so I actually went to buy a CD today and was appalled at the price, and so i left the store to do a little research. now in truth it's been awhile since i bought a new CD from a store and i think the last one was at Best Buy on the release date so it was only $8.99 that day... everything else i've bought was used off ebay except for one album recently that was $5 for a whole 256kps mp3 album from amazon.
so maybe i'm a bit of a jaded consumer but doesn't it seems like we are being totally ripped off when it comes to buying music?
i'll use the most recent counting crows CD as an example:
$10 amazon.com 256kbs mp3 download with no art/lyrics, etc
$14 + $3 shipping amazon.com for new CD with reduced packaging (read: no case)
$15 at Best Buy for CD with reduced packaging
$18 in B&N store for CD with cardboard sleeve (ahem: reduced package blah blah)
ok, artists really only get paid based on the amount of music they sell, right, so basic production and recording of albums is fairly consistient between artists and then marketing and pressing of the CD's i'm sure is not super cheap, but $15-$20 for a CD when I can buy 50 blank CD's for under $20? given the benefit of doubt that it really does cost that much to make an album from start to finish where do they get off charging $10 for a download!?!? and it would be $14 if I purchased it one track at a time on iTunes!?? wha?
if i remember, a download is an inferior quality version that contains no physical attributes, no case, no artwork, no lyrics. I don't neccessarily want all that for every album i buy but i think we are getting ripped both ways now. at least with a CD i can tell myself that i am getting the highest quality sound possible (a CD is 1400kbps while a mp3 is 128-256kbps) and at least with a CD i have an archival-quality, physical copy of something i bought and it will still be there if my hard drive/mp3 player craps out or comes down with a nasty virus. but $20!?!? when we know it only costs them 25 cents for the CD, 25 cents for the liners, and 25 cents for the case.
somehow we have been convinced that despite massive increases in technology, a single song of lesser quality is worth $1 each on iTunes... that a physical copy of songs we purchased are not neccessary, and that it costs an artist $20 to produce an album.
/sigh... looks like i will be watching for more $3 deals on used CD's on ebay for all my future music purchases... sorry musicians
...and don't even get me started on what netflix and blockbuster are charging for less-than-DVD-quality movies for download... are we just that gullible these days or does quality not matter anymore in this throw-away world?
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9 comments:
Lol. So true.
I would have sold you my cardboard sleeve of the Counting Crows CD for$5.
It is pretty ridiculous. Why buy anything (CD or DVD) when you can stream it free from YouTube or Hulu?
Which is why it's always nice to have a friend (Seth) that buys CD's of every band he ever listens to, regardless of quality or price. Said CD is then transferred to my computer and/or mp3 player, for the introductory price of: FREE. :)
Now now... Netflix is not ripping anyone off. It's a freakin great system for someone like me, who had a queue 250 movies long within the first week of subscribing (french new wave directors, fellini films, sam fuller noirs, cassavetes films, plenty of classics i'd never seen in their true non-commercial-interrupted form).
The difference with netflix is this: streaming films is simply an amenity to the usual disc-delivery subscription package. You can see woody allen films, marx brothers, werner herzog, and even some pretty great newer made-for-web documentaries, where the quality doesn't really factor into the film's experience. And you can still get your full-quality discs for a very reasonable price (especially if you copy the discs within a day and send them back immediately like i do).
Sure, it doesn't compete with the theater, but when they make it so the theater comes to you, then i'm sure we can nitpick and find an argument.
I agree Reed! For $8.99 you get one disc in the mail (who cares) but you get unlimited streaming! It's near dvd quality and very convenient. No late fees and no driving anywhere to return movies...hey, wait, isn't this a music blog? :-D
yeah sorry about the rant on netflix (should have known it would set you two movie addicts off =)
but i'm all about quality at the moment (prolly cause i just turned 40 today and the older i get, the more i seem to care about quality vs. throw-away hmmm go figure)
i can see the point with old stuff that doesn't matter what kind of TV you have... it's just gonna look old, but i still like my art as close to the artists original vision and diluted as little as possible. watching streamed tv is sometimes like watching a really high quality claymation version of a tv show... can't get over the artifacts, compression, and jerky clipped motions.
so i only do it when totally unavoidable (and maybe netflix is better than fox.com, hulu, etc) but to pay for that quality still just seems wrong to me somewhere in my 40yr old bones =)
Well that's where the discs come in i suppose.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all about aesthetic nitpicking. BUT If i find i'm not enjoying something as I stream it, I don't write it off. I immediately close it and put the physical disc in my queue.
So I do agree in that I could never imagine only subscribing to Netflix Instant.
I can't do the streaming movies either. Blurays have messed me up (which is the only reason why I have Netflix).
Yep, you definitely don't want to use Hulu or Netflix for any movie with cgi or special effects. I think the picture quality is much better on Netflix than Hulu overall. Although Hulu does offer HD content.
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