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Consider that when VHS videocassettes came out, the price of a video was over $100.
I remember those days too, wasn't longer than 1985 or so. Why were movies so expensive? I think the studios were afraid people were going to copy and sell them. Was it Disney that came out with the first sub-$20 VHS tape? I think all it needs is one major to come out in the sub-$10 CD market to break it out.
I read an article that said *total* CD sales have gone down as there's less new acts coming out. If the difference in titles being sold was made up, with sales of just 3000 per title the industry would be growing at the same rate.
I think once public opinion turns against the industry ("What you mean I'm a pirate?") they'll turn to legal action against Clear Channel. CC is pretty bad in my book, making local radio turn into bland McDonald's, but it isn't the reason for the industry's problems but it is the easiest scapegoat.
Like a previous poster said, once CDs get to around $5 I'll start buying hundreds. Why pay $17 (I was shocked to see that's the new price point at Tower) for an album with 2 hit singles, 2 other okay songs, and 10 crappy ones?

Another reason that the movie companies priced VHS cassettes at $100 or more during the mid 1980s was because their main customers were video rental stores. Knowing that as many as 100 people would rent the same video over time, the movie companies priced the videocassettes at a premium in order to recoup revenues that they feared they were losing. But even at $100, a video store would break even at about 20 rentals and then the rest would be pure profit. I remember contemplating opening a video rental store around 1985 (this was before Blockbuster cornered the market and there were thousands of mom&pop stores around America) but the high start-up price dissuaded me. For in addition to leasing the storefront, it would have costed me around $75,000 to put together a basic 500-title inventory (would have needed multiple copies of popular titles) just to open the doors. As it turned out, some relatives of mine took the idea and opened the store and were driven out of business by the big chains two years later. They barely made enough to break even.

During the 1990s, the movie companies discovered that they could bypass the video stores and the "sell-through" concept was pioneered. Instead of shipping lots of new releases to the big chains like Blockbusters, they started dumping them into retail outlets like Wal-Mart directly to the consumer at a reduced price, hoping to make up in volume what they lost on price. It was a winning bet. Now there are some movies that generate more revenue on video (and now DVD) then box office receipts. In fact, many box office duds have become moneymakers thanks to "sell-through."

Rental stores like Blockbuster's are on borrowed time. They are never going to get over the hassle involved with going down to the store, waiting in line and then having to scramble back before the deadline to drop the movie off in order to avoid late charges. It's a real inconvenience to rent movies. Eventually consumers will either just buy the movie or go "pay-per-view" as cable companies will soon have the infrastructure and the vast amounts of resources to offer pretty much every movie ever made on demand at a reasonable price.

I've all but given up on listening to music on radio. It's an exercise in frustration. Playlists are so watered down to the lowest common denominator and so narrowly defined that it all starts sounding the same. In fact, songs that were popular five or six years ago are still in heavy rotation today because there is so little new material that is being played. Just this morning, I quickly scanned the FM band in my car and there was the same Everclear and Counting Crows songs that were being played back in 1997.

Even classical music stations have fallen into this trap. Despite the thousands of great compositions out there (that are widely available in multiple recordings), you basically hear the same 40 or 50 short pieces over and over again. Especially Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," Bach's Brandenburgs and Mozart's early symphonies. Any classical piece over 15 minutes tends not to get played so that the station can get those commercials in.