Post

I vaguely remember paying about $5 for new vinyl records in the mid 1970s. People sometimes express frustration to me about newly manufactured vinyl records being $25 or whatever today.

meanwhile CDs still cost what they did 35 years ago

$10-$15? Been a while since I've been in a record store to look for new stuff. Last new CDs I purchased were at an evening open-air show's merch table and I think were $5, $5, $10 (opening act, these I am sure of) and $20 (lead act, less sure).

Was blundering around looking for HP3000-adjacent info as one does and ran into this from 1988, which gives a cost of $3000 to $5000 for mastering and pressing costs of $3 to $10 per disc. dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

Today: $105 for 25. Not that different!

Reading their site a little deeper, "CD duplication" is burning CD-Rs, "CD replication" is setting up to press CDs and they say 500 is a minimum quantity. 500 "replicated" and card sleeves for 'em is $595.