SbCl3 wrote:
Last night i was pondering how evil the RIAA is charging 15$ per CD when they only cost about a dollar (or less?) to press, how only another dollar goes to the artists, and the rest goes to the pockets of the people who work there.
Yeah, there is evil out there and people are probably charging too much for CDs, but you are way oversimplifying the costs. Most of that $15 goes into huge one-time costs for promoting the CD. And then retailers, distributors, labels, and artists get their cut of the margin. I've heard something like most albums lose money, and 1 in 5 are a big hit that pays for other losses. Same kind of economics for the retail electronic game industry.
So I'm wondering where the profits go for the 15$ DMOD CD (sold by an indepentent artist). At first I'd think Erik would be getting huge profits (which is great 
), but then I remember he said that to get profit he needed to sell 60 or more. How much do they cost to make and where is the money going?
It wasn't 60. I think I said 25. I've actually sold 21, although 10 of them are bundled with another product, which means I'd need to sell more than 25 to break even.
My economics, having nothing to do with retailers/distributors/labels and huge one-time promotion costs are much simpler. First off, you are getting the CD for $10. $5 is for shipping and handling to anywhere in the world, which including the cost of the mailer is about the right average price. The DMOD CDs cost about $3 apiece to manufacture. I bought a short run of 50, plus shipping costs and tax, coming to $188. I'm not going to look up all the numbers, but long-story-short, I am close to breaking even on the investment. If I pay myself $10/hour for the time spent putting the CD together, I probably won't break even until I sell a dozen more DMODs.
And it's not my goal to be an underdog. One of these days, I might release a product that wildly overcompensates me for the time and money spent on it. In that case, I will just grab up the money in a guilt-free way and not concern myself with justifying my good fortune.
-Erik
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The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
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