The breakdown of the cost of a typical high-rpofile new album with a list price of $15.99

• 17 cents – Musicians’ unions
• 80 cents – Packaging/manufacturing
• 80 cents – Retail Profit
• 82 cents – Publishing royalties
• 90 cents – Distribution
• $1.60 – Artists’ royalties
• $1.70 – Label profit
• $2.40 – Marketing/promotion
• $2.91 – Label overhead
• $3.89 – Retail overhead

Source: Almighty Institute of Music Retail
Or, in a pretty form:

Besides the rather self-aggrandizing name, here is what the ‘institute’ does:

The Almighty Institute of Music Retail helps record labels and music retailers better communicate with each other to sell and promote more music.