Ah, another old fart who remembers vinyl! Well, what I remember from those days was that record companies the unit cost of CDs, even early on, was cheaper than vinyl. From raw material, pressing, to larger size and weight adding to the price of shipping units, the overall cost of vinyl was higher. Early on, though, the CD burn process was error-prone, only 5% of CDs pressed were accepted. Around this time, the CDs started coming with questionaires. The survey started with questions about the current prices of vinyl records (~$7) and CDs (~$16). Then they had questions about how much better CDs were (sound, durability, etc.) The survey concluded with "questions" that said, based on how much better CDs are, how much do you think is fair to pay for CDs? Essentially, the record companies wanted to convince consumers they should pay more for a product that cost them less to produce, simply because the customer's satisfaction level was higher.

Bastids.