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I too have been burning my CDs into compilations (and mixing in some MP3s for good measure). I own nearly 1,000 CDs that I bought from 1985-2000. Over the last two years, I have bought relatively few new CDs. One reason is because of the RIAA "war" against file-sharing. But the other reason is that having been burning my own CDs, I now realize just how much I was getting ripped off. Consider this. I can buy a stack of 100 blank CDs for about $30. That's about 30 cents per CD! And that's retail. I would reckon that the record companies pay a lot less because they pay wholesale and in bulk lots. Probably more like a dime for a blank CD. Now these record companies have been lying to us all these years, making us think that these "state-of-the-art" CDs were so expensive that they had to charge us $15-20 per CD just to eke out a profit.

"I too have been burning my CDs into compilations (and mixing in some MP3s for good measure). I own nearly 1,000 CDs that I bought from 1985-2000. Over the last two years, I have bought relatively few new CDs. One reason is because of the RIAA "war" against file-sharing. But the other reason is that having been burning my own CDs, I now realize just how much I was getting ripped off. Consider this. I can buy a stack of 100 blank CDs for about $30. That's about 30 cents per CD! And that's retail. I would reckon that the record companies pay a lot less because they pay wholesale and in bulk lots. Probably more like a dime for a blank CD. Now these record companies have been lying to us all these years, making us think that these "state-of-the-art" CDs were so expensive that they had to charge us $15-20 per CD just to eke out a profit."

The flaw in this is that you're buying CD-R's, which are different than silver-pressed CDs. However, your point about the price is quite valid. I remember when CDs were first introduced, and the record companies came out and said the high prices were simply because it was a new medium, and that they'd eventually come down to the price of LPs. Well, guess what... that day never came (and artists didn't get any additional royalties because of the increased CD price EITHER!).

Doug

More fundamentally, I've just been too busy working on my old cassette tapes to clean them up and convert them to MP3s before they disintegrate -- I've hardly had time to listen to new material (what there is in the way of new material worth listening to).