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Re: [ARSCLIST] The "dumbing down" of Downloaded Recordings



Yeah, I'm with Don. I wouldn't blame Amazon. But I will add something interesting I've discovered -- Amazon doesn't carry quite a bit of in-print classical content that is carried at ArkivMusic. And it's not just obscure stuff . And I'm also not talking about the stuff that's out of print but Arkiv has the right to sell as CDR's (the ArkivCD series). Arkiv simply has a larger selection of classical titles. But, Amazon still carries more than any brick-and-mortor store that ever existed anywhere near where I've lived in my 41 years. And I did used to make a yearly pilgrimage to J&R Music World, which had a classical-only store. Same for jazz titles, by the way, and J&R had a separate jazz-only store too. Amazon has greater variety. And there's the hidden "weapon" of Amazon's "buy new and used" where you have access to all those smaller sellers with still-shrink-wrapped out of print titles for sale. I wish Amazon would adopt a browsing interface more like Arkiv for both jazz and classical but Amazon's search engine is fast and semi-effective (effectiveness directly related to specificity of search terms).

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- From: "Don Cox" <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 12:46 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] The "dumbing down" of Downloaded Recordings



On 25/01/08, Bob Olhsson wrote:
-----Original Message----- From Tom Fine: "...MANY CD titles are being
taken out of print, and not because a reissue is made with a better
remaster of the same material. One of the first consultant-driven
cutbacks a megaglomerate makes to
keep its stock price from cratering is to make a an ever-higher cutoff
point for number of units
sold per time period in order for an item to stay in-print..."

This certainly affects decisions about new pressing runs. I'm told the
real underlying problem is that the "megaglomerate" retail stores are
returning everything that they can't turn over within six weeks. The
one-two punch of Napster and Amazon have killed the classical market
dead because a huge percentage of sales in the past came from folks
who were browsing and stumbled across something interesting in the
classical section of a store.


You can browse in Amazon, too.

Regards
--
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx



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