Price is just price ... everyone should have the ability to decide what is too much and what is agreeable to them. It's a personal decision, plain and simple.
Value is separate and distinct from price; that's a concept most people learn eventually but probably should learn when they're 12.
Just a comment regarding the specifics of the topic, though, where the OP was talking about new releases at full retail. I'm not sure everyone knows that with CDs and other music formats, the artist only earns a royalty when they are sold at full retail. Discounted CDs (for example) are a zero royalty sale for the artist. A modest discount ... where the retailer eats the difference but pays full wholesale price ... would still pay a royalty. But there isn't that much for him to eat, so if you pay $10 at Wall-Mart, guaranteed it's zero-rated for royalties.
I'm not sure about movies but I would not be surprised to learn they work the same way ... ie if the contract calls for "points" (% of sales; when expressed as a "point" it's usually 1/10 or 1/100th of a percent) I would bet it's only paid on full retail sales.
For CDs there is what is called the "statutory rate" ... 7c per song of 5 minutes or less on the disk. All you need to know about the statutory rate is nobody gets it ... all contracts are negotiated at a lower rate. 5c or so is typical.
For music downloads, the labels negotiated a lower rate than for CDs; this after they were paying nothing at all, and got sued. It probably wouldn't surprise anyone to know that the labels argued in court that zero was the appropriate rate. They get 70c for a download from the iTunes store @ 99c, pay the artist perhaps 3cents out of that. The labels have no costs in the transaction; its all profit. Apple pays the costs of storage, distribution, etc out of it's 29c share. Apple does now make a profit from the iTunes store, but for years it operated at a loss.
Once the full-retail sales figures are tallied, and multiplied by the contract rate, the labels take 10% off the top for "promotion".
If you mailed a dollar to your favourite artist after buying a used CD, a new one from the bargain bin, or *cough* downloading * cough* a 16/44 file of the disk, she's made more money than she gets from a full retail sale via the label.
If anyone is wondering why the artists are getting royalties for "their" music, it's because when you agree to sign with a label, you give all your copyrights to the label in return for the contract. The label then loans you the money you need to record and tour, and you pay that money back from the royalties. At one point in time it was worse ... you had to borrow for the music video too. Mercifully, those days are gone.
If you ever do pay them back, you start getting checks. If not, you don't.
It used to be that artists made their income ... actual month to month paychecks ... from touring. Today the labels also generate income from the tour, and sometimes manage the entire tour, retaining all the profits, and pay a salary ... due to added clauses in the contracts that are now standard.
