Shoutbox

That's beside the point and only an example of missing costs (like merchandising, which goes together with promo, but is also needed to get a CD on the market, and I can think of more things...)

But what I wanna show is that such calculations (widely used by many people to show that a CD should costs almost nothing) are in fact very very incomplete and don't show the whole picture....

That doesn't change the fact that some CD's are indeed to expensive or that some stores charge to much money for some albums... But overall, a CD is priced very fairly... be sure of that....

Also, the arguments that selling a CD on the net is cheaper so why not use the same prices in the stores are wrong. If a CD is ONLY sold on the net then you cut out many costs (like store-profit, distributers-profits/costs, people to do the promo "on the street", etc...) So that's why CD's sold ONLY on the net are often cheaper. That doesn't mean they can sell them for the same price in the store because that includes more costs....

like some artists say themselfs: "If the song isn't officialy put on the net and you download it, then that's stealing our hard earned money. But if that illegal downloaded song makes you buy the CD, then that's great, but still stays a bit wrong... Downloading full CD's of the net is stupid and keeps us from earning the money to make more music." <= collective quote from some bands currently playing on Rock Werchter...