Re: [ARSCLIST] seeking discography info -- Dizzy Gillespie album

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

No, it's usually cheaper to buy a copy from a 3rd party in the US than pay exchange and shipping 
from Europe, unless the material is cult-priced like some of the Japan-only Verve/Mercury reissue 
CD's. Like I said, my friend in Sweden is on it and has already bought me all that I was seeking for 
around the equiv of US$10 per CD. He'll give them to me when he's home for a visit this spring.

My main point was, since Universal is a global company, it's dumb not to have some sort of facility 
for global release, or at least make sure to include release in the country of origin (most of the 
Sonet jazz albums were recorded in USA, although a couple were recorded in Sweden). Or, in worst 
case, make everything iTunes available (at inferior sound quality, unfortunately) and release the 
physical CD's in countries where they are likely to sell enough to justify the 
inventory/manufacturing costs.

A lot of the Verve/Mercury jazz reissues that were done out of Polygram (now Universal) Japan at the 
beginning of the CD era are now available only via iTunes. Some of this material was eventually 
reissued in the US, sometimes with much better remastering and sometimes not. Some of it never was, 
especially some of the older mono stuff. Most of the content Verve sells on iTunes from their 
"vault" web page is now out of print on CD, and used prices are usually crazy but not in all cases. 
The older mono stuff definitely works better in iTunes format than stereo stuff, which has the usual 
reduced image, reduced top end and occasional digi-swishy. If I understand MP4/AAC encoding 
correctly, the mono material has higher resolution because no digital file space is spent with 
channel-difference information since there is none. So theoretically, a like-sized mono file should 
be less lossy, if I understand the CODEC correctly.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Cox" <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2007 5:47 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] seeking discography info -- Dizzy Gillespie album


> Hello Tom
>
> On 05/02/07, Tom Fine wrote:
> > Thanks again to all who helped with discog info.
> >
> > I picked up a used copy of the CD for too much $$ via Amazon.
> >
> > Typically strange behavior by Universal mega-glomerate. They reissued
> > all of the Sonet jazz albums ... only in Europe. Yet, a lot of them
> > were actually recorded in the USA and all but one of them feature
> > exclusively American artists. Sure, Sonet was a Swedish/UK label, but
> > it makes no sense not to release this worldwide, or at least in the
> > country of origin of the artists and/or recordings. And, apparently,
> > even though they were released in 2004, they are now out of print. And
> > further bizarro, Universal didn't issue them as low-grade iTunes like
> > they done with most of their jazz stuff that was out on CD and is now
> > out of print.
> >
> > I put my friend who is working a 15-month assignment in Sweden on the
> > case and hopefully won't have to pay megabux to get the rest of this
> > catalog.
> >
> > Wonder how much more jazz made in USA but recorded for European and
> > Asian based labels will never get reissued here???
> Have you checked out Amazon.de and Amazon.fr?
>
> They are easy enough to use even if you don't speak the language,
> because the layout is basically the same. If you have an account with
> Amazon, it applies to all branches.
>
> Regards
> --
> Don Cox
> doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx