Well then, what would be an appropriate royalty for musicians and price for CDs? Well-known recording artists seem to be living quite well. Stuff by the Beatles done 40 years ago is still selling new at full price. ['course then there's people like me who buy that stuff used for 50c at yard sales.]
Actually, in thinking about it, the price of album when I was a kid is lower today considering inflation. (The cost of a 'single', if you can even find one, is much more.)
While I can't help but suspect CD prices should be lower, in fairness to the record companies, they have their unseen costs as well. They go to plenty of expense to select new talent and market and distribute it. Often times a CD doesn't sell and that expense is wasted. They also have to deal with tempermental artists, fickle consumer tastes, normal distribution channel issues, investors, and basic business issues.
There's a hopeful singer Analise van der Pol. She did a pop song "Over It" that got repeated play, but she was not signed for a record deal. I think she's very talented, but the mass market obviously didn't think so. So it goes.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not only are the Beatles still doing okay on their work from forty years ago, but lots of the very old classical music stuff -- from the 78 rpm era and the very early 33 rpm era is now getting re-issued on CD and selling pretty well. I had some ancient 78 rpm and 33 rpm 'long playing' records of Virgil Fox which were lost in the tragic fire Bill Pfieffer endured in the mid 1990's. I just assumed I would never see them again. They dated back to the early 1950's and late 1940's, when LP records were very heavy in the old fashioned cardboard sleeves. Well, you can imagine my surprise when I received a very small box of CDs the other day including all those ancient recordings now on Compact Disk, re-issued, including a newer DVD-style disk which had a bunch of other old things of Fox on it, including a thirty minute 'Quick Time' movie file of Fox from his 1964 visit to the Wanamaker store in Philadelphia and one of his performances there. Lisa H, you said you have visited Lord and Taylor in recent years. Would you like a copy of that DVD of Fox from when it was Wanamaker's? PAT]