The cost of LP's and CD's - an observation

I do most of my used LP buying on eBay for convenience. In my area (Pasco County, Florida) the Goodwills and thrift shops have sparse collections to hunt through. Not like where I previously lived - Fairfield County, CT (wealthiest part of a wealthy state). I hardly ever buy any new (reissue) LPs. Too expensive!

I shop at a local "antique store" for CDs. They were $2.99 when I first started shopping there (about 3 years ago). Then, they were lowered to $1.99, later 99 cents, now 50 cents. That’s not deflation, just supply and demand. Every thrift store in town, even Goodwill Stores, sells CDs for a dollar!

The decline of CD prices and the rise of LP prices are due to lots of factors but here are a few of them.

CD pricing followed a typical pattern for any new technology. At first they were expensive because manufacturing efficiencies hadn't been fully realized and because they were novel. New techy stuff is expensive at first and then comes down in price.

Besides manufacturing prices coming down there is excess capacity in the CD industry. Excess capacity leads to lower margins and lower prices.

Many catalog CDs have a renegotiated royalty formula to help the record label put out the CD at a lower price to attract sales.

Vinyl LPs were mass produced when CDs were a new thing. The plants were turning out zillions of records often at low quality. I've got hundreds of LPs that I bought in the 70's and 80's that are just awful - noisy, clicks, pops, you name it. I tried returning them a few times only to find that the new copy was just as bad. My experience agrees with corelli - I viewed CDs as a definite improvement in SQ when they came out.

Nowadays Vinyl is the boutique format. The records are made with more care and are of much better quality than they were 50 years ago. LPs cannot be mass produced in the same way as CDs so the manufacturing cost is higher. The surviving pressing plants care about the quality of their records and they understand that if they produce garbage they will destroy their market.

Lastly, the bands and labels consider LPs to be a high margin item. Vinyl sales are often a major source or revenue for modern bands. Money from streaming (unless you are Beyonce) is insignificant. If you buy  LPs from your favorite musicians you are genuinely contributing to their survival.

BTW, I have hundreds of CDs that I bought for under $5. There are lots of places to hunt for cheap CDs with urban record stores being a good place to start.

At least with streaming the artist may see some money. A used CD confers 0 money to the artist.

This is a great time to buy CD’s, at least at the many Goodwill locations here in AZ. Maybe some people donating their collections because they gone to streaming, and I’m sure that in the retirement communities like Sun City they are donated by surviving relatives. Whatever the case, it is an amazing place to get great music of all genres. They have now dropped their prices from $2.29 per CD to $.99. Maybe turnover wasn’t fast enough.
Most CD’s are mint, especially if they are classical. I buy things that I am only vaguely interested in because I can’t leave it behind for the price. I bought three yesterday that would have cost over $110.00 when I checked them out on Amazon for $4.50!