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Comment by anthomtb | Hacker News Reader

>music pricing.

For sure. My memory of those days is getting hazy, but IIRC CD's from top artists were going for $15-$16 in the late 90's. Maybe $12 if you were lucky. Considering inflation and that you might only want two of the twelve songs on the disk, you could easily be paying $10/song (in 2023 dollars). Big chunk of change especially for a pre-teen or teenager.

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>IIRC CD's from top artists were going for $15-$16 in the late 90's.

That's because the labels were engaging in pricefixing and blacklisting retailers who did not go along with their scheme. People suspected it but nothing really happened until the FTC stepped in.

https://archive.is/3thhx

Even then the result was basically a slap on the wrist and most people had begun using P2P instead.

I miss what.cd. It was such a great way of discovering new music back before there were algos recommending stuff to you 24/7.

I also miss what so much

Like always, communities reform. There’s a Swiss site now that I’ll have to leaved “REDacted” that is just as good if not better than what.cd

I seem to recall typically being able to buy major CDs in the $14 range in ~1995, but the expensive stores (Tower Records) charged $18.99 and up which is very clear in my mind. That's more than $37 in today's money.

Can't imagine anyone putting anything other than pirated mp3s in 95%+ of mp3 players ever produced.

So would it be fair to say that Apple built the iPod to take advantage of music piracy?

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