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

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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