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| Author |
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| 25 new of 106 responses total. |
bmoran
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response 32 of 106:
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Jul 6 02:12 UTC 2001 |
The new Afro Celt 3 was on the shelf @ Borders for 18.99 last week, so I
added it to my wish list and left. This week it's on sale for 12.99, so I
got it. Whenever I hear something new, I'll almost always try out Encore
Records to see if someone else paid full price and didn't like it. That's
how I got AfroCelt's 2nd disk for 8.00.
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krj
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response 33 of 106:
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Jul 26 21:33 UTC 2001 |
Rotten to the core... An LA Times story, and a NewMediaMusic story
derived from it, reporting allegations that some major labels are
rigging the SoundScan charts:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-000057351jul13.story
http://www.newmediamusic.com/articles/NM01070298.html
The scam is pretty elementary. The major label hires an independent
promoter. The independent promoter gives a bunch of free promo discs
to a CD store which reports to SoundScan and has the CD store employees
scan the free discs multiple times. The CD store then gets to sell
the free discs at normal price. Since the discs were not bought at
wholesale, the retail price becomes pure profit to the store.
The artist is screwed because, as free promo discs are involved,
no royalties are paid.
Soundscan itself is exasperated. "'The labels pay us to run a system
that delivers an accurate sales count,' (soundscan exec) Shalett said.
'What's the point of them paying somebody else to mess
with it? It's insane.'"
NewMediaMusic suggests that the scam is motivated by internal record
company politics; people who stand to be fired if a release they are
responsible for performs poorly.
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orinoco
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response 34 of 106:
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Jul 26 21:38 UTC 2001 |
Curiouser and curiouser....
I've given up on thinking that any given development will be the last straw
that will turn people against the music industry: there have been far too many
last straws already, and we're apathetic and cranky, but we still buy from
them. Still, I'd have fun following this if it became a big scandal; I'm
rooting for it just for that.
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dbratman
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response 35 of 106:
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Jul 27 16:44 UTC 2001 |
Options for obtaining music from somewhere other than "the music
industry" (a pretty broad term) are currently somewhat limited, and
require some hefty searching and self-starting. Sure, folks tried to
bypass it, but ...
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orinoco
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response 36 of 106:
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Aug 18 18:28 UTC 2001 |
The State Street Harmony House in Ann Arbor seems to have bitten, or to be
in the act of biting, the dust. They have a 'for rent' sign in their window.
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tpryan
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response 37 of 106:
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Aug 19 15:49 UTC 2001 |
So State Street is where the Harmoney House was hidding?
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krj
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response 38 of 106:
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Aug 20 16:37 UTC 2001 |
Yeah. I think everyone in the Grex music conference who commented on
the Harmony House store wondered what the heck they thought they were
doing, putting a mall-quality CD store, which could compete on neither
price nor selection, in the State & Liberty area.
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otaking
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response 39 of 106:
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Aug 21 04:05 UTC 2001 |
Yeah. The only time I went to Harmony House to shop was when I was looking
for a "Top 10" soundtrack. I decided after one visit to never shop there
again.
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mcnally
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response 40 of 106:
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Aug 22 10:02 UTC 2001 |
So for those of us who aren't in Ann Arbor any longer but are
still keeping score, what's left?
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scott
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response 41 of 106:
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Aug 22 12:05 UTC 2001 |
Well, now, let's see:
Borders, of course. Discount Records is still standing. There's that weird
used CD place over on the other side of campus with the CDs in the huge locked
glass cases; they sell a fair amount of new CDs. Schoolkids in Exile still
there.
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krj
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response 42 of 106:
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Aug 22 16:52 UTC 2001 |
And Encore, Wazoo and PJs.
I've found that my shopping for new CDs at stores has collapsed.
For new CDs, I'm shopping only at Borders, Elderly Instruments
in Lansing, and very occasionally at Schoolkids-in-the-Basement.
Schoolkids is limited both in stock and in hours open, so I haven't been
going there much.
My rough guess is that I'm buying maybe 1/4 of what I used to buy
in the local new shops. For a lot of what I want, it's not
even worth the time to check Borders: obscure folk/world
and classical CDs just aren't being stocked much in Ann Arbor any more.
I miss being able to wander out either from home or work to browse
through bins of CDs, but it seems that era has ended.
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dbratman
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response 43 of 106:
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Aug 22 21:39 UTC 2001 |
Browsing through web sites just isn't the same.
For that matter, browsing through CDs wasn't the same as browsing
through LPs. Not only was it physically easier to flip through the
LPs, but (at least in classical) they had liner notes on the back that
could help you decide whether to buy something you didn't know.
I've been tempted, on occasion, to slit open CD wrappers in the shop so
as to read the booklet. I'd buy a lot more CDs if I could. In this
respect, the web is a slight improvement. Not much, but a little.
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orinoco
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response 44 of 106:
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Aug 23 17:37 UTC 2001 |
Most used stores let you do just that.
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dbratman
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response 45 of 106:
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Aug 24 16:59 UTC 2001 |
New CDs, Dan, new CDs. Used ones don't even have wrappers.
Some new-CD stores will indeed let you do that. But I can't imagine
making that request of the drones who staff my Tower's classical
department.
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tpryan
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response 46 of 106:
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Aug 24 22:11 UTC 2001 |
Borders has a new, different kind of listening station in
the newly opened stores...a way to listen in a multitude of CDs
from one place, instead of only 5 at a time.
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scott
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response 47 of 106:
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Aug 25 15:30 UTC 2001 |
Van Morrison, "Moondance".
One of the true classics...
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krj
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response 48 of 106:
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Sep 14 02:58 UTC 2001 |
At the Frandor Mall in Lansing yesterday, I unexpectedly stumbled
over a new Michigan Where House Records outlet. (This is the locally-
owned small chain which used to operate campus stores in East Lansing
and Ann Arbor, not the California-based chain with the similar name.)
Alas, it's beyond easy walking distance from my office, but I will
have to stop in there and see if their stock is interesting enough
to merit any business. If anyone is looking for it: the store
is just to the east of Bollert's Ace Hardware.
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krj
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response 49 of 106:
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Oct 21 17:36 UTC 2001 |
View hidden response.
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krj
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response 50 of 106:
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Oct 21 19:13 UTC 2001 |
((I decided to move resp:49 to a different item...))
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krj
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response 51 of 106:
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Oct 25 22:41 UTC 2001 |
East Lansing has a store selling new CDs again, after a dry year.
The Barnes & Noble CD department is probably about as good a CD shop as
East Lansing has ever seen, except for the late lamented Tower.
The classical section is probably less interesting than the old
Michigan Where House classical section at its peak.
What makes it particularly interesting is the new music preview system,
from a company called RedDotNet. They claim that customers can hear
preview samples from any disc in the store, and this seems close to
correct. The headphones are attached to a laser scanner (the Red Dot
of the company name); the customer scans the bar code of any random
CD, and you get a menu of 30-60 second samples from every track on the
disc. My guess is that the samples are MP3 or similar compression.
They are stored centrally, and a clerk told me that updates come from
the Home Office every week or so. The clerk told me that a
prof we know from the Music department spent three hours in the
store on opening night, playing with the preview system.
The system had most of the items I checked, about a dozen.
It had Steeleye Span and a Mahler Resurrection Symphony.
The only discs which did not have preview tracks available were
Sigur Ros, and a duet album from Cecilia Bartoli and
Bryn Terfel.
The East Lansing B&N stores world music alphabetically by artist,
with no geographical divisions, so the Irish nestle up against the
Africans. The world music section is small enough that you could
browse through it all pretty quickly.
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krj
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response 52 of 106:
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Oct 28 05:42 UTC 2001 |
Back in resp:music2,154,217 (music2, item 154, resp 217) I wrote
about the Virgin Megastore on Michigan Avenue. The store was still
pretty appealing when Leslie and I returned there this spring; but
we were there again on Friday, and the store has crashed.
The biggest disappointment was the dismantling of the classical section.
Classical was forced out of its separate room, the one with classical
albums playing in the background; it was shoved in a back corner and
cut by maybe 40%. The old classical music room is now the DVD room.
World music seemed gutted as well; I couldn't find any discs that I wanted.
There were a couple of British Isles/Celtic items worth looking at,
and they were priced at an appealing $14. I settled for the new Kathryn
Tickell CD and passed on the Bachue. And there was a Tracey Dares CD
I had not seen before. But that was it; two CDs bought, and just one
tempation passed up, from a store where previously I had found
armloads of stuff.
The standard price of $18.99 was really putting me off buying anything
which might have been stocked at any other store.
We're unlikely to go out of our way to stop there on our future
Chicago trips.
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mcnally
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response 53 of 106:
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Oct 28 08:32 UTC 2001 |
It's hard to see how a record store could be both price competitive
AND located on Michigan Avenue, but $18.99 for most discs just makes
me want to cry..
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krj
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response 54 of 106:
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Oct 29 18:24 UTC 2001 |
Second-hand followups to some of my recent reports:
resp:52 :: There is a Usenet report on rec.music.classical.recordings
that the Virgin Megastore in Times Square has drastically pruned
its CD section to make way for videos, much as Chicago did. So perhaps
this was a corporate decision for the whole chain.
resp:48 :: A co-worker told me that the Where House Records shop
in Frandor Mall in Lansing has closed; this is just five weeks
after I learned that it existed. I never got to visit it.
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tpryan
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response 55 of 106:
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Oct 29 20:49 UTC 2001 |
A shame if they don't think they can make good business
in October, November and December.
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krj
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response 56 of 106:
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Nov 2 00:39 UTC 2001 |
The venerable Canadian firm Sam the Record Man has filed for
bankruptcy. There are two good stories at http://www.globeandmail.com
but unfortunately Globe and Mail URLs are about three lines long,
so you'll have to search on "sam's" to find the news story
from October 31 and a memorial from November 1.
Sam's had outlets all across Canada, but the important store
was the one on Yonge Street in Toronto.
Back when I was a college student, my friends and I experienced
something we called "the East Lansing/Toronto Spacewarp."
We went to Toronto, lots of times. And in those days, the
four-story Sam's, with the landmark animated neon LP
design on the front, was probably the best
record store in Canada, and one of the best in the world.
Long before "world music" became a viable genre, Sam's had a
killer section of international music; I got some fun Eastern
European albums from there. And lots of Canadian and British Isles
folk, and jazz, and classical... sometimes it seemed like if it
was released anywhere in the world, then there was a good chance
that Sam's had it. I don't think I ever saw a selection of
imported records that was better than Sam's.
I didn't get to Toronto much in the CD era. Senna would tell me
that the store was declining due to commercial pressure from
the HMV down the street. When I made my last trip to Sam's
about three or four years ago, it was clear that the store wasn't
what it had been 15 years ago, but I still came away with a good
armload of Canadian, British and European folk and roots music,
including one treasure I never expected to find -- a long out-of-print
disc on Billy Bragg's old Utility label by Jungr & Parker.
(And the Sam's clerk marked it down by 40% -- "This has been here
far too long," she said, when I hesitated at the somewhat high price.)
I hit HMV on that same Toronto trip; the HMV store was newer and shinier,
and it wasn't bad, but it still didn't have the breadth of stock
that Sam's had, even in Sam's long decline.
Thanks to Sam Sniderman, age 81, who ran such an important store
for its entire 63-year life.
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