quite frankly it's the whole corporate music business machine that is pushing people away from buying CD's and forcing them to download MP3.
Think about this. The average album MIGHT have 3-5 cuts that are single material that most people would care about listening to. The rest is just filler.
In my area the average cost of a CD is $19.99.
When I first started buying CD's in 87-88 or so, CD players and the media in general were very expensive, but the average CD was about $15.00.
You can not tell me that since media has become cheaper, that the cost of an average CD needs to be 5 dollars more.
It sure as hell can't be the fact that the artists are making more money at an average of about 10 cents or so a copy on average.
I know for a fact I can right now go and get 1000 good quality CD's with jewel cases, logo screening on the CD instead of the paper, 3 page insert, for about 1200-1500 bucks, or roughly $1.50 a CD. I am also sure I would get one hell of a break if I wanted to make 100,000 or more.
SO... Let's just say this...
$1.50 a CD to duplicate.
Let's say I spend 100 grand in the studio, divided between each CD it makes it a grand total of...
$2.50 for EACH CD if I make 100,000 copies
Spend 10 grand or so for photography and layout...
$2.60 a CD
Other misc stuff...
$3.00 a CD
Paying the employees and such
$5.00 a CD being liberal considering this is just ONE band...
Now I realize a few of my numbers could be off, BUT I ain't off by that much.
NOW for distribution...
I have half a million into 100,000 CD's
Distributing to record stores at $7.50 a CD I make $250,000 plus my $500,000 back.
Record stores marking up 100% would still only put the CD at $15.00, and since they deal in bulk, they are probably only getting a 40-50% markup. So guess who is making all the extra cash......
Not the artist.....
Not the employees barly making minimum wage....

Also who the hell wants to spend 20 bucks on a CD to only like 3 songs....
I'm not gonna spend 20 bucks on a CD to learn 3 songs, when I can get those songs in a good enough sample bitrate to be able to learn it to go and gig it the next weekend....

So in closing, if the artist wants there dime, email me and let me know and I will send it...
But I don't think I wanna make some rich **** a little richer when the product isn't as good as it used to be.

Whew my fingers are tired now, and my brain hurts...