“You Don’t F— With the Costco Hotdog of the Music Industry”: This Industry-Standard Mic’s Price Just Jumped, and People Have Thoughts
Anyone with a stock portfolio, a 401k, or a functioning set of eyes and/or ears is right to have a case of the tariff jitters by now. The markets have been going totally crazy—the specifics of which I won’t go into here—which has had wide-ranging effects (mostly—okay, totally—negative) on just about every aspect of our economic lives, and looks to continue to do so for some time.
But for us music gear addicts, there has been one economic indicator in particular that’s sent shockwaves throughout the space, raising no small amount of alarms, and, naturally, spawning some not-totally-unfunny takes as well.
That’s right, the Shure SM57 condenser mic—the “industry standard,” as it was described to me by the Guitar Center employee who sold me my first one—aka what one blogger called “the Costco hotdog of the music industry,” just underwent its first price increase in over a decade, from $99 to $108.
It’s not just the SM57—the SM58, SM7B and others have seen a jump in price as well.
And people are losing it.
@badguitaristpodcast posted to Threads: “You don’t fuck with the Costco hotdog of the music industry. First time I’ve ever seen the price of an SM57 go up.”
Podcaster/YouTuber Bandrew Scott of the Bandrew Says Podcast provided a detailed analysis in his May 4 episode (watch the full video below):
“This is something that I thought I would never see come to pass. As long as I can remember, the SM57 and SM58 were $100[…] It has been that price since the ’90s[…] The speed of light’s a constant, but I thought $100 57s, 58s, and (Audio-Technica AT) 2020s were a constant as well.”
Scott goes on to explain a bit of gearhead Econ 101. “Why do I think the price of these microphones has changed? Why has it gone up? I think the answer is pretty simple […] I’m pretty sure it’s because of tariffs in the United States,” Scott says in the episode. “Now, to the best of my knowledge, Shure manufactures their gear in one of two countries. That would be Mexico or China. Both of those countries are subject to tariffs. But the rates—they are vastly different.”
“If we look at Mexican tariffs […] it comes to 25%.” He continues, “If we look at China, it’s a very different picture. What I mean by that is, the tax on the imports are not 25%—I found that they are over 120%. So if you have a $10 item, and you import it from China, that’s not $10. Now it is $22.50.”
That was more or less my understanding as well—minus the careful research and, well, math. And if this is the case, then we’re going to be looking at a lot more price increases in the gear world very soon. To stretch our metaphor a bit, that “Costco hotdog” might just be a canary in the coal mine as well.