Downloads VS Hardcopy

I decided to do a bit of maths because I found that the average price of a album download on itunes was 7.99 and to buy the album in a shop or supermarket would be 8.99. A few of the downloaded albums now come with digital artwork which is ok for screen and I presume you can print it off if you like.

After finding that I went on to calculate how much it would cost you to print out the CD cover, booklet, and reverse cover. So I found out how many pages on average my printer cartridges would print and how much paper I would need. The results showed that it would cost approximately £2.68 to print one lot of artwork and have the music files burnt to CD. This not only costs £1.69 more than the hard copy, the quality can never be as good.

My calculations are shown below.
Printing
Each cartridge 370 pages
£8 each
6 inks
Total = £44
Source HP.com

Paper
120gsm matte paper 50 sheets
£5.99
£12 = 100
£24 = 200
£36= 300
£42= 350
£45= 375
Source Whsmith
£44 + £45= £89

Average amout of pages for artwork= 10
37 albums from one cartridge
£89/37= 2.4056723463
£2.40 approx per album

Blank media
25cd-r’s= £7
37= £10.50
28p per disc
To burn to CD and print the album artwork would cost
Approximately £2.68

Now obviously not everyone will print artwork but the extra £1 for a physical copy of an album that does exactly the same as a download is surely worth it...