All of these albums were on sale for less than $3 per LP, and the normal price ranged from $3.70 to $4.59, brand new. The artists listed above were some of the heaviest hitters of that generation, and some of the music in this ad is still being played on radio stations today. The artists lived well (so well, in fact, that a few of them met an early demise), the record companies did well, and everything seemed to be be pretty copacetic in 1968. People could afford to buy albums, artists could afford to be artists.
Fast forward to the 21st century. Today, these same albums would be about $15 if you bought each one on a CD, and approximately $10 per album if you bought them as digital MP3 downloads. We read all the time about how the record companies are hurting, but artists like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison have been dead now for nearly 40 years and still selling music for them. Classic albums like these, whether the artists are dead or alive, are still selling, but they cost 2-3x what they cost then, even though the engineering costs and advances were paid long ago, and today's distribution costs (or even advertising, on this old music) are next to nothing. So what's the problem?
