Hi guys. I don't usually follow this sub-forum, and just now read the whole thread, including the cost concerns. I suppose the big guns will say something eventually (after they recover from CES!) but I'll offer a bit of perspective.
I am not one of the principals, but I did participate in the early discussions, in the summer of 2006. As I recall, pricing had to be set around that time, as we were looking at announcing the project at the Fall AES or Janualy 2007 CES. This was long before actual costs could be known, but everyone was well aware that once a price was announced, it would pretty much have to remain fixed throughout the first series. It was a long and difficult effort. I have an initial spreadsheet from some of those discussions, showing estimated capital costs to get the first four albums produced - figuring that we needed at least that much to get started, and hoping that subscriptions would continue to come in and finance the rest of the project. I don't know the current costs, but I do know some of our assumptions at that time were much lower than the actual cost. For example, we budgeted $4000 to set up and refurbish the four ATR recorders; I don't think any one of them cost that little in the end. I know that the demo machines (those brought to the shows like CES) cost more than twice the original estimates.
Like I said, I'm not a principal, so I don't really know how close the project is to breaking even. But I do know that nobody is getting rich off of this!