I generally just ignore all the pressures ebay tries to put on me for whatever change they want businesses to adopt (get this badge, get that badge, do free post, pay for COM returns, blah blah blah) - my advice to any seller is that first and foremost, listen to yourself and your buyers over anything eBay might say (unless it is a mandatory policy type of thing I suppose) - what do they (buyers) want, what do you need, and what works best for both? eBay will only tell you what some out-of-context and unquantified statistic "wants". If you are running successfully, no buyer issues etc, then ebay doesn't know what they're talking about when it comes to you and your customers and their push (shove) to tracked postage is not currently applicable to you and your business, and you won't need to read the rest of my post. 😁
I'm not sure how in-demand CDs are these days so the market may be a bit more sensitive to changes, but in your case, if I were to introduce tracked postage, I would try keeping your prices as is, but add the cost of the tracked upgrade as postage, then implement a promotion for free postage on X or more number of items (presumably each item has X amount built in for untracked shipping, so if someone buys 4 or 5, tracked shipping should be covered?). This will have a lower impact on perception of item price + postage, and give people and incentive to purchase multiple items.
For myself, I sell small, low-value items (starting from around $3) and always listed postage costs (untracked letter rate) separately to item prices as free post really doesn't suit craft supplies that well (IMO). A few months back, I decided to double my postage charge and send everything tracked. The decision was made largely to test if my market would accept higher postage costs for low-value items, but also I did want to take some pressure off, and the latter has certainly been successful.
I actually chose a pretty unfortunate time for my experiment, in retrospect, as it's been difficult to gauge the full impact of the change when my other platforms (Etsy and my own website), where I made no postage changes, have also been affected by a downturn in sales, but it definitely has had an impact - however, they are not all bad, and I still get people buying only one item and paying more than twice the price in postage on top of the item price, though that is rarer now.
Sales are down, but still high enough to keep eBay worthwhile. Problems with buyers have been reduced by about 90% - that may sound hyperbolic, but it really isn't. Not only do I not get any "where is my item?" messages any more, but I get far fewer petty complaints, too - the higher postage costs seems to have eliminated many of the "I got exactly what I ordered but not what I imagined so now I'm going to throw a tantrum" buyers. (Interpret that however you will 😆 )
Honestly, I think that for eBay, the writing is on the wall and while tracked postage may not ever become compulsory, it will become expected by the vast majority of buyers (may be years away, but I am convinced it'll be the case sooner or later), which is as good as mandatory, and I really got tired of explaining to people why the item they bought with $3 postage didn't have a tracking number, lol.
