On 24/10/08, Bob Olhsson wrote:
-----Original Message----- From Tom Fine: "...I definitely believe
that part of the business cratering is due to putting out an
overpriced, bad quality product in a format that has been
antiquated..."
I totally agree about bad quality but strongly disagree with the idea
that music recordings are overpriced. Factoring in inflation,
prerecorded music is by far the cheapest it has ever been.
The problem is what people get for their 15 to 20 bucks which is
shoddy packaging, horrendous audio quality and too few great
performances of great material. There is no evidence that lower prices
will increase sales while everything points to the fact that people
will gladly pay a premium for any recording they consider worthy of
purchase. Too many labels and artists got lazy and greedy during the
CD era. They are now reaping what was sown. Selling the same garbage
at a lower price is not a solution!
I think people will spend a certain amount on recordings. The price
decides how many hours of music they get for that money.
The horrendous audio quality is IMO mainly confined to pop music, and to
super-budget compilations of material such as 1950s pop. The standard in
classical music is high. The jazz I buy is mainly transfers from analog,
and recent transfers from tape are often better than I have ever heard
(this on material I know well on LP).
Packaging varies. Naxos manages to provide informative booklets even at
a low retail price (however, they are no longer a super-budget label).
Brilliant Classics have moved toward PDF files on a CD for their
extremely cheap box sets.