Re: [ARSCLIST] CD versus Download was "All hail the analogue revolution..."

[Don Cox <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 27/09/06, Tom Fine wrote:

> You are seeing how things have shaken out. A player like Naxos or
> Telarc, which has a classical-focused staff and knows their customers
> and their marketing and can survive with a few thousand copies of
> something sold per quarter, will be the main new-release generator in
> this market. I would also say that the failure of high-resolution
> formats to attact much of an audience has further set back the
> megaglomerates since their marketing and new-release machinery is
> obsessed with technology and "latest-greatest" thinking. It's not
> flashy or perhaps "interesting" to quietly work hard to build a great
> classical catalog, and this probably does not attract the best and
> brightest in these corporate cultures. By the way, back in the "golden
> era", even very large companies like RCA and CBS/Columbia had a small
> cadre doing the classical work. Classical has always been a "specialty
> shop" with U.S. labels, which is why some of the recordings are so
> beloved -- because the whole thing was the antithesis of corporate, it
> was very personal and hand-crafted. I think classical was more
> institutionalized in Europe because it was a bigger music market and
> because it was a bigger part of broadcasting for longer than in the
> US. Remember that jazz and rock didn't catch on until after the US.

Remember that Naxos is based in Hong Kong. I think a large part of their
sales are in the Korea, China and Japan. The populations are so enormous
that even if only one person in a thousand buys classical music, that is
a lot of customers.

Jazz records were popular in Britain from the early 1930s at least, and
rock sold well starting with Bill Haley.

Regards
-- 
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx