What Happened to CD Clubs & Stores to Buy CDs?

The recording industry's greed caused this demise. If they had reduced prices instead of increasing them (after all, a CD costs 50 cents to make), as would have made sense after twenty years of manufacturing this medium, places like Tower and others would have continued to exist and make money.

Prices went the opposite way. For a number of years, full line CDs were $14.99. There was a time when EMI, I believe, reduced full line prices to $12.99. The problem was that the other labels didn't want to follow suit. After that, we slowly saw a decline in CD sales, and then a price increase upward, where full line at Tower were $16.99 to $18.99.

Tower used to have great sales: $11.99-$12.99 for full line, $8.99-$9.99 for mid line, $5.99-$6.99 for budget line. This spurred sales, and people bought and bought. But, for the greedy labels, this wasn't good enough, so, over time, these sales became less frequent. Tower would have a January storewide sale where everything was on sale, even imports and small labels that never went on sale.

Like every aspect of our great economy/society, it's all disintegrating and nobody gives a damn.

Good comments here. While I agree that I miss the store brousing to uncover new music, I have found that "discovery process" has been replaced with websites like Rapsody, CD Baby, Yourmusic.com and Amazon to where I can customize a search and it is as effective as my days of combing the stores (that are now gone). I still visit our local Barnes & Noble once a month to scan the CD inventory, I typically find at least one new artist to investigate. I just can't keep up with all the new (good) stuff out there.

I guess I'm lucky to livei in Austin. We still have a wealth of stores to choose from. World-famous Waterloo Records & Video, End Of An Ear(ex 33 1/3 guys), Cheapo, Backspin, Half-Price Book Store, Antone's, CD Warehouse...and I still buy tons of stuff online. Sometimes the used deals on Amazon are insane. Great prices! I totally admit to still driving down the street to Waterloo and Cheapo and htting the "recently arrived" cd's and vinyl.

BMG Music Club is still around and worth checking out. They are at www.bmgmusic.com

Another good place for brousing new music is the All Music Guide site, all reviews and bio's are link so you can run off on tangents forever! They have a newsletter subscription as well, for weekly new release news.