I know at least 50 people in my local area with CD collections of 1,500 or
more. Some are classical, some jazz, some theatre music, many are of
rock, country and other popular music, polka bands, some are ethnic, etc.
Since I only pretend to know everyone, let's assume there are at least an
additional 250 such collectors in the greater DC area. If this area
comprises about 1% of the U.S. population, there are surely 25,000 such
colllections in non-institutional and business collections in the U.S. My
gut feeling is that this is too few by a factor of at least 4 or 5,
espcially as so many now have CD burners.
Except for classical music and jazz, most selections last about three
minutes. Some are by one performer but a great number include items by
others, sometimes many others, which makes shelving them by performer
quite difficult.
If the average CD holds 20 selections and there are 2,000 of them in a
collection, then there are 40,000 selections to be considered.
Selections recorded by one performer must indicate all performers on the
first screen (or subsequent ones if it is, say, the Gounod "Ave Maria.")
Performers make a studio recording, perhaps a second or more at a later
time, and also have the same title issued from a concert broadcast, a
broadcast (a concert with no audience present), a "from the audience"
recording, etc. There will be copies on CD from 78s, cylinders, 45s, LPs,
audio and video cassettes, DVDs, etc. Some will be manufactured items,
some home-made CD or DVDs.
The CD collector is faced with finding a particular selection by a
perticular performer from a particular recording event.
The equipment he uses or will use in the future will be a variation on a
CD/DVD player, probably in a quiet computer, where he can toggle back
while the music is playing and access his catalog on his TV screen- the
convergece of these two screen uses are in your stores now.
He is faced with, say, 2,000 CDs. He has to easily find the selection he
wants and lay his hands on it.
He must then be able to see, in Schwann/WERM format, a list of the
versions he has of that selection with enough data appearing on the screen
to enable him to choose the one he is trying to find. He can get the
details unique to this item by clicking on it and viewing a second screen
but the recording date has to appear on that first screen, since that is
an order in which recordings by a given performer will be listed. Perhaps
then, clicking on an icon will give him the phsical location.
If he can't do that, then the catalog is of no use to him.
Steven Smolian
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