Robot Child Vocalist Tells Us Why All CDs Should Cost $30

In a shifting ocean of streaming services and rampant piracy, a standardised price could go a long way to reclaiming the value of music, says Jeff Wortman, the vocalist for Melburnian rock outfit Robot Child.

The band, which also features renowned journalist and lawyer Waleed Aly, has just started selling its debut album, and so Wortman has put together a video, Band Merch Table, which cleverly, comedically and cutely portrays the ways in which streaming sites, torrent sites and other third parties determine what seem like arbitary prices for an artist's wares.

To provide some context for the clip - which you can watch below - Wortman has written a bit of background as to why he believes that all CDs should still be a flat, reasonable rate of $30.

The worst CD I own is Up, by Right Said Fred. It's a shocker. I'd use it as a drink coaster if the artwork wasn't so bad. I was so enamoured by the smash hit single I'm Too Sexy that I assumed the album would be a cavalcade of hits. It wasn't. Thirty bucks down the drain, lesson learnt.

From that moment on, I researched my CD purchases more carefully and avoided false dawns such as Aqua, Baha Men and The Crash Test Dummies. I deferred to Queen, Pink Floyd and Radiohead. A decade later, my CD collection was a masterpiece (another decade later, it ended up at the bottom of a cupboard somewhere).

CDs should still cost $30. Minimum. A handsome sum, reserved only for the most gifted artists. But we live in the era of The Pirate Bay and Spotify, where albums now cost anywhere between $0.00 and $0.02. There's nothing at stake any more. Reality TV show contestants now dilute our once great music collection.

If music was a burger and there was a flat fee of $15 every time you wanted one, how many Quarter Pounders would you buy? None. You'd go directly to that hipster joint and order a gourmet burger, hand-cut chips and some garlic aioli.

I've just started selling my band's debut album, Robot Child's One More War (gratuitous plug). Nobody knows what to pay for it. Some friends have been surprised I've asked for any remuneration, citing many other bands they know who give their CDs away simply "to get it out there". I'm charging $15. Perhaps that is too high. I cannot guarantee it is half as good as a Queen album, or 750 times better than Harrison Craig's cover album on Spotify (winner of The Voice 2013). Without a standardised price, we'll never know where it ranks.

Jeff Wortman is the lead singer of Robot Child and produces a very funny podcast and blog, Hash It Out.