CM Mavens, Yesterday I was browsing at Tower Records when I was shocked
to notice that many Universal disks (formerly Polygram aka Decca, Phillips
etc...) were now selling at an outstanding Nineteen Dollars per disk.  The
disks seemed to be randomly distributed through the bins which would lead
me to believe that Tower was pricing new arrivals at the "new and improved"
price as they were entering the store.  The net result will be all
Universal disks selling at a higher price within a few months once all
the old disks are finally gone from the shelf.

Later on, I purchased a CD at one of Tower's competitors and noticed that
the Ondine disk I had just bought was priced at Seventeen dollars but this
store had Universals going for Eighteen dollars.  So the culprit would
appear to be Universal and not Tower Records but just to be sure I went to
Amazon.Com to do a little price comparing.  I compared the price of an EMI
Double Fforte disk with the price of a Decca "Duo" disk and found that the
EMI had a list price of $16.97 versus the Decca disk which had a list price
of $17.97.

In conclusion, Universal has jacked up their prices.  The costs of their
latest Mega-Merger is being passed on to you the consumer.  Expect Sony
and EMI to raise prices soon.

I now only buy full priced CDs when they are on sale because they are
just too expensive for me.  These days I mostly only buy midlines, budget
CDs and Naxos disks with most of my purchases coming from Naxos.  For me
I reach a point where I just refuse to pay a certain price for a product.
For me that point is around $15 per disk.  I made an exception for the new
Rautavaara disk but that was only because I knew that Ondine is almost
never on sale.  Perhaps Classical sales wouldn't be so low if the prices
on new releases weren't so high.

Steve M. (Northern Virginia)

 [Ah, and the death of the majors continues unabated.  -Dave]