The price of music

[paulfromcamden]

It’s a but daft when new vinyl is £25 and the CD a tenner or less.
Back in 1987 I recall paying £12 for a CD but the same album on vinyl was £5.99.

Yes I'm just about old enough to remember when CDs were more expensive. I think CDs have basically got really cheap - they're cheap to manufacture and, aside from the slightly older classical market, I suspect there's a limit to how much you can charge for them now.

I just bought a used CD on a whim for £3 inc delivery. The same price as half a lager in pubs round here.

 

[Big Tabs]

Yes I'm just about old enough to remember when CDs were more expensive. I think CDs have basically got really cheap - they're cheap to manufacture and, aside from the slightly older classical market, I suspect there's a limit to how much you can charge for them now.

I just bought a used CD on a whim for £3 inc delivery. The same price as half a lager in pubs round here.

Depends what you are purchasing.

I bought 2 new c.d’s yesterday from Amazon. Both about £15 each.

Second hand c.d’s can be very expensive.

As always, depends what it is, and how many copies are in the market, and how sort-after it is.

 

[zippy]

my earliest memories of buying LP's (around mid-sixties) was that they cost 6s.8d.
Todays equivalent would be about £15 **, which is the sort of price that a CD currently costs so really not much change.

** https://www.measuringworth.com/index.php

 

[RJohan]

When I was a wee lad everybody was recording from the radio on to RtR tapes (I still have one in the vault). A bit like Spotify, only you couldn't choose

Some singles where sold, I think, but as they where bought by girls we 'serious' pop listening boys ignored them.

 

[gavreid]

VAT was only 8% in the 70s too, 20% today.

 

[kingston12]

I first started buying albums seriously in 1977. I seem to recall they were priced around £3.49 to £3.99. Shops such as WH Smiths, Boots etc usually had the top 20 albums at a pound off. Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" at £2.49 type of thing.

Singles might have been £1.50, not such good value but my memory fades.

In my little town, cue Simon and Garfunkel, there weren't any second hand record shops, they came later. Whether this was unique to the place where I grew up or represented throughout the country, I couldn't say.

The point is, in those days, records and cassettes had real value. Even if it was by an artist you weren't keen on. Maybe it was because I was buying records from pocket money.

Fast forward to this very present day. I just saw Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" on CD in a local charity shop for 20p. Who could have guessed it?

Very similar to my experience in the mid-80s. Woolworths, WH Smith’s and Boots were the options in my small town, with a single independent shop opening a bit later. I don’t remember supermarkets selling music back then.

Price-wise, I remember the big jump in price between buying and album on CD compared to record or cassette. I bought more CDs and cassettes in those days, and always rather wish I’d bought records. I seem to remember it costing £5-7 for an album on record or cassette, and double for the CD.

I always remember the singles being half price they first week they were released and then up to full price once they’d got into the chart the next week. 7”/cassette singles were 99p and CD singles £1.99 for that first week.

Travelling to larger towns would always involve a visit to Our Price, Sam Goody or an independent, and trips to London or other large towns had a lot more big names.

I moved to Kingston upon Thames in the 90s and there were about 10 records shops here in those days, just a shame as a student that I didn’t have much money to spend in them!

 

[paulfromcamden]

I moved to Kingston upon Thames in the 90s and there were about 10 records shops here in those days, just a shame as a student that I didn’t have much money to spend in them!

I used to catch the bus into Kingston as a teenager in the late eighties to blow the cash I'd made working evenings in the supermarket - two Our Prices, Beggars Banquet, the imaginatively name Record Shop followed by a stop off in Books, Bits and Bobs for comics and Metallica t-shirts. Happy days!

 

[gavreid]

I used to catch the bus into Kingston as a teenager in the late eighties to blow the cash I'd made working evenings in the supermarket - two Our Prices, Beggars Banquet, the imaginatively name Record Shop followed by a stop off in Books, Bits and Bobs for comics and Metallica t-shirts. Happy days!

You're just a little younger than me but it was a £1 return bus ride for me - HMV in Coventry and then Virgin too, a bit later - we went by ourselves from about aged 10. There were Woolies, Boots and Smiths but they were largely a waste of time. I remember after the IRA pub bombings we were banned from going shopping that Christmas after an explosion at the Coventry telephone exchange, I can't remember, 74?

 

[MUTTY1]

Just bought a cd from America posted for £5.99. The same thing was a few pennies more in the UK. Curious to see how long it takes and if the vender bothers. Then I realised he’s based in Kentucky…. Won’t complain if he says it got lost in the upper atmosphere.

 

[matt j]

Where new music is concerned I would say it has always been relatively expensive, as a teenager I can well remember the dilemma of picking an album from one artist or a best of or compilation instead. That is as a music lover, my friends didn't buy music at all.

It is only as an adult with disposable income that I have had the luxury of buying multiple single albums from individual artists, and even now I have spent a lot of money on music that regular people would find a bit daft.

 

[kingston12]

I used to catch the bus into Kingston as a teenager in the late eighties to blow the cash I'd made working evenings in the supermarket - two Our Prices, Beggars Banquet, the imaginatively name Record Shop followed by a stop off in Books, Bits and Bobs for comics and Metallica t-shirts. Happy days!

I remember Books, Bits and Bobs! It was there until relatively recently, but it's now some type of restaurant/take-away as is the way of things these days.

The main shop that surprised me in 90s Kingston was Tower Records. That place was huge and I couldn't understand how even a relatively large commercial centre like Kingston could support that on top of large Virgin and HMV branches and all of the others that you mention. Tower always seems quite expensive in comparison as well.

Things were different back then though as big towns like Kingston were the main regional shopping centres for most in those days before they were cut down to size by the mega-malls like Westfield and Bluewater and then of course the Internet.

It's all very different in Kingston now of course. Only two independents remain and both are relatively tucked away so a lot of visiting shoppers probably don't realise that there are any records shops here at all.

 

[kingston12]

Where new music is concerned I would say it has always been relatively expensive, as a teenager I can well remember the dilemma of picking an album from one artist or a best of or compilation instead. That is as a music lover, my friends didn't buy music at all.

It is only as an adult with disposable income that I have had the luxury of buying multiple single albums from individual artists, and even now I have spent a lot of money on music that regular people would find a bit daft.

That's exactly the same for me. A couple of my friends when I was younger bought a similar amount of music as I did, but I don't know anyone who even buys music at all any more, certainly not in volume.

I do find that special editions, especially those of single albums have become much more lavish in recent years. I recently bought the 30th anniversary deluxe edition of Metallica's Black Album. It's lovely, but ridiculous really, and I certainly can't imagine many albums getting that type of treatment for the 30th anniversary up until quite recently.

 

[Orbe Chaser]

There were definitely second hand record shops in Sheffield in the '60's, Rare & Racy & Violet Mays were two of them. I am sure there were more too, I can see the locations in my head but can't remember the names unfortunately.
Plenty of new record shops too, Bradley's & strangely The Co-op being the most popular, along with Wilson Peck. They all had listening booths, you could barely move in there on Saturday mornings. Great memories.