Originally Posted by skofarrell
Since I've never bought a cd single in my life, I was more interested in comparing album pricing.
At the magical $9.99 price, you can buy the album on itunes/napster/y! music or you get a physical CD (sometimes the CD is on sale, but let's assume it isn't). I'll leave the various benefits of the CD over the drm wrappered electonic media aside for the time being, but would like to focus on the costs involved.
It would seem to me that the electonic media would have a much lower cost for the label to produce. I imagine that the costs to produce the cd itself run in the $1-2 range. Since the sale price is the same, does the artist get more money for electronic sales, or does the record label keep the extra as profit?
Why aren't the savings passed on to the consumer?
Because the record companies are greedy and dumb. I don't mind that they're greedy - their business is after all getting as much as possible for their product. I believe lowering the price would cause a vast increase in sales though. P2P is free money-wise, but it's a giant PITA. At $.25-$.50 song, it's really no contest.
Unfortunately,the record companies are still living in the past, and still up to their bad tricks. Which doesn't give us the right to steal their product.