Steven Martin wrote:

>In conclusion, Universal has jacked up their prices.  The costs of their
>latest Mega-Merger is being passed on to you the consumer.  Expect Sony
>and EMI to raise prices soon.

Yes, indeed they have, and thank you for not blaming Tower.  As a Tower
employee, I can tell you that we were not pleased at having to mark up the
stuff.  Truth be told, we waited several months after UNI's increase to
increase our prices, holding out till the very last minute!

>I now only buy full priced CDs when they are on sale because they are
>just too expensive for me.  These days I mostly only buy midlines, budget
>CDs and Naxos disks with most of my purchases coming from Naxos.  For me
>I reach a point where I just refuse to pay a certain price for a product.
>For me that point is around $15 per disk.  I made an exception for the new
>Rautavaara disk but that was only because I knew that Ondine is almost
>never on sale.  Perhaps Classical sales wouldn't be so low if the prices
>on new releases weren't so high.

Well, Steve, you are both right and wrong.  From my vantage point behind
the counter, most consumers have not said a word in complaint about prices
and they are buying cds by the armload.  And not just budget titles.  I
concur that I would not buy front line product sans my employee discount,
but everyone seems to have lots of money these days and so until they stop
spending it, the labels are pricing in accordance with what the market will
bear.

>[Ah, and the death of the majors continues unabated.  -Dave]

And to this I say, again, "Who gives a damn!"

As long as the "minors" can produce an affordable quality product, who the
hell needs the "majors"? They have been churning out crap for years now
anyway!

Kevin Sutton

 [Actually, that's my point.  To so many people (journalists in particular,
 it seems), as go the majors so goes classical music.  This is erroneous,
 as Kevin points out.  The majors have been increasingly superfluous to
 the serious collector for quite some time.  I like to take every
 opportunity to extricate the fortunes of classical music from the big,
 blundering corporate machines that deluge us in ridiculous crossovers
 and theme collections.  Classical music will survive in lieu, and in
 spite, of these entities.  -Dave]