A few years back Tower Records adopted an almost zero profit price point for cd singles to help push the format. I think they were "making" about ten or fifteen cents over wholesale. This was, of course, predicated by an actual price reduction from the record companies so they really were able to make a little bit on them. Mostly they considered it a way to help artists on the charts and pull customers into the store. 45rpm singles were similarly priced back in the day. Someone somewhere is still making some cash on these things. Once you get over 5000 copies a fully wrapped cd with a nice booklet costs about a dollar to produce. I can betcha the artists are getting less than ten cents per single... I wonder who's getting the money. I was thinking about buying a new copy of Chill Out the other day and found a copy... for $14.99!!! It's criminal. I bet in real dollars artists are getting less money per cd than they were getting for lps at the end of their life. Remember those days? A brand new release was full price of about $10. Now since 1991 or so I really don't think the value of the dollar has dropped by half yet a new release is $20. That's insane. Especially when you consider how much cheaper it is to press a cd is than an lp. In the event that any of you get offered a recording contract, get a good lawyer. Don't sign ANYTHING until you've spent hours pouring over it with a good entertainment lawyer. This is especially true of major labels but even a lot of the little guys are as bad are worse. One item that often appears even now is a "new media royalty reduction"... for cds! This is often more than a 15% reduction in the royalties paid to artists, even though more likely than not cd is the ONLY format their album will be released on. There is also a zero royalties clause for samplers. Rounder records is notorious for their use of this clause. They sell tens of thousands of samplers at super cheap rates and none of the artists make a penny. Admittedly the exposure is good and the money allows the company to expand but I think the artists would be better served if their cds were priced lower and the compilations were priced a little higher and they got paid for all of it. Rounder doesn't produce any electronic music so I'm getting way offbase here. Most electronic labels are started with compilations the songs for which they pay standard mechanical royalties so artists do make some money. Your favorite windbag, Alan Evil p.s. I'd like to apologize to both of you that asked about the lack of live shows this weekend. I've been remastering some material from the 80's (not mine but still a huge project) and fighting with the internet in trying to get a mailing list up and running and such. I promise I'll do a new show this weekend. I'm leaving to work now but I've got the ShoutCast thing running if you'd like to hear stuff from the last three months, over six hours of live mixes: www.ifpr.homestead.com/ifprradio.html Institute for Psychic Reform Change your Mind www.psychicreform.com