Compact Disc Sales Plummet 20% Since Start of Year

SeekingAlpha.com ^ | March 21, 2007

[Jonathon Spectre]

Ah, the just desserts are coming home to roost, or something like that.

I remember back several years ago when Tool's album "Lateralus" came out & I actually went & bought a CD. It was an exotic experience for me even then. I realized the record companies were lost, forever, without any chance at redemption when I told my students about this & the reaction was one of universal amazement:

"You bought a CD?"

[yuleeyahoo]

I concur; if I am going to be forced to purchase my video entertainment, I am going to purchase specifically what I want to watch and nothing else.

[Borges]

MP3s may work for pop music but for serious music (a 100 piece orchestra), the nuance isn't there. I'm sticking with CDs for that genre.

[durasell]

It's good for those kids with their punk rock music and Sexy Pistols...but for me, I want to hear the ever so soft hum of the bubble machine when I play Tiny Bubbles!

[razorback-bert]

I just can't stand playing $15+ for a cd, so unless it is something I really really want, I don't buy any.

[ßuddaßudd]

I did my part and bought the new Buckcherry CD for a mere $9.99.

[theFIRMbss]

>Best Buy has been reducing the floor space allotted to CDs, and if Wal-Mart follows suit, the picture will grow even gloomier for music companies

Eight tracks are still cool, right? Hot chicks still dig a guy with lots of eight tracks?!

[norraad]

I've got lot's of eight tracks, I love'um.

Big old fashioned juke box record player combo in my bedroom, love the feel of shove it in the slot and hearing good analog sounds.

[amchugh]

The Passion of the Christ budget, $30,000,000 (estimated) 300 budget $60,000,000 (estimated), The Blair Witch Project budget $35,000 (estimated)

The first two qualify as big budget for me, but I tend to watch more comedies, period pieces and indie flicks. So I might be biased. Certainly they are no Waterworld or Titanic (thank God).

People talk about YouTube like you can catch any show in the world posted, but they've done a good job recently of cracking down on a lot of the shows I used to watch online. It is a lot harder to find clips for the Office for example.

The record companies controlled the airwaves through "the Network", a sort of middle man cutout of promoters who handled payola. It got out of the record companies control though, and payola prices to get songs played spiralled upwards. Ironically, this raises barrier to entry costs for indie labels who want a big act and protects the oligopoly of the big labels. Read Hit Men by Fred Dannen for more details

[amchugh]

The conventional wisdom of Hollywood that big budget films are more successful is a lie to get investors to pony up money for a bad rate of return.

[cookcounty]

"There is absolutely no reason to pay for 200 channels just to have access to the 5 that accounts for 90% of my viewing time."

Exactly, and then they bundle. Dish sold me a plan with 180 most popular channels in America. After I got it, I found out that (sha-zamm!) National Geographic Channel is not among the 180 top US channels, but Shopping for Socks is.

I need TV and I have international satelite reasons for doing Dish that Direct can't match, but Dish is not straight up with their advertising.

[mikeybaby]

I thought The Passion and 300 were much less expensive.
I stand corrected, although the recent hillary "Big Brother" ad shows the power of new distribution channels.