At 6:18 PM 7/25/96, jim bell wrote:

If what Duncan said were true, then you'd see music stores spring up which sell ONLY the "Top-40 stock", but sell it for pre-CD vinyl prices. They'd get all that business, and OTHER record stores would sell the obscure stuff. That's not happening.

Something not being talked about in any of the messages I've seen is the role of _inflation_. Those claiming CD prices are "too high" should consider inflation. (Caveat: I also consider CD prices "too high," in terms of what I'd _like_ to pay.) When I first started buying LPs, circa 1967, LP prices were usually around $4.88 (that figure rings a bell, no pun intended). Some discount prices were around $3.67, at a local PX (Post Exchange, a military store, usually having subsidized prices). I do recall paying $5.98 for some albums I wanted. And in those days the average working man's salary was under $10,000 a year, gold was $35-40 an ounce, a new 3-bedroom house in many areas cost $20-30K, a pound of hamburger cost less than a dollar, a copy of "Scientific American" cost either 60 or 75 cents (price increased) and a paperback book cost between 75 cents and $1.25. (These numbers are approximate, but mostly about right. Paperback books, for example, were at about 35 cents until the 60s, then moved to 50 cents, then to 60-75 cents, then hit the dollar point around 1970, the $1.95 point a few years later, then jumped to $2.95, $3.95, etc., and are now around $5.95 for most bestseller paperbacks. Again, don't quibble too much. A detailed check of paperback collections showing publishing dates and prices would pin these numbers down.) So, what do we have now? Salaries are 2-4x higher, gold is at $375 an ounce, a new 3-br house averages about $100K (and is 2x that in many places), hamburger is at $2-3/pound, "Scietific American" sells for $3.95 or $4.95, and paperback books go for $4.95. Roughly, then, everything on this list is 3-4 times more expensive than it was in the late 60s. So, those LPs I was buying for $4-5 should now cost $12-20, correcting for inflation/price rises. And yet I am able to find many CDs I want for $8.67 (Tower Records: "3 for $25" sales). And they never wear out. And they usually have 60 minutes or more music on them--at least the CDs I buy do--, compared to the paltry 35-40 minutes on most LPs of the past. I can also make flawless copies of CDs I borrow onto DATs. (A friend of mine has gone a bit far with this, borrowing thousands of CDs from libraries...he now has 3900 CDs recorded digitally.) So, while I "wish" CD prices were even lower, I'm paying a lot less in "real dollars" for more music today than I was paying 15 years ago or 30 years ago. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."