Average price of yesterday's Top 40 albums: $10.97

Highest: Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadium at $19.90. This is a double-album with 29 tracks, and includes a digital booklet. (Amazon.com sells this double-CD for $11.99.)

For the highest single album there's a tie: Yung Joc's New Joc City at $13.99 for 16 tracks (three of which are interludes) and Dane Cook's Retaliation at $13.99 (for 29 tracks, some of which are not even one minute in length). Amazon.com sells New Joc City for $9.98 and Retaliation for $12.98.

Lowest: KT Tunstall's Eye to the Telescope at $8.91. (Amazon.com's price is currently $7.98.)

Coolfer wonders when competition will heat up to the point where digital stores will do what many physical and online retailers regularly do: price the music at or below cost. There's no sign of major labels' interest in dropping wholesale prices on the most popular songs and albums, and at this point Apple has no incentive to compete on price. We're still in the infancy of digital music, and early adopters always pay more because they have the means and the willingness.