They are slapping down recording costs, and they definitely less than in the nineties. However the marketing costs remain very high. I'm a full time music produ

They are slapping down recording costs, and they definitely less than in the nineties. However the marketing costs remain very high. I'm a full time music producer and have my own studio. That cut some of my out of pocket costs but the true cost of my album (it's eight songs) is probably $30-40k which I experience as opportunity cost (i.e. I'm not working on paying projects) and I stretched it over a couple of years. It's not a rational use of resource for me by any measure, I'm just obsessed. The cost of production can categorized in different ways; time, money, talent, effort. At a certain point one seems to reach a limit that can't be breached. Music is organized information, it takes a lot of fighting against entropy just to make it competent, never mind good. It's like some kind of law of information entropy dynamics! Seriously, if you compare any commercial release against the ocean of self produced music (like you find on MySpace)the amature stuff is not listenable and the commercial releases are, and they cost a lot.