First, an out of context quote from today's (1998/0012/0016) NY Times:
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/12/biztech/articles/16disk.html)

BMG Entertainment chief executive Strauss Zelnick said he did not envision lower prices, even if consumers bought their music as electronic impulses rather than physical CDs. "The cost of a CD is related to the creative effort that goes into making the music, which is a lot more than the plastic that goes into a disk," he said. "What's driving the costs is rewarding the artists for their creativity."

My opinion about this:


What a load of crap! If this was actually the case, the cost of manufacturing and distribution would determine the difference in cost between CD's and tapes. Since CD's are far less expensive to produce than tapes, and cheaper to ship (they weigh less and take up less volume), they should be cheaper than tapes. NOT THE CASE. The cost of a CD is clearly related to the record industry's desire to screw the average customer, and the average recording artist. It cannot possibly be argued that it is not cheaper for the recording industry to distribute music over the internet than to produce, package and distribute even the cheapest of media. What's obviously going on here is that the recording industry wants to make a huge profit on music sold and transmitted over the internet and pocket the difference by telling everyone early on that what they're doing is reasonable.

Message to the recording industry:


Yes, I pay money for CD's. No, I don't like being lied to or ripped off. No, I won't pay the same as a CD for music distributed over the internet. For an industry that claims it's trying to reduce piracy, you're giving a lot of people a lot of rationale to increase it.

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