On 27/10/07, Tom Fine wrote:
I bet there were more than 40,000 released 1982-present BUT I would
also bet there are fewer than 40,000 still in print. It's amazing how
many classical titles have been taken out of print in the last few
years. Jazz too, for that matter.
Many have gone out of print and then been reissued later, perhaps in
bargain packages.
Once a company has a digital file, the cost of a straight reissue is
quite low, especially if the booklet is reduced to a single sheet.
The one likely-profitable commercial venture I know of that makes some
of this out-of-print classical material available in full CD
resolution (as opposed to junk formats like lossy iTunes) is ArkivCD:
http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/AlbumGroup;jsessionid=DB9430E149BE60523CFAF6CA8BF3CB61?album_group=8
as of this AM, 4245 formerly out of print titles available there.
If anyone is _really_ interested, the head buyer at Arkiv or Amazon's
head buyer for classical can probably provide a good estimate as to
the number of SKU's (individual barcode CD's) now in print.
I guessed the number from a sample count I did of the new (really new)
releases last August, which was just over 100. The number of releases
was much lower for the first few years.
So I thought around 1200 new recordings per year over nearly 30 years
might be as many as 40,000. Could be fewer.
The bar codes would count every reissue as a separate product.
Regards