Pizza's on the RIAA!!

In the mail today I received my check for that class-action lawsuit against the recording companies for years of price-gouging on CDs. The grand total?

$13.86.

All those times I inadvisably took my college meal or rent money and bought CDs, all those trips all over town on the release dates of filmscore albums, all the mileage over the years resulting in a CD collection numbering over 600 discs....fourteen bucks seems fair, I guess.

I have to admit, though, I was never really one to bitch about the price of CDs, although I'm very surprised that faced with the new competition of digital distribution, the RIAA's approach is to militantly protect its high price points as opposed to trying to price their own products more competitively. All that aside, though, I never figured sixteen bucks was a ridiculous amount for a full-price CD -- I mean, that's roughly two-and-a-half times the cost of a movie admission, and if I play a CD six times in the years I own it, well, those six hours of entertainment come in cheaper than going to the movies.

But then I look at things like the Naxos label, and I consider the fact that I can often buy a DVD of a film for less than the filmscore CD of the same film, and then I start getting a little annoyed. But still, only a little.