I'm bored, so I've decided to take a random page from the RIAA site and break it down. Today, I bash Cost of a CD Would you ever say a CD is a good value? I wouldn't. The article says that there are perfectly good reasons for the CD to be worth selling your left testicle on ebay... shall we find out what, exactly, those reasons are? Of course they don't collect information on the specific costs! I mean, what would happen if they did! They might find out that they really ARE charging people too much, and someone would demand that they publish the data. We wouldn't want people to see that they're charging twice as much as they should, now would we? I just love how they say it costs more than ever to lay down a track... this must be why kids are able to make high-quality recordings of their garage band, right? First of all, I like how they make it very clear that both the artist AND the songwriter get their cuts! In other words, the RIAA doesn't support artists who write their own material or do much of anything except dance for that matter *cough*boybands*cough*... Second, if the most important part of the CD is the artist's effort, why do they usually get less than 10% of the profits? Logical enough... of course they again failed to note how much the costs of the recording usually tally to... Again I note the kids who can make high-quality recordings of their garage band. Ah! So in other words you have to spend a butt-load of money so that people will think that this band is better than the last one! NSync must be better than the Back Street Boys, the RIAA says so in their ads! And the CDs cost more too! And of course the radio play didn't just happen. No, they had to talk to their pals over at Clearchannel and maybe slide a little cash their way, and, I'm sure, explain how much better this band is than the last! Yes, for I wouldn't think about buying a CD based on the actual musical tallent! They have to have a pretty CD box and lots of posters up at the local music shop! Jeeze, who would ever think about buying a CD that didn't have a pretty cover? In other words, after we spend all this cash, we realize that our artist sucks and no one wants to listen to them, no matter how great we tell people they are... so we have to leech the funding from other artists who are more capable of dancing and lip-syncing at the same time. Again, lord forbid we don't spend so much on advertising, trying to convince people how great our lip-syncers are, and focus on making a cheap CD so people are more willing to give it a go anyway. A nice pretty conclusion paragraph. Almost standardized-test-worthy! I like the that explains how; if CD manufacturers ripped us off as bad as the labels do, we'd be paying (or not paying, rather) $40 per CD! TBC
Continued (sorry, the post was too long ) Ah! A "we swear we're not as bad as satan!" paragraph! Although, the price of a CD as I've seen has gone from ~$16 to ~$15 over the past 5 years or so... Meanwhile, they've built a nice shiny new movie theatre nearby, with a bigger screen and more comfortable seats and better sound. Guess what? The price for that new theatre with it a thousand times nicer than the old one... still costs the same price! WOW! And there's Six Flags theme parks (Six Flags Over Texas is located nearby) which continue to grow each year, with bigger, faster, cooler rides that push the limits and outdo themselves each year. As far as I know the price to get in to Six Flags hasn't changed in over 10 years... and it's substantially better than it was then. A CD on the other hand is about the same today as it was 5 years ago. About the same number of tracks (between 10 and 16 or 17) and about the same quality (which, granted, just isn't going to get much better). If the media were getting much better, I wouldn't mind paying the same price. But it's stale, which tells me the price should be decreasing. Until you break them, in which case we'll tell you to go pay another $15. Or if you don't like them, we'll tell you "too bad." and then you're stuck with a $15 piece of plastic that you might be able to use as a coaster... until it breaks. But by then you'll probably have a few more RIAA-distributed coasters because you walked into a music store, saw 50 million posters and thought, "Wow! That must be a good CD! I've got to buy it NOW!" In which case, their marketing sceme has won again. And you'll take your new CD home and put it in your CD player only to realize that it's the exact same thing as your last coaster, err, I mean bad CD, just with a new band and slightly different lyrics (which only your grandson can actually understand). So, as you can see, it is definitely worth it for everyone... okay, maybe not the consumer... or the artist... or the songwriter... or the music technicians... so that leaves what? The RIAA and the marketing companies I suppose... Okay, so as you can see, it is definitely worth it for the RIAA when you pay $15 for a CD!
RIAA is like Sony/EMI whatever other music publishers (whatever they are called) hitman ... Does the dirty job and takes the heat away from them directly. It wouldnt look too good for them to go around suing people and trying to get them jailed as it might backlash into the sale of their other products and their reputation as well.
Of course the latest strategy is to repackage old artists music in a new compliation CD because the new ones can't cut it. I see one minor flaw however in the fact fans will already have all the tracks What this means of course is that excessive amounts will be spent trying to advertise these respins (and of course the amount of crud boybands, girlbands, hiphop bands and other rubbish in the charts), so prices will in all likelihood increase.
The current top of the charts show a distinct lack of talent. Some guy sitting in a room with his computer could do better ... and will do better if he had the same funding. Talentless ****
Unless the world wakes the **** up and starts realizing that there's an endless amount of tallent out there on no-name records. Take the plunge. **** the RIAA. Listen to indie artists.
12.75????? when in hell did they go to 12.75??? only price I see for any CD around me is at the lowest is $16 only once I got a CD for $10 but it was a local band and they used most of the money to pay off the place they used for thier show And I have to say that I loved the CD plus I was friend with several of the band members and they told me that they wanted me to put the CD on the internet so more poeple would hear them so more people would buy thier CD. nice post try this did you know it costs more for those music companies to make a tape then a CD? heh and it costs more to buy a CD then a tape or 2 of the same thing cept worst quality. As I keep saying we all need to get as many people to stop buying CD's and tapes and watch those music companies shiver at the possiblities that people don't like them BOYCOTT THE RIAA!!! VIVA LA RESISTANCE
