I could be completely wrong, but it came to my head and I got excited.

Recently, we've seen a HUGE surge in popstars and at the same time, CD prices are ridiculous. Large CD prices means large profit. Large profit means more money to spend. I would assume (and I expect rightly so) that most of a record labels money would go towards manufacturing popstars and I would assume again that popstars work well in the struggle for large profit.

Some of you might have already seen or known where I was going, but just in case:
Download music instead of giving your money to the industry and they can't afford to manufacture their big money makers, and make more money.

This might explain why the industry in general hasn't taken an arguably smart move and reduced CD prices, which may bring more people back to buying their music.

Waddayathink?

My god, you have discovered that money talks and that it makes the world go 'round.

The industry is blaming p2p networks because they can.

absolutely... 100% for sure... because when the record industry starts losing profits the first people they cut is NOT going to be the struggling artist who actually tries to make valid music... nope...

not every band on a major label is manufactured shit... and who pays for the production and studio time for most bands? who pays for the promotion so that you actually hear about them beyond the word of mouth?

even if the 'valid artist' only gets $0.25 per cd sale while the company gets $19.75 that's still a LOT of incentive for the company to keep that person around and making music...

i still download music... but if i actually see the music i like on a store shelf i do pick it up...

A lot of decent CDs are now available for arond £10 here... it's pretty cool, and it's mostly the lesser, alternative labels that are doing it.

i agree...

I really do think the music industry is making p2p worse for themselfs. People dont buy CDs so they raise the price...??? The whole reason people download music is because its free... So if they raise the price, how is that suposed to make the non-buyer want to start buying agian, . In a way they are doing themselfs in.

But on the other hand you have the people who dont know what a computer is and could never figure out how to download music.

if CD prices went down, i would begin to think about buying music.

And also I think this whole, apple music store/napter music store is a great idea. People pay for the music they like....so instead of buying a whole CD, somebody can pick out the music they like from it and download it for .99$....hence.....music artist will not get away with making just one good somng and have all the others on the CD suck butt.

I would imagine that this would make some better music for us to listen to.

Exactly. It's the artists you should be supporting who suffer when you don't buy their music, not the big stars.

The thing is, the major record labels are so ridiculously rich, actually having enough money to make pop stars is probably not a concern of theirs. The guys at the top are still going home in limos either way.

hey, I got $13.86 in the mail the other day! Yeah! (from some record companies, or the RIAA, I believe)

What'd you get it for?

It's a settlement in a class action suit. Every record buyer in the country is entitled to some of the take.