To big to fail? What road are we headed down?


Anyone else irritated about the way CD's are packaged? For the longest time I have expressed my dissatisfaction to record companies about the way CD discs are sealed for the American market. It's a hassle unwrapping the damn things, and never mind the stickers with impossible to remove glue stuck to many jewel cases. Back twenty plus years ago in Europe I saw the better way CD's were being packaged, and the disparity of common sense in CD packaging between overseas CD packaging and American CD packaging has not changed. It reminds me of so many things in America - that things are done for the convenience of the manufacturer, not for the consumer. I'll extend my grievances with buying CD's in America further by mentioning the way CD's are often shipped here domestically: they are shipped in various packaging, but usually in something that does little to discover that yet another of the CD cases is cracked. I know over many years of CD buying that this has actually got worse in America, not better. With declining sales of music CD's you'd think manufacturers and sellers would do their best to help the buyer - not ostracize them further from buying CD's. I know of the CD's I receive, between 30 and 35% arrive with damage to the jewel case, and I buy from many sellers. Interesting that CD/SACD/etc. discs I buy from Japan (and Hong Kong) rarely arrive with any damage, and they travel much further to reach me. It may sound unfair to some of you, but I find a general lackadaisical, laziness in many aspects of the supplier to their fellow American consumer in many areas - and the aforementioned problems with CD purchasing is but one small area of a much larger problem in this country. I always shake my head at the ethnocentrism I encounter daily in our country, because frankly in many areas in this country we have no reason to be so feeling so superior to others who try harder to please others.
byegolly
No one seems to have mentioned that CD packaging prevents removal of a CD from the case by shoplifters - not to mention raising the price of the CD itself.

Merchandise packaging changes as much as anything are a reaction to theft loses by retailers.
Andrewscag's suggestion is right on: if you open the side of the box opposite the tape, and twist and pull on the two sides of the case a bit, the tape almost always comes off easily in one piece. Do try it! When a friend told me about this, it changed my life: I used to be a curmudgeon of digital, cursing every region of the country (including the one in which I lived) while picking haplessly at the jewel case tape with all manner of dangerously sharp household instruments. Now, people stop me on the street to ask me what I'm smiling about. The jewel case tape, I say, the jewel case tape! :) John