I’ve always been a little curious how the money from the price of a CD gets divvied up, and I recently found something that gave some indication. Apparently on a US$15.99 CD it breaks down as follows,
$0.17 Musicians’ unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists’ royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead
Interesting.