For the Record, CDs Are a Music Industry Scam

Just over 50 years ago, thousands, maybe millions, of Americans tuned in as Orson Welles and his Mercury Radio Theater read H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds” and became completely, hysterically convinced that Earth had been invaded by little green men.

We’re notorious suckers for hoaxes, a fact that seems somehow reinforced this week with news that several Music Plus record stores are dropping vinyl LPs entirely, largely because consumers have been so willingly conquered by another invading alien: the little silver compact disc.

This is the music industry’s great scam of the ‘80s.

I should preface this by saying I find nothing inherently evil about CD technology, the way there is with, say, nuclear fission reactors or men’s room Brut dispensers.

I’ve never subscribed to that audio-purist school of thinking that the digital-recording medium, because it converts sound to a string of numbers that is reconstituted as music, irritates the listener on a subliminal psychological level. No, Johnny Mathis was doing that years before digital.

Apart from the commercial side, which I’ll get to shortly, I like the fact that a CD theoretically will sound as good on the 1,000th play as it does on the first. And I respect the increased dynamic range that CDs can capture: 90 decibels, compared to 55 decibels maximum on vinyl LPs (us Motorhead fans will just have to keep waiting for some newer technology that can handle all 126 decibels that the “World’s Loudest Band” churns out).

And I’ll gladly admit to being frustrated at times by LPs’ inescapable hisses, pops and clicks. There’s nothing quite as thrilling as the absolute, dead silence of digital, something you notice instantly on the new CD version of “The Collected Wisdom of the Reagan Years.”

Plus, a CD will last forever, or for the life of the owner, or until record companies invent another configuration that’s even more profitable, whichever comes first.

And there’s the rub. The cost. I’d have no problem with CDs if they cost only a buck or two more than LPs.

Music Plus officials say they decided to drop LPs from 14 stores because they don’t chalk up enough sales to make them worth carrying. One store manager said he would be doing well if he sold five LPs a week. Under those circumstances, dropping the vinyl is just common business sense.

The problem here is that the record-buying public has been flimflammed into thinking that vinyl is a four-letter word.

Via the compact disc, the music industry has very cleverly come up with a way to entice otherwise sensible people into running to their nearest record store--er, music/video/accessory sales/rental/service center--to buy recordings they already own. And at twice the price.

And you thought those pyramid schemes were crazy?

Compact discs shouldn’t cost the $13 or $14 they usually fetch.

Originally they did, because the blank discs themselves cost between $3 and $4 back in 1983-84. By the time you added in disc mastering, plating, pressing, packaging and all the other expensive “ings” that go into compact disc manufacturing, like songwriting royalties to the artist, the shiny little buggers actually cost $7 to $10 just to press up.

Tack on even a modest profit margin for the record company, the distributor and the retailer, and a $15 price tag wasn’t particularly excessive here in the land of the golden fleeced.

But a lot has changed in the 6 years since CDs hit the market--except the prices.

The cost of the discs themselves has fallen dramatically, to somewhere between 75 and 90 cents each--not much more than the 50 to 60 cents it costs for a good blank piece of vinyl. Most of the rest of the costs that go into a CD are fairly close to those for records. Furthermore, instead of just a handful of high-tech plants that are capable of making CDs, there are dozens, maybe more than 100, CD manufacturing plants in the world now.

So why haven’t prices come down accordingly? There’s some validity in the claim that CDs with bonus tracks require higher royalty payments to the artist, whose cut is calculated based on the number of songs on the album.

But most CDs, especially in pop music, just duplicate the album song for song. And often, they leave out the lyric sheet or some of the artwork that comes with the LP. So who’s zooming who?

If a record sounds lousy but the same CD sounds great, it’s not the record’s fault. That just means the record company did a lousy job of manufacturing the record.

Furthermore, you have to wonder whether the industry realizes it may be cutting off its roots to spite its trunk. Sure, it’s a great racket--for now--to find music lovers willing and able to buy all their favorite old albums on new CDs. Heck, you don’t even have to promote this stuff--they’re already sold.

But that same money might be spent on records by new artists--you know, the nearly forgotten entity once reverently referred to as “the lifeblood of the industry.”

Maybe I’m wrong and there is enough consumer interest out there for the record business to survive simply by recycling old Phil Collins albums forever on a succession of new formats.

But when you wake up one day to discover that the invasion is over and that the alien has won the war of the disc formats, remember: You’ve been warned.