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).

$17 in stores, same as back then

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/...

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.

Anyway, my observation (having lived through it) was that something happened that all those indie record labels suddenly were able to get CDs pressed in the early 90s, *and* it became possible to get all sorts of data and software on CD-ROM.

These days my observation (looking at the ones that come through Friends of the Palo Alto Library) is that it was and is possible for solo performers to get CDs pressed and packaged, I guess for sale at their performances, and have wondered what that costs them