Interesting but not entirely convincing. One can't look at the cost of simply reproducing CD's alone to explain their price. Record companies have to market their acts now more than ever; a cost which is escalating rather than reducing and which is built into the price of the CD's we buy. Of the many acts they sign there are a higer percentage of failures than successes - Kerbdog for instance ran up a $1.5 million debt recording their second album (I'm getting this from a recent Sunday Tribune article) and this amount was eventually written off as a bad loss.
I wouldn't suggest for a second that record companies are benevolent entities uninterested in profit - they're not. But to suggest that they control both the format in which we listen to music and keep the price of said music artificially high needs to be made with better care and stronger evidence.
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