Re: [ARSCLIST] OK - Does Anyone Know More About This?

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Don:

Unless you live in Silicon Valley or an area where Wall Street bonuses get spent, I think you might 
want to talk to some high end dealers. Yes, the $1000 "cinema in a box" market is borderline 
mainstream (although I only know 2 people out of maybe 100 I've asked who have a surround system and 
view DVD's in surround sound, and both of them are audio professionals), but the high end market is 
in the toilet according to the audiophool mags. There will definitely be a market to sell $50k 
surround cinema systems to the latest dot-bomb millionaire, but that is the definition of fringe. 
Any SACD sales figures I've seen (and they're elusive because no one wants to admit to the 
mainstream media or Wall Street what a total failure the format has been in the marketplace) are so 
low as to not cause a ripple vs. CD. They might stand up as a ripple vs. download sales but we all 
know that a lot of downloading is done outside legal sales channels and the only hard figures I've 
seen on numbers of songs sold come from Apple.

I'm not sure how you measure the labels you mentioned as "overtaking" anyone. Except for Naxos, most 
of these are shoe-string operations selling into what may well be a profitable niche, but still a 
niche. If you're talking the small and shrinking recorded-classical-music market, yes the small fry 
are relatively big players in that space. But how many people under 50 buy classical music 
recordings anymore?

Listen, I wish more than anyone that good music and truly high-fidelity recordings (both classical 
and jazz) weren't going extinct, but the market is a cruel mistress and when people don't have an 
interest in buying something, there is no incentive to make it. And culturally/socially, I think 
it's wrong to force something down unwilling throats (especially when it's unwillingly subsidized by 
their tax dime) just because an elite somewhere considers it high-brow or "refined" -- if the pepes 
aren't interested, they're not interested and the market will give the poeple what they want.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Cox" <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2007 8:41 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] OK - Does Anyone Know More About This?


> On 15/06/07, Tom Fine wrote:
>
> > Er, OK Don but the fact is the major owners of content have pretty
> > much abandoned the format. Yes, some small labels catering to
> > audiophiles do continue to make releases, mostly classical music but
> > some jazz. Fact is, SACD failed as anything approaching a mainstream
> > format.
>
> Good music isn't mainstream anyway. And what you call "small firms" are
> overtaking the majors - Hyperion, Chandos, Naxos, BIS etc have been
> building their catalogs for the past 20 years while the old majors have
> been winding down.
> > You raise a good question about quad uptake vs. SACD and you might be
> > right but note that SACD-enabled players are not all DVD players by a
> > long stretch, so they are a tiny subset of the installed DVD base.
>
> Not all DVD players can play SACD, but a good proportion can, including
> most of the better ones. So people who are serious about Home Cinema can
> generally also play SACDs in surround dound.
>
> Hi Fi dealers now sell a lot of Home Cinema gear.
>
> > Also note that DVD-audio pretty much failed as a mainstream format,
> > too, although some niche players are definitely active in that format
> > too.
> >
> > Bottom line is, more than 2 speakers for music-only listening is just
> > not appealing to most people despite how much you and I might like
> > listening in surround sound.
> There seem to be a lot of magazines called "What Home Cinema" and the
> like. I think this is a thriving industry.
>
> Regards
> --
> Don Cox
> doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx