There’s 80+ years of used recordings for sale on the open market (used book/record stores, garage sales, thrift stores, high dollar conventions, ebay, etc.).
The consumer dollar only goes so far and there are billions of pieces of product already out in the marketplace.
The Industry “got lucky” in 1983 when CDs started to hit the market and they were able to convince baby boomers to toss out their record collection and buy back everything at inflated prices. In the 1990s it came to light that CDs were cheaper to manufacture than cassettes yet cassettes held a lower sell-through price in stores. Turns out that the labels were in collusion to price fix CDs at an elevated price structure. They settled out of court, paid millions to the trial lawyers, and sent the states that filed class action lawsuits worthless deadstock CDs for has-beens and nobodies in the name of “providing educational assistance” (per court order).
“Turns out that the labels were in collusion to price fix CDs at an elevated price structure.”
There is no such thing as price fixing (at least, not in that sense). There’s only what the consumer is willing to spend and what he’s not. If the price set after collusion between labels holds on the market, then it is the market price.
Oh, and by the way, the cost of producing cassettes has absolutely no significance this way or that.