Why are HD downloads so expensive?

I don't eat Burger King or drink cheap wine so the analogy is lost on me ;-)

Don't get me wrong, I wish they were cheaper as well but consider this:

Most new Cd's (44.1/16) go for $10-15 new
Most SACD's go for $25-75 new

Most 24/96 hdtracks go for $17.95 with the 24/192 more $$$

All in all the price is fair. Besides if we don't support this media only cd's and mp3 downloads will survive for hard media (let's face it DVD-Audio and SACD's are very limited markets)

Sign up for hdtracks and you become elligible for 15% discounts from time to time to lessen the pain.

While on the subject of hdtracks did anyone notice the upcoming artists for hdtracks? deep purple, talking heads, joni mitchell, chicago and many more!

I personally cannot wait

The price is determined by the record labels that use HDtracks as an online distributor. In fact they had to raise the price at the record label's request a while back, so pricing was more uniform across all labels.

Also I don't think we should be discussing torrents here. HD tracks is what all of us have been waiting for, finally high resolution media. And especially considering what we pay for gear, the cost of high quality media is worth it and provides an incentive for more labels to make their catalogs available.

Buy cds!!

Locally good used Cds are $1 to $3 with the majority at $2.
Om Amazon plenty of new stuff is in the $10 and under range. Box sets of to die for classical is five or six CDs for $20...
So the price differential is lager than posted. (though if you pay retail for Cds.. I guess not)
The original (back in 1983) idea was prices would come down on CDs once they got established. That NEVER happened. The prices wer kept high.
Only the glut and saturated market has reduced the price of new and used CDs.
As for downloads, natually is is a seller's market in hi def content. Not much available, and a demand is there. The music folks see the crazy prices folks pay for equipment to play hi rez, and charge accordingly.
IMO it is the same thing as cables. The higher price means it is better in plenty of folks minds. ( that it is actually better, probably.. just saying..)
As for the warhorses being sold over agin in high def. Well, that is the bread and butter of any media content. When they run out of stuff to be resold, then they start crying it is too expensive to continue. (which started when they discovered the Goldmine of reselling old content with the CD boom. Then DVD boom from VHS.)
So now they expect to make boatloads of money, automatically.
That is why hi def downloads are so expensive.