Could DCC or S&P make more by charging less?

I've been wondering if DCC, S&P, or even MFSL might be able to be more profitable if they charged less for their audiophile discs. Is it possible that you could sell way more (ie. twice as many) discs if you priced them closer to the prices for the regular discs? I know I wouldn't think twice about spending $18.99 for a gold DCC disc for many more artists than the current ones I own. At $24.99 & $29.99 a pop, I've got to be convinced that this is one I'll listen to a lot.
Is there any chance the (mass) public would give an audiophile CD a chance, and potentially become a "convert," if they only had to pay $5-$8 more.
Will you always have "standard" pricing on your discs, Steve, regardless of your "costs?" Do comapnies stipulate that you have to charge a certain amount (so as not to compete with their standard issue)?
Just curious
Jon

 

I'd like to hear what the people at Sundazed have to say about their bottom line. I really wonder if their prices have hurt or helped them, regarding the popularity of their vinyl & CD titles at reasonable prices at the retail level.

 

85 views and 1 response

Not everyone at once!
Steve, in particular (if you read this), what has determined (in the past or will in the future) the price you charge for your gold discs?

 

Fair Enough

 

I never had a problem forking out $30 for a title that I am very familiar with (Aqualung, Original Masters, the CCR discs, Metallica, Queensryche).

But I will admit that it wasn't until I found some of the titles for around $15 at MFAS that I "took the plunge" on titles that I knew NOTHING about. I tried lots of Jazz titles, and I am glad that I was able to do this, because I know that I would have never been willing to spend $30 for a Sonny Rollins CD (mostly because I had never heard Sonny Rollins, but also because I gotta eat.)

However, since hearing some of the jazz titles "on the cheap", I have paid "ebay bendover prices" to get several other DCC gold CDs. (Hey, I had to have those Miles Davis CDs!) I even paid $25 for the Phoebe Snow gold CD even though I had never heard a single song by her. It is just impossible to pass up a DCC gold CD when I have it in my hands!

The point of all this rambling? I am not sure, but I guess that I am much more willing to risk $20 on an unknown title than $30.

I would be willing to pay $100 for a Hoffman mastered "Heavy Horses" by Jethro Tull.

Tony

 

I think for some people if it costs more than it must be better. I don't buy many Sundazed releases because I am not a much of a fan of the titles they are currently doing(if they do any of the Little Feat catalog that could change). So for me the price of a Sundazed record is a non issue. I purchased many DCC and MoFi titles at full retail, and recently way more than retail. I think the market for a DCC or MoFi release has always been driven by quality (and maybe a little mystique in the case of MoFi 'cause the sound wasn't always there). I don't think anyone selling vinyl or even a gold cd could lower prices enough to get the Samgoody crowd.

 

Hell, have you ever seen their prices?
Anyway, my original thought was, with DCC & (obviously) MFSL struggling with profits (an assumption I've made??) maybe they could sell more for less=price 1/3 lower and sell 3 times as many. Of course, there is no way of knowing how many more you'd sell at any particular price point but the "MFSL pricing" doesn't seem to be working very well for anyone (as far as I know).
This has been bugging me lately and I was curious if there was some sort of stipulation when DCC put out a disc that they HAD to charge a certain amount (so as to not make the standard copy obsolete).

 

So there we have it the unseemly dark underbelly of reissue pricing.

 

Thought so. Nevermind. I'll just have to get a job some day!

 

I've got an idea. How about "student pricing" like software makers have!
We'll pay $21.79 ea.

 

I guess that would depend on your definition of student. My uncle has a PhD from CalTech. A great thinker when he couldn't refund his post doc work he nearly ended up homeless. He is now a janitor in a hotel. Always had his nose in a book. Zero interpersonal skills can't get a better job 'cause he's alway day dreaming. I know he would love to go back to school for any thing. Just as long as he didn't have to interact with people.

 

So that's what I have to look forward to. Me and my Highway 61 CD laying under a cardboard box!

 

It's just as easy to be homeless with a BA and you wouldn't have all those student loans.

 

My BS cost me $60,000 whereas I get paid to be in the PhD program. Not much, mind you, but it sure beats paying $1200 for an introductory Algebra class. That's 40 DCC golds, if my math doesn't fail me.

 

WOW!!! I went to a small public school. I crammed 4 years of college into 6 years of my life. I had a lot of fun though. 60K wow, I haven't spent that much on my stereo.

 

I am just getting into the world of aluminum discs that Steve has done work on. Some of these CD's beat regular CD pricing, compare $11 to $17.

I sort of tripped across this in the discography on this website (thanks again HZ!). To wit:

In the DCC Artist Album section all the catalog No. with prefix GZS appear to be Gold CD.

However, items with the prefix DZS are aluminum CD's. If you can find them, stuff like Nilsson's Harry, Willie Nelson's Me and Paul, Merle Haggard's That's the Way Love Goes. [BTW, HZ, Nelson In the Jailhouse... is DZS -198]. And don't forget all those MCA releases, like The Mamas and Papas 16 of Their Greatest Hits MCAD-5701.

At MediaPlay.com they note a March 13 release of Dave Mason's It's Like You Never Left, DZS-199. (What do they know that we don't know?!)

Remastered for this disc by Steve Hoffman. That's all I need to see. The sound is great, and I am turning on to all sorts of music at these low prices. Bluegrass, cajun, cuban, country, peruse the discography, artists and various artists. At these prices I'm going hog wild.

So maybe an audiophile label can do volume on well-priced aluminum CD's remastered by a specific engineer (certainly in Steve's case!). How about that, support quality releases by specific engineers, on aluminum, and price those to go? I'll buy!

Maybe a lot of volume on an increasing number of quality aluminum releases, a real push in this category, can help sustain Gold CD releases?

 

IIRC, MoFI silver (aluminium) CDs were less than $20. Then apparently they wanted to raise prices, and so they made Gold CDs, because people would immediately recognize that Gold is more valuable than silver

 

Gold Versus Aluminum

Regarding the post by Petzi
(IIRC, MoFI silver (aluminium) CDs were less than $20. Then apparently they wanted to raise prices, and so they made Gold CDs, because people would immediately recognize that Gold is more valuable than silver )


I always wondered if the music on the gold discs would sound any different from one pressed on aluminum if all other factors were the same.Say the difference between some of the MFSL aluminum releases that were then pressed on gold(Rick Wakeman for one).Or is it just a marketing ploy to raise the price.I know about oxidation and reflectivity but does it REALLY make a difference in what we hear?
Anyone have any thoughts or done any comparison listening?

 

ListenUp,

Gold, silver, it really doesn't matter. The bottom line always is the mastering. For example, you mention Rick Wakeman. The aluminum MFSL sounds incredible! It's made in Japan. The same album on the gold cd UD2, made in the US. SUCKS!

The DCC's are much more consistant although I know that Steve takes a little more care when doing the gold cd's.

Hope this helps ya!

 

I"LL AGREE WTH DAVE ON THIS:

After hearing the Steve Hoffman standard "WHO's NEXT"

 

There really isn't any reason for a gold CD to sound different from an aluminium one, providing they use the same master, pressing process and stamper. Any changes in the recording, mastering or manufacturing process can effect the final product but the reflective coating shouldn't make any difference.
One of the stated reasons that MoFi started using gold coatings was to avoid the dreaded "CD Rot" that apparently occured with some very early discs. I personally have never seen it but it was well documented in the trade magazines back in the olden days.

I think that when MoFi started making CD's they needed a way to make thier product stand-out from the standard issues and to justify the additional costs of remastering and licensing major artists / titles for relatively short production runs. I assume that DCC saw this as a fairly small but profitable niche and decided to get in the game first with some of thier early aluminium titles and then began to license and remaster specifically for the audiophile market. Once Sony, BMG (RCA) and Universal / MCA saw the sort of profit that could be made reselling thier back catalog titles a second time as gold CD's they also got involved by releasing a sampling of thier popular titles. Unfortunetly, the remstering on these discs is just not up to the standards of the early MoFi or the DCC discs so most of these titles, while collectable, are not particularly better sounding than the aluminium releases. Bottom line: It's the music that counts!

 

Curiously, JVC's XRCDs, which are priced at $30+ (U.S.) at many places, are aluminium rather than gold. Unlike their audiophile-label counterparts, JVC reportably decided that gold plating doesn't effect the sonics. I wonder what others think about this. Does the surface plating improve the longevity & the sonics? Also, would you spend around $30 for an "audiophile" LP that wasn't pressed on heavy vinyl?

 

A great benefit about the "gold" CD's is that there are no "pitts" and therefore will make the job of the CD player easier and more accurate in reading the digital info (less error-correction aproximation). I wonder what Steve's 'Who's Next' would sound like if it was on a gold CD?

Todd