Joel Hill wrote:

>HELLO ARTE NOVA!!!  Why would *ANYONE* think that it makes any sense to
>have EIGHT (8) copies of Artur Schnabel's Violin and Piano/Violin Sonatas
>on a rack in Tallahassee, Florida.  Or anywhere else for that matter.

Hold on there Joel.  Arte Nova has little or nothing to do with how
many copies of a cd are in a store.  This is up to the buyers for each
individual retailer.  When I was in the business, we were constantly
frustrated by over and under buying habits of the doofi (plural of doofus)
in the front office who would buy too many obscurities and not enough of
the "godawful Goreckis" that were selling like mad.

>Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!!!!  How better to go bankrupt
>than by flooding the market with totally obscure works by a composer who
>is basically known for his playing of Beethoven on the piano. There are
>probably *NOT* 100 people in the "greater metropolitan" area of Tallahassee
>who have even heard of Schnabel.

Again I assure you that the good folk at BMG have no control or for that
matter, no clue as to how the x-number of copies sold to a chain will be
distributed to individual stores.

>There - I've said it.  This is *nothing* against the recording of "unknown"
>works, but 8 copies still on the rack???? I wonder how many they have
>already sold.  Also - nothing against the white-haired man.  Glad Spec's
>has Senior Salesclerks.  Now I know where to go and look for a job in a
>year or two.  By then the label will be Arte Vecchio.

In Dallas, the Tower store here has a tendency to buy 15-30 copies
of nearly every new release and does a rather mediocre job of keeping
the ones and twos of good seling back catalogue in stock.  Again, the
lables have nothing to do with it except that they sometimes offer
discount incentives to chains to encourage them to post new records on
listening stations etc.  Take it from one who is very experienced in the
matter...those eight copies will get boxed up and returned by some $5 an
hour clerk in a month or two!

Kevin Sutton