Too little, too late

So, one of the biggest record companies in the world – Universal Music Group - announced it’s going to experiment with lowering the retail price of compact discs to $10 or less. Always ahead of the curve, those record companies. Three (of many) reasons this doesn’t matter:

1) Record companies already have lost an entire generation of music buyers when it comes to CDs. People mid-20s and younger have never bought CDs – especially when they were $15.99. This is the digital music generation – they either found it free (OK, stole it) online or bought it through iTunes. Physical CDs are a foreign concept.

2) And don’t give them the “sound quality” argument – these people only know music as heard via compressed digital files, often through their tinny computer speakers.

3) Where are people going to buy these reduced-priced CDs? Quality, independent record stores are nearly extinct, and stores like Target and Best Buy aren’t exactly the places to find cutting-edge music. An example I like to cite: I live in a college town of 200,000+ and we now have no decent record store.

Advertisement