Quote:
Originally posted by Millie
First off, let me pose a question for you all: how often do you look to buy products at a 2000% mark-up from the cost of their production? That's what you're doing every time you buy an album on CD. All totalled (including recording fees and burning costs), CDs cost about $1 apiece to produce -- and that's a very liberal estimate. The actual cost is much lower, but we're using $1 to give ourselves a nice, rounded figure. Factor in publishing costs, which scale down as production scales up, and you notice that record labels face very negligible costs for manufacturing and distributing their CDs. |
I disagree with your numbers. When you add in marketing, artist royalties, distribution, etc. the number is higher then $1. Most retail luxury products (designer clothing in particular) carry a high margin as well, does one suggest shoplifting their next Armani suit?
Even if the price of a CD was $5 people would still elect for MP3’s because free is better then $5. The issue isn’t entirely with the record companies/artists. The argument that price/profits makes it ok to steal doesn’t make it any less stealing the hot wiring a car.
PS For the record I have sure downloaded my share of MP3’s/Movies, then again I used to shoplift like a fiend when I was a kid so I am just a bad seed!