Juozas Rimas:

>Only very recently Warner fired all their personnel from Teldec in Germany
>(one of the truly great labels) and Erato in France.  This "death-toll"
>comes hard in heel after SONY's dismantling of its Continental Europe
>Hamburg head office.  Philips have fired basically all their producers for
>classical music, whereas Deutsche Grammophon has been sold and resold like
>an unwanted car. ...

This is interesting because I believed that CM worldwide market was
flourishing.  I got convinced of this looking at the last two Tower stores
opened a few years ago here, in Buenos Aires.  These stores are really
big:  the one placed at Cabildo Av.  is a 5 floor building, in which the
5th floor is entirely dedicated to classical music (the stock is really
amazing!!!).  At the other one, placed at Santa Fe Av., the classical
section has a smaller room but not a smaller stock.  That kind of stores
were conceivable ten or twelve years ago.  Moreover, Tower has local
competitors (Zival's or Musimundo, and a lot of specialized stores), whose
classical sections are very well supplied too, and often sponsor and issues
recordings by many local classical artists.  Buenos Aires has a big market
of CM consumers, but, as many listmembers possibly know, the economical
situation of Argentina is not precisely flourishing.  I wondered then,
how good should be the worldwide profits of international CM stores and
recording corporations, considering the fact that they trust even the
market of a poor Latin American country.  However, after reading Juozas'
message, I begin to understand why Sony dismantled its head office and
why nobody wants Deutsche Grammophone, not even as a Christmas gift!!!

Pablo Massa
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