Used CD Prices Have Collapsed

Last word on this subject: If by chance the site is illegal at least I paid for my music so no one can say I was stealing music.

 

Or stream it.

 

lol

 

...with all the wonderful sound quality you get.

 

It probably doesn't make sense to radically low-ball the prices. They won't entice any neophyte music fans.

The fact is, people who are still interested in buying CD's don't really care if a disc is priced at $3.99, $4.99, $5.99, $6.99 or $7.99. At some point when they get into the 12-to-20 dollar price range I'll hesitate and force my feeble brain to rationalize a purchase, but when they're dirt cheap, I buy 'em if I want 'em.

Anything $7.99 or lower is dirt cheap in my estimation.

 

My local used store has CDs for sale for almost twice as much money as new copies of the same issue from Amazon. So I am not sure where the "collapse" is taking place, but it ain't here.

 

I think that was only at places like The Wherehouse (which, I suspect, is why they were one of the first chain stores to go out of business). I remember thinking $20 for a new CD was highway robbery.

In the '90s, I started buying CDs at Circuit City and Best Buy, where the prices were far cheaper. At Circuit City, new CDs seemed to be around $12 and older catalog items were usually $10 or lower.

 

And when new CDs are selling in the $3.99 to $7.99 range it can be argued that new CD prices have collapsed.

I can buy new classical CDs from Amazon third party sellers for around $5 plus shipping. That's for new current recordings done recently, and very good. Not old recordings being re-issued by bargain labels.

 

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/forums/classifieds-cds/

 

320kbps is basically identical to CDs to 99% of people, so yeah, the sound quality is in general great.

 

Well, I walked out the other day after viewing their prices with nothing in hand because, IMO, they were too expensive. I'd rather spend $15 and get 2 CDs than spend $9 and get one.

 

There are two? o.0

 

Steel Horse said: ↑
So do I have to sell my DCC, Mofi and AF collection for 1 buck a piece now as I have a storage problem. Somebody must help me out....

Where is the Steel Horse guy? I'm willing to help him out...

 

Me too. I'll double that and pay 2 bucks.

 

Stick It and CD Warehouse. I didn't even mention Vintage Stock who has high prices as well (both locations). And Entertainmart has good prices a lot of times but in general not a great selection.

 

I consider anything $5 and under to be "dirt cheap". Even at those prices though, I won't bite at just any title I'm only marginally interested in.

Now, get down to $3 and under, and I'll scoop up just about anything I'm interested in.

 

Anything that is plentiful and still in print, dirt cheap. Anything out of print, and remotely wanted - way too expensive. I was looking for a copy on cd of The Temptations 'Solid Rock', and was knocked over. One of many examples.

 

Except for a handful of rare, desirable masterings, I think many niche CDs have come down in price. Internet competition is driving some of it. While there may only be 200-300 copies circulating at any one time, all you need to drive the market down is have one or two motivated sellers since most are using bot pricing tools. It simply was much tougher to find certain CDs over a decade ago, they would almost never make an appearance.

 

Exactly! Whole Foods Market also sells CDs at each register, usually 5 different titles per register and in no particular order. All styles of music.

 

CDs still seem to sell well in Canada, I used to buy most of mine at the HMV stores when I lived there. I can't seem to remember the name, but there was also a big chain store which sold about half new and half used CDs and DVDs. They also had movie posters and movie/tv/music-oriented gifts. It was a big store with a high ceiling, to give that warehouse effect.

 

It seems like it's been that way here for the last 10+ years. I remember back in the summer of 2003 my friends and I drove down to Cedar Rapids to checkout the town as we were moving there for college and one of my friends brought his entire CD collection along to sell. He planned to sell them at one of the record shops and he had well over 100 CDs, so he thought he was in for a big payday.

We went to 3 or 4 stores and the best offer he got was $10 for the whole box, one store didn't even want any of them. Of course all he had were mainly popular albums from the 90's, things like Chumbawumba and Ace Of Base and such. I remember buying a used copy of The Beatles 1 (my first disc had broke) and two used McCartney CDs - Flaming Pie and Off The Ground for $20 dollars at one store, so I guess the stores were still selling used discs at a high price, although the Beatles ! disc probably made up about 15 out of the 20 dollars IIRC.

In the end my friend sold a lot of his CDs to us on the drive home, I remember buying The Sign, Tubthumper, a CD single of Hanson's MMMBop and a few more for 20 bucks. I way overpaid but I felt bad for him. And that Ace Of Base CD became a very guilty pleasure until I lost it, a year ago I bought Ace Of Base - Playlist comp and it has become a guilty pleasure disc. They really put out some good songs, especially their singles.

 

If you have CDs I'm looking for, I'm willing to pay you generously for those titles. Please list them in the for sale area or at least a general summary of what genres/artists you have.

 

All that mass-produced mainstream stuff which was force-fed to an unsuspecting public doesn't carry the same weight when you compare them to small pressings of jazz titles and of course, the long-running Bear Family Records. You're talking about millions of CDs made by songs which were overplayed countless times on the radio. Those songs were played on the radio so much and nearly everyone owned the CDs, which I believe has devalued them. However, the small pressings of historical music are not affected as much by these shifts in trends and technology. Most people shopping at the Apple Store probably have never even heard of Bear Family Records, which is a shame.

 

Interesting. I have the JSP Carter Family box Volume 1. JSP appears to have used the Bear Family transfers. In fact the transfers found many of the "Collectors" boxes, like Bear Family's or Mosaic's, manage to find their way to these steeply discounted box sets. And then there is the ongoing fire-insurance sale of Classical music in Mega Boxes at cut-rate prices. The market for collectible CDs will continue to shrink as more people stream or sell off their collections after copying to cheap, massive hard drives. It's not simply folks tossing out their Indigo Girls collections, it's all departments, all genres of music on CD, circa 2014:



$11.99 shipped from Amazon.

I see no reason why the market for Redbook CDs won't continue to decline. What would be interesting would be re-issues in surround. I've noticed some of the older surround sound titles have become collectible rather quickly. But again, there's no reason why surround remixes can't be streamed, at least for those with the available bandwidth.

 

Dirt Cheap would be the $30 [shipped] price for the Brilliant Beethoven Box, third iteration, from Amazon as an initial sale price. That's 85 CDs. 35¢ a CD. Lots of the big Boxes of Classical Music these days go for $1, $2 a disc.