[Via Ars Technica] “I think that 10 dollars and below is the magic price. Lower prices are something that consumers and retailers have been asking for years,” John Marmaduke told the New York Times. Marmaduke, the chief executive of music/book/movie retailer Hastings Entertainment, was discussing Universal Music Group’s newly announced decision to make the bold and painfully overdue move of lowering the prices of its CDs to combat waning CD sales.  Starting next month and continuing through til the end of 2010, nearly all UMG new releases on CD will cost between $6 and $10, with the exception of some higher-priced “deluxe” editions.

Of course, the majority of releases affected will be standard major label garbage, so there’s not necessarily a whole lot to get legitimately excited over in terms of real bargains in the short run. UMG includes Interscope, Geffen, DGC and A&M, and somewhere in the midst of those, ya got yer Beck, yer Sonic Youth, Sigur Ros, Teenage Fanclub, and others; we’re just not sure how many of these or any other worthwhile band under UMG’s bat-like corporate wings will have a release during the experimental low-price period, or if it will be made permanent, or how it will affect the back-catalogs. Still, anything that makes music more affordable (while no less equitable for artists) is a good thing!