Physical Formats Death Watch (Part 36)

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard and/or read about the imminent demise of the CD these past years. Just recently, once again, a news item (that has never really been substantiated) made the rounds again, stating that EMI, Universal and Sony had plans up their sleeves in regard to giving the CD the chop in 2012.

Do I care?
Well, uhm, yes and no.

Besides the fact that I don’t think any label (greedy bastards), will annul any one format that is still making it more than 10 cents of income, I do think that even if labels were to start dropping physical formats altogether in favor of digital download solutions, those formats would survive for quite some time. Continue Reading →

Recycling

One of the most irritating aspects of most music labels’ reissue policies (if there is, indeed, a “policy” of any kind present, aside from generating the most cash with the least amount of effort) is the constant need of company bigwigs to recycle releases for the umpteenth time.

I know it’s akin to yelling into an empty forest, especially since just about every music collector is likely to get a hernia sooner or later when faced with the 756th reissue of “Kind of Blue”, but it also needs to be said around here:

It is maddening to see how much music remains unreleased, is left to shady European offshore labels to reissue in more or less adequate format or which, in a worst-case scenario, is just lost to the sands of time and tape deterioration because the management, as is customary, couldn’t give a flying leap about the music it has been and is selling. A product is a product, and if the ($) signs are right, the same music will be reissued again. And again.
And again. Continue Reading →

Remove ‘em!

Many moons ago, in my series about collectors’ nightmares, I wrote about those absolutely annoying American stickers at the top of each CD. I have no idea why they are on there, but I can easily think of reasons. View the pictures →

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Boxed-In

I’ve said it often enough around here and I’ll state it again: We collectors are nutcases.

There was a time when I collected books, “contemporary horror fiction” to be precise. It all started when I got my first limited edition of some book and it continued with lots of other limited, numbered, lettered and whatnot editions, plus a trillion other “normal” books which were – at the time – virtually impossible to get in ol’ Germany. I can’t quite recall how I chanced upon him, but Robert Weinberg, who had a thriving mail-order business way back when, sent out these highly-tempting monthly catalogs from which I invariably bought more than I could afford. For years. Continue Reading →

Observations 03-2009

(01) Rising Curtain: “The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back”

Yesterday I added my “recent” purchases to my CD shelf system. A load of classical albums including Paul Lewis’ Beethoven piano sonata cycle (brilliant), a couple of Ahmad Jamal double and single CDs (early stuff and equally brilliant), the Oscar Peterson Clef/Mercury Box (I had most single issues but … well, it was Mosaic), a few soundtracks I picked up for next to nothing (“Les Choristes” and “Gladiator“, only the former of which I really like), the Andreas Vollenweider live double-CD (yeah, shoot me), a number of Ruby Braff (shabby compilations but hey, the only place the stuff is available) CDs reissued by these Spanish scam artists, some J.J. Cale and John Mayall discs I had picked up to more or less complete my respective artist collections, a bunch of Teddy Wilson CDs (mostly Storyville reissues) and probably another ten or twenty CDs (some of which were Deep Purple releases before people started remastering stuff, some ECM classical and jazz releases, etc.). Continue Reading →

Trials and Tribulations (V)

The Shopping Nightmare

I do 98% of all my music shopping online. I know that I’m helping the demise of the record store swiftly along, but I need to save cash to feed my habit(s) and I simply cannot pay some of the outrageous prices my local shops ask for releases that often cost me one half to one third of that asking price online.

Still, shopping online – although it does have its pleasant sides – is often a Hegelian nightmare of gargantuan proportions. I cannot shake the feeling that people employed by any of the regularly frequented online outfits manage to rise to their level of incompetence within a minimum of one hour after having been hired. The level and intensity of stupidity is at times unmeasurable and the software employed, the logistics planning and just about every aspect of shipping and handling seem to have been entrusted to a group of autistic preschoolers with a serious attention deficit disorder. Communication skills are those of single-cell organisms and if you do get a message, it’s usually of the simplest boilerplate type, held together by too many returns (or none at all) and a hefty dose of play dough.

So, without further ado, here goes part V of the always popular – but recently neglected – “Trials & Tribulations” series: Continue Reading →

The Loudness Wars

If you have been a regular reader of my site, you know that without the Steve Hoffman Forums I would be lost in the sea of mostly crummy remaster jobs permanently released all around the globe. If you also happen to be a regular on those forums, you probably also know that there are various camps frequenting the site, including a large group of hardliners that basically damn everything that isn’t a flat transfer, and I can understand them, especially if they have invested heavily into extremely expensive gear which reveals each and every fault of a recording. But even if you have just a decent and maybe only a mediocre stereo setup like I do, you can’t help but notice that record labels seem to have overstepped an invisible (but clearly audible) line: Too much is just too loud, too maximized, too compressed and too darn harsh. There’s no other expression for it but to say that a large number of releases and reissues just suck. Continue Reading →

Illegal Downloads

Note: Readers beware. This post contains some slightly stronger language that might offend some, but only because it is directed at those who have gotten more money from me than anyone else on this planet.

With a tip of the hat to Indie HQ, a wonderful site which you should be reading regularly, I’m about to go on another verbal rampage here, something I haven’t done for quite a while.

The question posted over there, more or less, is if downloading (readily available for purchase) music is acceptable. It’s a bit more complicated, but head over there to check out the original post yourself.

Let me go off on a slight tangent here with one single example:

Gosh, where do I start? Maybe with this: I don’t want to download music, not only because even the best lossless formats aren’t the real thing, with home-printed covers and the eternal hunt for liner notes and whatnot, but also because I don’t believe in keeping a collection of digital files. Still, the labels have – in the past – forced me to do so. Continue Reading →