The Belgian Trotter

A quarter of a century ago, on August 17 1982, the first CD came of the assembly lines with the album “The visitors” from Abba. Only in November of that same year the discs went on sale on the Japanese market. The rest of the world had to wait until March, 1983. The price for a disc varied from $10 to $20. (we’ll come back to this later)

We have Philips and Sony to thank for the Compact Disc, Philips made the laser and disc technology and Sony developed the digital encoding used in the standard.
It would take some time before the new and expensive standard took over from vynil and cassettes. Five years later, in 1987, CD players started outselling LP players, and next year CDs outsold vynil LPs for the first time, and we all know where it went from there.

New high definition standards aren’t doing great either, since the sound quality of the plain CD or MP3 is enough for most people and more and more consumers put an emphasis on portability and ease of use, i.e. they’ll rather buy iPods and other MP3 players.

The CD ruled the nineties, and the recording industry loved it, since its quality was quickly recognized by consumers. The second half of the decade, with the advent of cheap CD-RW drives and media, saw a rampant jump in piracy, and the new century threatened it with flash based MP3 players.
Since 1982 about 200 billion Cd’s have been sold. Nevertheless, sales are down due to new technologies & piracy.

Now, let’s get back to what I told in the beginning: prices varied from $10 to $20: so basically in 25 years time the price of a record hasn’t changed a BIT!
Normally due to mass media and the economy of scale, prices of technologies seem to drop over the years. I’m full aware a record has to cost a minimum because a lot of work goes into making one. But let’s get real here. 25 years ago making a CD would have probably been more expensive to produce (not the costs an artist has to pay, but I’m rather speaking about the production costs for making it) than nowadays. But still the price has been quite the same for the last 25 years.
No wonder people get their music from different sources, legal or not.

I’m getting sick and tired of music labels always blaming the customers! They should see at themselves as well! In a world of digital media and promo, new artists often realize they do not need a label to get their music to the masses. If music labels do not watch out and get realistic, they too could be in serious problems in 1 or 2 decades.

As a finishing note, I stumbled upon an article from the band Nine Inch Nails:

They give an example of “absurd retail pricing” of their recent album Year Zero in Australia. “Shame on you, UMG. Year Zero is selling for $34.99 Australian dollars ($29.10 US). No wonder people steal music. Avril Lavigne’s record in the same store was $21.99 ($18.21 US).
By the way, when I asked a label rep about this his response was: “It’s because we know you have a real core audience that will pay whatever it costs when you put something out - you know, true fans. It’s the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy.”
So… I guess as a reward for being a “true fan” you get ripped off.”

NIN are critical of marketing tricks used by the labels. “The point is, I am trying my best to make sure the music and items NIN puts in the marketplace have value, substance and are worth you considering purchasing. I am not allowing Capital G to be repackaged into several configurations that result in you getting ripped off.”