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CD-R Prices Could Triple This Summer
Suppafly writes: "According to this story at pcworld.com cd-r media prices are going to skyrocket once the surplus of CD-R media is used up and companies return to having a shortage. 'Consumers ... can expect discs to sell for about 35 to 40 cents at retail.' This doesn't sound good for those of us who backup damn near everything to CD-R." Some spares couldn't hurt, either way.
OK, so there's a lot of surplus, and they aren't making a whole lot from it all. Solution? Report it's all running out, and prices will "skyrocket" (35 cents a cdr isn't that high, c'mon, last time I bought them anything under a buck was great). So people go out and buy a lot, thus creating their shortage. Nice work.
Then again, this could be even worse for them, people buy a whole lot, and then don't need any more for a couple years, and then they drop to nothing because there's no demand... ;-)
OK OK enough conspiracy theories... ;-)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
"So, I guess the moral is, if you see any "free after rebate" deals, take advantage of them because they won't be around long. Race you to Best Buy!"
Me: "I'd like to buy this spindle of CD-Rs, please."
Best Buy Cashier: "OK. I see that these have an instant rebate, so the price is only $2 today."
Me: "Cool."
Cashier: "However, with our convenient CD-R protection plan, for the low cost of only $35, we'll provide you with a replacement if your purchase should be found defective for any reason."
Me: "uhm...wait a second..." Cashier: "We also highly recommend these special CD-R cleaning cloths, available for only $19.95...you can't clean CD-R's any other way, you know..." Me: "wha? cleaning cloths? I don't think..." Cashier: "...and don't forget these special CD-R labelling pens, only $7.50, which are guaranteed to work with your new CD-Rs." Me:"Hold on just one second now..." Cashier: "better not to argue, sir. See the cameras? They're watching...ok then, your total comes to $70 after tax...sir? sir?"
Sound of car tires peeling in parking lot...
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Dude, you forgot pr0n. ;-)
Between CD-R's at $0.30 each, and gas at three bucks a gallon, it looks like a gloomy summer ahead for Joe American Consumer and Pr0n Hound.
Too expensive to drive to the beach and too expensive to back up all that pr0n. And with cable rates going up... we might have to start talking to each other or something.
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
This is, after all, from the same people who successfully predicted the now skyrocketing price of RAM!!! ;)
For reference: In Western Europe we pay:
~$0.75 for a CD-R (DFL 1.75 in NL)
~$4.25 for a gallon of gas (DFL 2.70/liter in NL)
I would die for your American prices...
<grub> Reading
This reminds me of the rumors about 4 years ago of increased taxes on CD-Rs being implemented in Canada to compensate the music industry. The next day we went driving around to about 6 different stores and they were all sold out. I actually suspect that they (the stores) were stockpiling their discs so they could put them back on the shelf with an increased price blamed on the tax, and make extra profit because they bought the CDs before the tax was implemented.
This reminds me of a painful memory. December 1998, I ordered 1000 pieces of Sony CDQ-74CN (really nice discs) from my distributor at the then-decent price of $2.11 per disc. I got 10 boxes of 100 CDs each, retail packaged. I figured since everyone thought the price would go up to about $3.50 at the least, I could make a nice little sum since it was said that the tax wouldn't be retroactive, so selling stockpiles amassed before the tax came in would be golden!
Pissed doesn't even begin to describe how I felt when it was revealed that the whole fscking thing was *WAAAAY* overblown by the media, and that prices would essentially stay the same.
Now my cost on the same disc is $1.06 from the same distributor, and I have more than 250 left from the original order more than two years ago. I'm selling them at a loss to get rid of them.
Oh, but I'm not bitter or anything...
--
Copies and copies of demo CDs for my band. Cheap, DIY CD replication is a godsend for small indie musicians with no money. Instead of spending $100-$500 for a few hundred demo discs, we can pull it off for about $100. Plus, we can make exactly as many as we need; no extras piling up, no shortages, and we can change the content any time we want.
The convenience + low $$$ lets us give them away to fans who can't afford a dollar to cover our costs.
CDRs RULE!
Plugging your band on Slashdot RULES!
If you're not wasted, the day is.
If you're not wasted, the day is.
This is great, now all the STORES get slashdotted.
Almost as good as telling everyone that we're going to run out of gas in about three weeks, "GO GET SOME BEFORE ITS GONE KIDS!".
Klowner
watch me get modded down..
I'm not a bit surprised to read about this surplus of CD-Rs - I wondered how they became so cheap between 1999-2000. This tripled price of CD-Rs probably won't affect quantity demanded much.
As a side note, too many people who've never learned economics confuse demand with quantity demanded Demand of these CD-Rs will remain the same if the only factor that changes is the price - the demand curve simply determines how many CD-Rs will be purchased at a given price. My personal opinion is that the demand curve is rather flat (on a quantity vs price graph) around the current price range.
Prices may double, triple, whatever, but I still find a 50 CD-R spindle at $15-25 a bargain. Besides, shouldn't we be saving plastic and backing up on CD-RW anyway? According to the article, CD-RW prices will remain stable - perhaps CD-RWs will become even more common in a year.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
You've got to love it when a one-line comment about pr0n is modded up as insightful!
So you're a karma whore, eh? For the right price, I'll be a karma pimp...
SIG: HUP
In related news, the price of Clay Pigeons is expected to return to normal. Charlton Heston of the Shotgun Association of America stated at a press conference, "Our recent sources of cheap plastic clay pigeons are expected to dry up. We will be returning to clay clay pigeons."
Keeping
Honestly, 40 cents for a blank CDR is still a good deal. It would only make a difference to the people who buy hordes of CDRs. And to these people, I have a question:
:) What do you guys use your CDR's for? Or did I nail it on the head? The last time I burned a CD was SuSE 7.1 last month. Before that? Probably Slackware sometime in 1942.
What on earth do you use all these CDRs for? Seriously, how can you amass so much data so quickly that you need spindles atop spindles of them? =)
I have some theories:
1) Packrat. This person loves collecting everything. TV episodes, movies, software. Obviously this person doesn't actually do anything with these CDRs other than lend them out to people who make copies and do the same thing.
2) Rampant Windows pirate. This person makes illegal copies of Windows software and carries all the CDs around in a black CD-binder/case thing. Need some outdated version of Photoshop? He's your man.
3) Music Leech. All of this person's blanks go to hold the massive amounts of Napster downloads. Obviously this person does not have a long enough lifespan to listen to all of the audio acquired.
Ok enough jokes
This reminds me of the rumors about 4 years ago of increased taxes on CD-Rs being implemented in Canada to compensate the music industry. The next day we went driving around to about 6 different stores and they were all sold out. I actually suspect that they (the stores) were stockpiling their discs so they could put them back on the shelf with an increased price blamed on the tax, and make extra profit because they bought the CDs before the tax was implemented.
It turns out that nothing came of the tax increases. They stayed at $0.06 per disc.
This makes me wonder...were we being manipulated? I mean we were strongly driven to go out and buy something. Isn't that what the corporations want their consumer ants to do? And is this what is happenning again now?
I suggest we carefully think about what we're saying and doing. Already the poster of this message has branded the post as "from the stock-several-spindles dept." Is this just some form of manipulation? Did seeing this message make you go look to see how many blanks you have on the shelf? Perhaps this is what the corporations want you to be doing. Perhaps you're being motivated by fear.
That's just what I think anyway.
I was really annoyed when AOL started sending me CDs rather than floppies because I can't use the CDs for anything but coasters, and now I have plenty of coasters.
Why can't they start sending me CD-RWs, at least I could use those. Especially now, since I'll actually have to pay for them. AOL-Time/Warner should consider it a PR expense. Most of the people who gripe about AOL would stop complaining if AOL was supplying them with CD-RWs.
And now in these harsh economic times when the price of CR-Rs is going through the roof... (I'll have to check my couch for lost change).
--CTH
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Here in Finland, and elsewhere in EU gas costs 1.2$ /liter.
I guess if gas was more expensive in US it would be easier for you people to sign the Kyoto agreement:)
Time to go pick up a whole bunch before the hoarders get to them. Oh, wait...
And even if you do intend to use removable HDDs as your archiving system, they're still a bit more fragile than optical disks. If you drop a CD off of a two story building, unless you're dropping it onto shear granite in Point Barrow, Alaska in the middle of February, odds are it will still work. CDs aren't anywhere near as sensitive to static discharge or EM, either. And even if the info on the platters are still OK, you could still fry a chip on the controller.
Continuing along that thread, hard drives by defintion have more points of failure. It is both the medium and the mechanism to read it; CD and CD-ROM drive in one. Not only do you have to worry about how volatile the information is on the platters, but the fact that every time you power it up, it spins itself closer to mechanical failure. If it moves, it WILL break. The more it moves, the sooner it will break. So sayeth the second law of thermodynamics. If your CD-ROM drive dies, you can get a new one, borrow a friend's, scavenge an old one, et cetera. Your CDs will be fine. If your HDD dies, you're stuck with paying out the ass to a manufacturer or a specialist to get your data out of the drive.
Yes, CD-Rs write a heck of a lot slower than an HDD, but it's not meant to be anywhere near as dynamic as an HDD. The concept is to know what you want to hang on to beforehand, and then put it on the CD where you'll have it for a decade or two. You may change hard drives, you may change computers, but you'll still have the information.
And last but not least, when was the last time you tried moving a hard disk from one computer to another?
At any rate, I think CD-Rs are probably the best option for archiving/backing-up data among all the options available. Everything else you might use (be it magnetic tape, proprieatary magnetic media, or DVD-RAM) require a proprietary drive to read and write. Odds are, you'll be out of luck hardware-wise if you want to read it from another computer. A CD-R, on the other hand, can be read by just about any computer manufactured in the past decade or so. It might as well be a floppy disk it's so universal.