Whenever you have a product that has a huge variation between cost to produce and the final sale price you can usually find a very wide variation in price depending on region.
If you look at Coke, the price to produce a can/bottle of Coke is negligable, the price is then determined by what people will pay for it, thus a can of coke in a machine can cost $1USD in LA, $1CDN(.65US) in Vancouver,.50USD in Johanesburg, and.20USD in Thailand.
CD prices vary from region to region along similar lines, so if you want to get good prices on CD's check out online foreign stores, shipping will probably negate any gains a single cd, however on stack it should be more than worth it.
In Canada CD's usually run around the same price in canadian dollars as they are in the US in US dollars, or 65% the price. Any of you who live in Western Canada probalby know that A&B Sound stores are traditionally $2-3CDN cheaper on new cd's.
A quick check of their online store compared to sony direct compares like this:
Offspring: Conspiracy of One
$18.98USD (online sale 15.99) Artist Direct (Sony)
$14.79CDN (10.06 USD, special). www.absound.ca
This is a 62% discrepancy at the retail level, this gives some idea in terms of the ammount of mark-up that exists.
bah im ranting here...
bottom line, if an artist where to hire an independant marketing agency, and a web crew and released complete mp3 albums for $2.50-$4 and say $6-$10 for CD versions they could make probably 5x+++ what they make now and the fans would be happier too, all it takes is couple major bands to show the way.
Slashdot Mirror
Whenever you have a product that has a huge variation between cost to produce and the final sale price you can usually find a very wide variation in price depending on region. If you look at Coke, the price to produce a can/bottle of Coke is negligable, the price is then determined by what people will pay for it, thus a can of coke in a machine can cost $1USD in LA, $1CDN(.65US) in Vancouver, .50USD in Johanesburg, and .20USD in Thailand.
CD prices vary from region to region along similar lines, so if you want to get good prices on CD's check out online foreign stores, shipping will probably negate any gains a single cd, however on stack it should be more than worth it.
In Canada CD's usually run around the same price in canadian dollars as they are in the US in US dollars, or 65% the price. Any of you who live in Western Canada probalby know that A&B Sound stores are traditionally $2-3CDN cheaper on new cd's.
A quick check of their online store compared to sony direct compares like this:
Offspring: Conspiracy of One
$18.98USD (online sale 15.99) Artist Direct (Sony)
$14.79CDN (10.06 USD, special). www.absound.ca
This is a 62% discrepancy at the retail level, this gives some idea in terms of the ammount of mark-up that exists.
bah im ranting here...
bottom line, if an artist where to hire an independant marketing agency, and a web crew and released complete mp3 albums for $2.50-$4 and say $6-$10 for CD versions they could make probably 5x+++ what they make now and the fans would be happier too, all it takes is couple major bands to show the way.