As I assume most of us on this board do, I'm still buying CDs, not downloads and not LPs (I'll never get that). Anyhow, if the sales of CDs have dropped so much over the last several years, if their popularity has fallen off so much, is it still necessary to put that stupid sticky label across the top of jewel boxes, I assume to prevent theft? I mean, who's shoplifting CDs these days? In the mean time these labels remain a pain in the butt to remove and invariably leave a sticky residue behind on the box. Thoughts? Someone we can write to? Or do I need to just grin and bear it?

You have a good point.

But...inertia...

At some point an accountant will realize they're spending money on this and he'll bring it to the attention of some junior executive, who will bring it to a VP or something who will get a fat bonus for discovering a way to cut costs.

As an accountant myself...my guess is the cost of the material and the labor to stick it on is next to nothing. The big boss probably thinks it prevents theft and based on the things I see ripped opened while shopping I would tend to agree.

I myself hate the labels. I would hope an engineer might come up with a device where that same company could make a profit on a product or a kit to remove that label and clean off the residue.

What I hate more is after you open the case you find the inner spindle that holds the disc in the case is broken and there is a bunch of plastic debris that have been scratching the underside of the disc.

It's not to prevent theft. The labels have convinced the average consumer that without those strips they're buying a re-seal (even though there's tons of pre-strip sealed cd's still out there). It likely originated as a way to limit retailer's returns.

My wife came back from NY the other day and all the CDs she got me have that bloody label stuck on them. At least you guys ditched the long boxes, I hated them too.

they do not prevent theft at all.

i once worked for a complete asshole who actually would leave the strip across the top, unhook the jewel case, and put a used CD in the tray, rehook the jewel case, re-shrink wrap and return it to the one-stop as new.

he also tried the scam of opening all new CD's and putting the disc behind the counter until sold, of course the moron would sell used as new (paying $2 - $3 and selling for $10 - $15....rather than paying the one-stop the $9 - $10 for new) much bigger profit margin.

he was making nice money on this scam as well as returning mint used cassettes as defective for full profit.

needless to say it all caught up with him when the regulars starting seeing the disc they returned and were getting a couple bucks for, being sold as new. it didn't take long at all till all came tumbling down.

the owner had another job, he was one of those guys who went into companies and showed them how to downsize manpower and maximize profits while doing so. he cost a lot of people their jobs and couldn't care less.

i really hated the motherfucker.

Sounds like a nice guy, not.

Funny how the thieves only seem to operate in the US. Never bought a CD from or in Europe that had one of those.

They didn't even have cellophane on most cd's (And pretty much never on LP's!) in Europe until 15-20 years ago.

I think they ended up feeling they had to add shrinkwrap for the USA export market.

Yeah, but almost every CD/Vinyl store I was ever in, in the UK, Germany or Hungary didn't actually keep the inventory in the bins. It was all empty cases/sleeves. It also made it easier to stock since they would only need one copy of everything in the bins, and everything else was behind the counter.

I've never been to Europe. I was in the record retail in the days of LP's, & almost nothing European came shrink wrapped. Most USA retailers put their Euro imports in an Outerslleeve & sealed it with a sticker. Cutout wholesalers usually used a shrink-wrap machine for the overstocks.

How about those rectangular stickers with the metallic strip that's stuck inside the tray?

Those are anti-theft devices.

they tear the paper when you try to take them off...hate them.

I always thought the sticker on top was simply to display the artist name and album title. So when consumers were looking through a rack containing CDs, they (1) did not have to flip through them to view all the covers when looking for the one they wanted and (2) if the artist name or album name on the front cover was a bit difficult to see, it would be clearly displayed on the top sticker.

I don't think the original purpose would be anti-theft because why go through the trouble of printing them? Why not just put a generic sticker to seal the top of all titles?

Considering the days of B&M's are disappearing I think it's probably a good time for these stickers to go as well. I don't know if these are helpful to warehouse workers...I would assume they would just have the boxes with 25-30 copies labeled on the outside but may use that top sticker to verify they pulled the right product.

I hate those damn stickers and fortunately for me do not buy hardly any domestic major label releases anymore. Lots of the smaller labels don't seem to be using them anymore. For a long time Relapse records used a thin, fold-over piece of cardboard on their releases which wasn't glued on and that was pretty cool because they could put an attractive top spine to make it stand out if in a rack and stuff was printed on the front part of the fold-over which served as a "hype-sticker" over the top part of the CD cover. Many of the smaller labels have also gone with the traditional digi-pak (that still utilized the plastic tray!) and those don't get the dreaded top sticker. And as first I could never figure out what the purpose was of those slipcases for jewel box releases. I remember getting one and removing it and being dumbfounded that the art on the slipcase was the same as the artwork on the booklet cover and back tray panel so what was the point? Then I realized the name was printed on the top of the slipcase and so there was no need for the annoying sticker on the top.

Those are MUCH worse than stickers on the top of the CD case. If you're careful you can usually kind of "pop" them loose and get them out, but yep, sometimes they are stuck very tightly and tear up the paper.

I hold to my previous statement; they have nothing to do with theft (other than the fat cats at the record co's being afraid that retailers are stealing from them).

I also believe they are here to stay, as many consumers erroneously believe that any cd/dvd/blu without a sticker is a used reseal.