Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that multi-award winning Norah Jones has a new CD out. I got this in my e-mail today from Amazon:

Dear Amazon.ca Customer,
As someone who has shopped at Amazon.ca, you might be interested in this special glimpse of Norah Jones's newest release, "Not Too Late." You can also watch an exclusive video of Norah performing her own song, "Rosie's Lullaby," right here. Order the album now for only $12.97--and explore other great EMI artists.

That's $12.97 Canadian or $11.00 US. It wasn't that long ago when new CD released were $20.00 and the discount baragain bin CDs with abysmal one page liner notes were $11.00. Now one of our industry's biggest stars is selling their new CD for $11.00! Approximately $5.00 of that price goes to retail overhead/margin, distribution, and packaging. Not much left for the label and the artist.

This isn't a temporary depression in pricing, people. Prices are not going back up.

Lucas has some compelling reasoning for the imminent CD sale collapse.

ownership of file-based devices like iPods will reach critical mass very soon, if it hasn't already, and when that happens the majority of listeners will actively dislike CDs.