Serves 'em right. What goes around comes around. Instant karma's gonna get you.

Local CD retailers are showing no mercy in their universal condemnation of the music industry -- and their response to Universal Music Group's intention to slash record prices is equally universal.

"Finally," they say.

Big Music has been whining for years about slumping sales, blaming losses on the widespread practice of illegal downloading. The industry fought back by raising CD prices, a curious and ultimately unsuccessful solution that dealt a fatal blow to many neighborhood record shops. Since the early 1990s, when prices began edging toward the $20 mark, many independent retailers have gone out of business.

For decades Carnegie-based National Record Mart was Pittsburgh's leading music retailer, and dozens of mom-and-pop independents jockeyed to secure nonmainstream niches. As a result of the sales slump, NRM, one of the nation's first record chains, closed its doors last year, and most of the independent shops have gone under.

Following a national trend, Pittsburghers now buy most of their CDs through retail giants that don't specialize in music, chains such as Wal-Mart, Borders Books & Music, Circuit City and Best Buy, or online through Amazon.com.

Music shop survivors remain bitter toward the industry and see Universal's announcement as a long-belated, half-hearted step in the right direction.

"It's too bad they had to go down into that hole before they realized they were burying themselves," said Paul Mawhinney, who has kept his Ross Recordrama store afloat for 36 years. "It was a mistake in the first place to go up to $20. It's the record companies' own faults from the very beginning. The responsibility sits on their shoulders in every way."

The sales slump, he believes, was caused by a combination of lackluster product, bullied artists who got fed up and set up their own labels to sell directly to their fans, and industry infighting that prevented bickering labels from effectively blocking illegal audio file sharing.

Sweetheart wholesale deals offered to the retail giants, says Mawhinney, enable the chains to buy CDs for $9 to $10, making cheap retail prices of $10.99 and $11.99 possible. "I pay $12.97 for a CD," he said. "How can I possibly compete with that?"

The answer is, he can't. Recordrama stopped selling new CDs two years ago, refocusing on oldies catalogues and album art.

"Thirty-six years in the business," said Mawhinney. "I was the largest independent store in the Tri-State area with over 2 million records. We were destroyed by the record business."

Regional spokeswomen from Wal-Mart and Circuit City individually applauded Universal's decision, vowed to continue to offer low-priced CDs and declined to comment on their wholesale costs, calling it "proprietary information."

Best Buy and Amazon.com didn't return phone calls.

"It's great that [Universal] is cutting its prices, but I hope it's not too late," said Strip District retailer Greg Eide of Eide's Entertainment. "It's a step in the right direction. I hope other [record companies] will take the price down even farther. Almost $20 for a CD? That's insane."

Eide has been selling music in Pittsburgh for more than 20 years. Under the current pricing system, his wholesale costs range from 60 to 70 percent of the manufacturer's suggested retail price of $16.98 to $18.98, about $10 to $13 per CD. Matching dollar for dollar with the retail giants is impossible, he says.

Eide's Entertainment competes by specializing in the underground indie music that big retailers avoid, diversification into comic books and providing customer service.

"The music industry is in an incredible doldrum," he said. "It's half dead. Currently, there's nobody who you could say is the No. 1 group -- it's all flavor of the week. Better quality music and cheaper music, that's what it will take to get people back to buying CDs."