Stirling Newberry wrote:

>In one of my other live, I am a computer solutions architect, my current
>project is a one terrabyte data warehouse for the desk top. What prey
>tell, does this have to do with classical music?

It seems to me like it means much of the history of recorded sound could
be stored on my desk top.

>The other side of this is not technological, but business.  To make this
>arrangment viable woudl require the other side - the supplier side - to
>take much less money per unit.  Let us face facts, the packaging and so on
>costs less to provide than record labels think they can charge for the
>packaging itself, and is used to justify the enormous percentage that
>disappears down various holes.

Some costs might be helpful. My label is tax exempt, non profit:

Our June issue is a reissue of Barbara Nissman doing all of the solo piano
and chamber works with piano written by Ginastera.  Originally released on
Newport, the masters are owned by SONY.

I do all of the mastering, layout, design, mailing of promos,
correspondance myself, so no charge there.  My partner works with our
distributor and is supposedly our fund raiser.  My wife, keeps the
accounts.  His wife does the layout for our fundraising stuff and keeps
the notes from our meetings.  In short, no charge for the above.

Manufacturing costs: 1,000 two disc sets

Production charges by printer   250.
Film-output films               150.
Blueline                        112.
CDs, two color face, shrink
wrap and jewel box insertion    1719.90 for 2,014 discs
Double slim jewel boxes (1,007)  654.55
12 page booklet, backtray card   563.92
Freight                          73.49
TOTAL manufacturing costs      3,515.86

Mechanical rights for 1,000 copies; all music published by Boosey and
Hawkes:               2,100. (still awaiting final bill)

On top of this SONY will get a small percentage of each copy sold.

We get about $12 for each two disc set sold in US and about $9 for everyone
sold in the UK, they pay the duty.

The artist has agreed to a percentage of sales and we did not have to pay
for the original studio costs or the costs of the other musicians, a string
quartet and the composer's widow doing two works.  The prices mentioned
above do not include those copies we mail out as promos, and the postage
and handling for those items.

We have to sell about 500 copies before we make back our costs.  We have
been told that an issue as esoteric as this is likely to have sales of
about 300-500.

The good news is that if one can sell out the first 1,000, the
manufacturing costs for the next 1,000 are less.

>The solution to the distribution dilemma is out there, however, grasping
>it means accepting a great deal less profit per unit, and finding ways of
>selling more units.

I don't know if there is much of a larger market, however, I do believe
that the difficulty in having access to the product has had a negative
impact on sales.

How Naxos manages to sell 30,000 copies of a title must have to do with its
visability, and having its own world wide distribution...and of course the
wonderful recordings they make.

>Sadly the trend seems to be in the other direction, to market more and
>more to the people willing to pay 19 dollars US per CD. This may make
>good sense in the short run, but not in the long run, since it closes
>down creation of newer fans, who are, by and large, not yet willing to
>pay 19 dollars per CD.

I agree.  This also has been my concern for the marketing of classical
music in other areas like the concert hall and radio.

For me, downloading is similar to self service gasoline...while I know
where to check the oil, I would rather have someone else do it.  As a
result, I don't check it as often as I should.

Karl