tuba@ur-tut.UUCP (Jon Krueger) (09/20/85)
From what I gather on CD player prices, you can now get a fairly basic model starting at about $180. The disks still seem to cost about $12 and up. After collecting a disk library of 10 to 15 disks, your disks will have cost you more than the player! I wonder if anyone in net-land has found disk prices coming down? Especially for classical music. Or, does anyone have a prediction of what year disks will cost about $5? -- -- Jon Krueger UUCP: ...seismo!rochester!ur-tut!tuba BITNET: TUBA@UORDBV USMAIL: University of Rochester Taylor Hall Rocheseter, NY 14627 (716) 275-2811
rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) (09/23/85)
[] I, personally, am very pessimistic on disc prices. A year to a year and a half ago, prices were coming down. But two things have happened to keep disc prices up for an indefinite period. 1) The disc manufacturing caoacity has increased very slowly. Plants are allegedly very costly and they take a long costly time to work their yields up. THere is one plant in the US which <may> have reached acceptable yields by now. THere is a lot of talk about another, but so far (over a year now) talk is about all there is. 2) Meanwhile, CDs have caught on much faster than anyone had predicted and demand is said to exceed supply. Now that must be understood in the light that outrageous prices are keeping that demand in check because there <are> CDs in the stores - but never, it seems, the ones you want, just the same old ones that aren't selling well. So, if this keeps up, and you can see that from a mfrs point of view there is every reason it should, demand will remain high, production low, prices high and profits lucrative. I assume, for want of better information, that the real reason for lack of mfg plants is market control by phillips/sony who own <all> the patents and (I think) <all> the stamping plants, and almost certainly <all> the mastering plants. THere are allegedly rumors of newer digital processes that are going to either replace the CD or make it much cheaper to mfr. I think thats malarkey. Its "Why should I let anyone but me play?" at work - sez me. -- "It's the thought, if any, that counts!" Dick Grantges hound!rfg
wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (09/26/85)
> From what I gather on CD player prices, you can now get a fairly > basic model starting at about $180. The disks still seem to cost > about $12 and up. After collecting a disk library of 10 to 15 disks, > your disks will have cost you more than the player! I wonder if anyone > in net-land has found disk prices coming down? Especially for classical > music. Or, does anyone have a prediction of what year disks will cost > about $5? -- Jon Krueger Well, an ordinary low-end turntable can be bought for $100 or so, with freebie cartridge thrown in. (Or a really basic model can be gotten for $59 or even less, but lets stick with this figure -- it is near the average cost according to some industry figures I've seen a while ago.) New LP records cost from $5 - $9 or so, lets use $7 as a strawman. That means that your LP record collection exceeds your turntable cost as soon as you buy 15 or so records. That doesn't seem too out-of-line with the above CD playing-device-to-software cost ratio, does it? Sure, you can spend a lot more for a turntable. You can spend a lot more for a CD player, too. The key factor, of course, that I left out so far is that you can get LPs for a *lot* less than $7, if you buy cutouts or on special sales. CD's haven't sunk below the $10 level except for some rare exceptions. With the current demand, it is unlikely that true cutout CD's will be available for $2 each at your local dimestore for a good long while. (But it seems that even cutout LPs are more likely than not priced at $2.99 or $3.99 instead of 3/$1.00 these days, so the possible savings are lower than they used to be.) I don't think that any rationale can be found in this particular argument to force CD disk cost lower. It has long been an audio-ad cliche' that your record collection is your most expensive component. Why would CDs be any different? Will