One possible future for CD sales?

Below is an article that ran in the Washington Post about a new program from Vox. (It’s archived, so I thought I’d save everyone some headaches.) Now this of some interest. Granted, $20 per disc seems a little high for many of the titles on offer, but there are some attractive items. Being a Walter Klien fan, I can spring for more discs if I choose. Hopefully some early Gyorgy Sandor discs and more Klemperer titles that have not been reissued yet will find there way in to the program.

I hope this program works sufficiently well so that other companies offer similar programs. Can you imagine the entire back catalogs of Decca, or DG, or (gulp) EMI? Oh, the possibilities.


The Article

washingtonpost.com
Vox Music, Heeding Its Masters' Choice
Firm Offers Custom CDs of Back Issues

By Tim Page
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 2, 2003; Page C01


A record company's back catalogue is one of its proudest possessions. Capitol Records still makes millions of dollars every year on decades-old Beatles and Beach Boys albums, while RCA Victor cleans up with the work of artists ranging from Elvis Presley to the legendary operatic tenor Enrico Caruso, who made his last record in 1920.

The best back catalogues are not only valuable assets but also archives of considerable historical importance. And, up until now, listeners in search of performances by many of the countless artists who never attained the legendary status of a Caruso or a Presley have often found themselves frustrated. Records remain in print for only so long, and once they are deleted from the catalogue or sold out, they become difficult, and sometimes impossible, to find.

That is why a recent announcement from Vox Music Group is such good news. This venerable company, founded at the dawn of the LP era in the late 1940s, offered high-quality but low-priced recordings -- some 5,000 titles in all, issued over the course of half a century. Now Vox General Manager Todd Landor and Gene Gaudette, the company's technical and repertory director, have announced Vox Unique, a service that will custom-make CDs of long-out-of-print Vox recordings for the serious collector -- or, for that matter, any listener with $20.

"Here's the way it works," Gaudette said in a recent interview." It's always been very difficult for a big record company to run off a small pressing. Making, say, 500 copies of a record simply hasn't been cost-effective --especially now, when the big record retailers are in such a state of flux.

"But we've been able to eliminate the middleman by dealing directly with the listener through the Internet. We've bought some high-level technology -- including top-of-the-line computers and CD burners -- and we are now able to make single copies available from our offices on Long Island, without ever putting the records on sale in brick-and-mortar stores. This way, even if only 20 or 30 people in the world want one of our records, our expenses will still be covered and the record will be out there."

According to Landor, Vox Unique is starting off with about 400 discs that will be available immediately, with further recordings added on a regular basis. The entire list of Vox Unique recordings may be found at www.cd101.net. "Given that less than one-fifth of our masters have been issued in the compact disc format, it is my feeling that the Vox Unique initiative will become not only a model but an alternative outlet for other recording companies both large and small," Landor said. "We envision a world in which people will have become accustomed to defining exactly what they want through interactive and entertaining Web searches."

Among the items available exclusively through Vox Unique is a legendary 1953 recording of Arnold Schoenberg's "Gurrelieder" featuring tenor Richard Lewis and conducted by Rene Leibowitz, which has been out of print for close to half a century. Other highlights include Beethoven symphonies with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Otto Klemperer; performances by the exquisitely tender pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski (who was still playing at the age of 99); and -- from the mid-1970s -- the complete Rachmaninoff symphonies with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of the young Leonard Slatkin, which were originally issued on a Vox subsidiary, Turnabout.

There are Chopin performances by pianists Walter Klien, Ingrid Haebler, Guiomar Novaes and Peter Frankl, many of which were available in the 1960s in a popular 12-LP set. Gaudette names a selection of "Transcendental Etudes," by the Russian composer Sergei Lyapunov (1859-1924), played by the pianist Louis Kentner, as a particular favorite. "The music is incredibly difficult, the playing is spectacular, and the recording has been terribly hard to find," he said.

Right now, the recordings come in a simple box, with minimal cover art and no liner notes.

"I hope we will find a way to reproduce the original packaging soon," Gaudette said. "At this point, our project is about the actual recordings and performances and not very much else." Single CDs are $20; two-CD sets are $30; three-CD sets are $40. Gaudette believes that someday soon all of what he calls "historically important" Vox recordings will be available. He promises that the company will be "responsive" to its public.

"We will be listening carefully to feedback and suggestions from our customers, from collectors looking to replace -- in fact, upgrade -- their favorite old recordings and even requests from special retailers looking to do limited runs of favorite vintage recordings from the Vox catalogue," Gaudette said.

If only all record companies were so respectful of their heritage.