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Re: [ARSCLIST] Folkways Reissues
Smithsonian has reissued hundreds of Folkways titles as "true" CDs,
with new notes and so forth, with many more to come. But when you
want something truly obscure, like most of those Harold Courlander
field recordings or the "conversation with Al Capp," it's available,
either on a CD-R, or online through the Global Sounds project. If
your local library has a subscription to Global Sounds, you listen to
anything in the Folkways catalog (with one exception) online through
your home computer at no charge. I'm not recommending that you make
your own CD's from the Global Sounds downloads, but it could be done.
I don't know the numbers, but I would guess that the charge for
one-off CDs is about what it costs for the labor need to produce
them. Seems like a much more efficient method than Moe Asch's keeping
a physical inventory of every LP he ever made.
John Ross
At 12/12/2007 02:21 PM, Garr Norick wrote:
"Tradition would be an excellent candidate for inclusion in the
Smithsonian/Folkways family of labels, n'est ce pas?"
"Dear Lord, I hope not... they charge $15-$20 per CD, and all you
get is a CD-R that may or may not play on your machine, with
photocopied artwork on plain paper!"
I feel I should add the following to what I just posted, which is
quoted above... while I admire what Smithsonian/Folkways is doing,
if I pay $15-$20 for a compact disc, I expect it to have the
original cover art, to be an actual manufactured CD rather than a
burned one, to have extensive liner notes (complete with a "where
are they now" about the artist), and to be painstakingly restored
and remastered from the original source... Smithsonian could charge
$5 or $10 for their custom CD-Rs (which are just straight transfers
from a master tape onto a CD-R with no restoration, and photocopied
inserts on plain paper) and still make a profit.