MAIN » ARTICLESBuying a CD is a lot like making love to a beautiful woman.
For a while now I have been more aware of CD and DVD prices than I ever was in the past - as I'm sure many other people have been too. With online shops such as play.com and cdwow.com, prices have been falling quickly especially with DVDs due to the fierce competition. Even the highstreet stores are now beginning to realise the only way they can maintain sales is to cut their own costs, explaining why HMV seem to have a new sale every time you visit for no apparent reason.
My particular field of interest was in the cost of a brand new CD album. The supermarkets have always been cheaper than the highstreet - for sake of argument by highstreet I mean HMV and Virgin - but have been largely ignored by consumers, probably because of choice and convenience when in town of buying from one of the above. A year ago today I studied the prices of one album across the stores, which had been released that week and going straight into the charts. These were the prices of not only that album, but the whole chart collection at that time:
Sainsburys - £9.99
Tesco - £11.99
HMV - £13.99
Virgin - £14.99
Amazon.co.uk - £11.99 (+ delivery)
In the case of CDs rather than DVDs, the highstreets have been slow if not completely unresponsive to changes in what people expect to pay. Virgin have lowered their price to around the same as HMV although the two are both inconsistent with chart pricing and you can expect to pay anything between £10.99 and £13.99 for a new album. HMV for example consider pricing an album at £9.99 as putting it in the sale - Permission to Land by The Darkness is one of those currently on "sale". Things changed about 6 months ago when Tesco, who had for so long been £2 more expensive than Sainsburys (the cheapest location), undercut their biggest rival by 1p changing their CD price to an amazing £9.98. This stayed the same for a long time without anybody making a counter-reduction.
Internet sites, such as play.com started to become more well-known mostly through word-of-mouth and adverts on the back of popular magazines such as Empire. There strategy was to capture consumers by offering the lowest prices on DVDs with free delivery - removing the barrier which many people had against Amazon. A delivery charge that once meant buying on the Internet would end up being the same if not more as buying in the highstreet because of delivery costs, plus a longer waiting time. However, you can now buy some albums such as Room On Fire by The Strokes for only £7.99 with free delivery - the cheapest price anywhere for that album, as long as you are prepared to wait.
Only last week after Tesco had cut some of their CD prices to below £9.00, Sainsburys reacted by reducing their own to around £9.80, a small but noteable change which will probably excite some people into buying more music when doing the food shopping. So considering all the recent activity this changes the CREA (Current Rough Estimated Average) price to something like this:
HMV - £12.99
Virgin - £12.99
Sainsburys - £9.80
Play.com - £9.00
Cdwow.com - £8.99
Tesco - £8.50
Amazon.co.uk - £8.49 (+ delivery)
In no case am I suggesting these will be the prices for an album at each place, there are always variations, but this is a fairly accurate representation of what you should expect to pay for a chart cd. To check this out I will check the prices for the new album 'Three' by the sugababes, because they look nice.
HMV - £12.99
Virgin - £9.99
Sainsburys - £9.79
Play.com - £9.99
Cdwow.com - £8.99
Tesco - £8.89
Amazon.co.uk - £8.99
In conclusion, buying a CD is a lot like making love to a beautiful woman because it's a lot more satisfying paying for something you can touch than it is getting it free over the Internet. "Cyber sex isn't that great." - Ryan Kent.
And remember everytime you illegally download an MP3, the RIAA kills a kitten.
Be safe, not sorry.
Written by Jay
My particular field of interest was in the cost of a brand new CD album. The supermarkets have always been cheaper than the highstreet - for sake of argument by highstreet I mean HMV and Virgin - but have been largely ignored by consumers, probably because of choice and convenience when in town of buying from one of the above. A year ago today I studied the prices of one album across the stores, which had been released that week and going straight into the charts. These were the prices of not only that album, but the whole chart collection at that time:
Tesco - £11.99
HMV - £13.99
Virgin - £14.99
Amazon.co.uk - £11.99 (+ delivery)
Internet sites, such as play.com started to become more well-known mostly through word-of-mouth and adverts on the back of popular magazines such as Empire. There strategy was to capture consumers by offering the lowest prices on DVDs with free delivery - removing the barrier which many people had against Amazon. A delivery charge that once meant buying on the Internet would end up being the same if not more as buying in the highstreet because of delivery costs, plus a longer waiting time. However, you can now buy some albums such as Room On Fire by The Strokes for only £7.99 with free delivery - the cheapest price anywhere for that album, as long as you are prepared to wait.
Only last week after Tesco had cut some of their CD prices to below £9.00, Sainsburys reacted by reducing their own to around £9.80, a small but noteable change which will probably excite some people into buying more music when doing the food shopping. So considering all the recent activity this changes the CREA (Current Rough Estimated Average) price to something like this:
Virgin - £12.99
Sainsburys - £9.80
Play.com - £9.00
Cdwow.com - £8.99
Tesco - £8.50
Amazon.co.uk - £8.49 (+ delivery)
Virgin - £9.99
Sainsburys - £9.79
Play.com - £9.99
Cdwow.com - £8.99
Tesco - £8.89
Amazon.co.uk - £8.99
Be safe, not sorry.
Written by Jay