My mom likes to complain about how, somewhere in the mid 80's, the standard size of all flour and sugar packages shrunk. The price of the packages remained the same, however, so the baking products (?) industry was basically counting on consumers not noticing the switch while increasing their profits, instead of ticking people off by raising prices.

Anyway, I was in Best Buy today picking out a CD as my "finishing thesis" prize, and the first thing that caught my eye was how cheap CDs are getting. Aside from Best Buy's 9.99 "New" or "Best Seller" specials, the average price on a CD appears to be 13.99, and is usually less if it's an older release.

But before I could get too excited, I noticed something else: the number of songs on a CD is shrinking rapidly. Several of the new CDs I picked up had only 10 songs on them. I checked my collection when I got home, and though I have a few older CDs with 11 songs, most have somewhere between 12-14. (The champion, at least for a regular album, is Tori Amos's Scarlet's Walk which has 18 tracks; granted several are very short, but at least two are over 4 minutes).

I was all set to buy Ryan Adams' new CD, too, until I discovered his (or his record company's) interesting strategy. His new album has been released as two separate CDs, each with an anemic seven tracks. Granted, Best Buy at least has priced each mini-album at 7.99, but that still means paying more than a buck for each track. It's cheaper to buy the songs one at a time on-line, where the going rate is .99.

My purchase? Dave Matthews' Some Devil, which not only had 14 tracks on the one regular CD, but came with a bonus CD of 5 live tracks, all at the standard 13.99 price. I'm not saying I will always buy CDs based on cost per track -- if there is something I really want. But when I have a number of things I kind of want, I'm definitely looking at value.

If only someone in the music industry would read my blog.