Fernando notes a recent excursion to the record store and comments on the marketing cluelessness of the record industry.
At least he has a good store in the region. Much of the country is now served by the physical equivalent of ClearChannel ... places like K-Mart and WalMart ... with their own very limited selections.
The lack of interesting new music (new music development is increasingly focused on the masses and tends towards vanilla) combined with marketing and communication that is suboptimal (ClearChannel and the death of real record stores) is having a severe impact on CD sales. Of course the industry refuses to believe this and blames online piracy. (there are many other factors involved in poor CD sales .. CC and store evaporation are just two)
___
One can hope that services like Apple's iTunes Store continue to grow. Many of the more obscure genres (and classical music is essentially an obscure genre these days -- let alone the many subgenres it has) may only survive with the aid of the Web.
The iTunes Store is a bit spotty at this stage of its growth. I wish Apple would add Channel Classics - a small, but high quality label (I've been listening to the cellist Pieter Wispelwey who mostly records for them ... oddly enough one of Mr Wispelwey's major patrons is an airport in The Netherlands, but that is another story). Much of the music will play on your browser if you have QuickTime 6 installed. They also have a selection of SACDs if your home stereo is sufficiently exotic.
6:28:25 AM 
|
