Plea for Cheaper CDs

I’m currently pondering the current state of the music industry, particularly the distribution of music here in the third world particularly and the entire world in general. I think music—no, I believe—music is too expensive.

CDs are on average PHP 400 which is around USD 7. That has been their price since my first CD purchase in 1995. Back then the price was understandable. Cassettes were around PHP100 which were around USD 4. The peso was at 25 to a dollar back then. The price increase with the new medium was understandable. The album art was bigger. The sound quality was much higher. You could skip songs instantly. The CDs themselves were more durable.

The same price disparity was seen again when DVD began to replace VHS. Skip forward 10 years and here we are with DVDs at below PHP 200, sometimes going as low as PHP 150 for two DVDs.

That’s the value of entertainment—around PHP 150. That’s the price of a movie ticket, a good, hearty fast-food meal, several days worth of prepaid cell-phone load.

Aside from pricing, the music industry should also follow the movie industry’s other distribution method: home rentals. Movies can be rented since as far back as I can remember. Why not CDs? The Japanese have been doing this for years. Why not the rest of the world?

Of course there’s always the piracy factor. The solution is not just stricter laws and better law enforcement but more affordable pricing as well. If it’s cheap enough, the true music lover would pick the original product.