Society is really screwed up now.

[Perndog]

It costs around a buck to manufacture package a CD, and the people who do the manufacturing need to make a profit, too, so packaging deductions run in the 3-5 dollar range.

A lot of money does go to fat rich men, not to mention artists who are already loaded, but there are also the aforementioned manufacturers and the producers, publishers, managers, etc. etc. etc. that also get cuts. In the case of many of these people, they are not rich and their only source of income is from record sales - it doesn't often matter which band is selling, so long as units move - so they get screwed the most when people don't buy records. Bands don't get hurt if a few thousand people download their album instead of buying it, but that few thousand multiplies in the eyes of a publishing company or a recording studio that works with several different artists.

Money does not follow from skill. I worked at a dinky little club last spring, and I saw some phenomenal musicians and excellent songwriters go through, some of whom were even excellent businesspeople, who made a flat $25 there. If being a skilled musician was what it took to make you successful, there would be a few million more rich rock stars out there instead of 40-year-old washouts who played fantastic music for decades and never got signed. I can't tell you everything you need to make it in the business, because otherwise I'd already be famous. But skill alone won't do it, even accompanied with charisma and hard work.

As for that last paragraph, there have always been plenty of quality records available, and if you think there are too many CDs with only one good single apiece, you're not looking in the right places. In those cases, it's rarely the performer's ("artist's") fault, because the albums like that are contrived by the record companies and the performers don't generally write the songs.

And CD prices will not be lowered. Enough people buy them right now that the record companies know price is not the issue. Furthermore, no intelligent consumer buys full-priced albums from stores like Sam Goody. You can get the major-label ones for $15 at Target, and if they're not big enough for Target to carry them, I can almost guarantee you that you can order them from the record labels themselves for $9-$14 apiece. $15 is not an unreasonable price to pay for 40-70 minutes of music plus liner notes, and if you care about the artists, keep in mind that their cut is a percentage of the total retail price minus the packaging deduction. This means that bands will make more money if you buy CDs for $15 than if the prices drop, and thus more people will be willing and able to make music and be successful at it.