continuing buying CDs selectively alongside downloading, for reasons of completing certain artists or genres?

No, I still use them every day.
No, I still buy new ones; they're my primary (only?) format for purchasing / experiencing new music.
No, I'll continue buying them to the exclusion of downloading, because fuck being a database temp for you own hobby.

I don't use a computer at home very often; we have a laptop that I type on or work from home on occasionally, and which I run my iPhone off, but I use it maybe once a week if that. Other than that all my web / information / communication needs are done on an iPad or my phone. Fuck using a computer at home. Computers are tools I use at work. At home I want to cook, hang out with my family, ride bikes, play football, listen to music on big speakers, etc etc. I don't want to sit looking a fucking computer screen anymore.

Written about vinyl vs CD an odious number of times. Here's one! http://sickmouthy.com/2013/12/31/on-vinyl-vs-cd-again/ I just like Cds; they're convenient and sound good and I like how they look on our shelves (which we had purpose built, and which look awesome, thank you very much). Ascetic minimalism is a nice idea but it doesn't work for me in practice. Plus it's a bit Fight Club and I'm not 20 anymore. I like stuff; books, CDs, boardgames, chairs, blankets. Not trinkets and ornaments so much, granted, but I guess books and CDs fill that gap slightly. There are a couple of thousand CDs in the house; about 1,600 on the shelves and about another 400ish in a couple of boxes under the bed in the spare room. And another 100-200 in the loft, actually. We have maybe 50 pieces of vinyl. Never liked it.

Don't get harddrive / cloud / streaming 'convenience' arguments; 'convenience' is something I only want a certain amount of in my life, because I also want to be aware of what I'm doing, and that means ritual and attention and a certain amount of awkwardness, sometimes, to have a better experience. Otherwise I'd eat microwave meals off paper plates.