Dan Zimmerman wrote:
>The price of a CD is not the only measure of its worth. It's duration
>is another measure.
As is the quality of the music, the recording, and the performance. Most
would argue that these last three are vastly more important in the long run
than the first two.
>Following the same tradition, Richard Pennycuick rightly honored Naxos and
>named a unit of CD price after them for their contribution to lowering CD
>prices.
I believe Richard's point is that because Naxos is available worldwide
and they follow what appears to be a relatively uniform pricing model, we
can use the local price of Naxos releases to normalize the price of other
labels and therefore meaningfully compare the prices in various currencies.
>In my opinion, Hyperion should be honored too because of the generous
>amount of music in their CDs.
At Hyperion prices, they have to be generous. There's also the implication
here that Naxos discs are substantially more stingy when it comes to timing
than Hyperion. While I have no way of comparing all of the releases from
each label, I do have a database for my personal collection, and these
labels are well-represented.
Back when the Internet was young, and before the spammers and chatters had
flooded the newsgroups, I regularly posted a list of the longest CDs and a
ranking of each label as to which had the longest average CD length. The
longest CD list has long since been abandoned (though I just found a copy
from Nov. 1993 - like a trip down memory lane) as the number of classical
CDs over 75 minutes now is probably nearing the thousand mark (in 1993
there were 254 CDs listed over 75 minutes). I now have over 400 75+ minute
discs in my collection alone, and 119 of those are over 78 minutes in
length.
>(I also like their CD covers)
Who doesn't? But are they worth $10-12 each (the difference between Naxos
and Hyperion)? I certainly don't think so, and in the world of budget
releases, Naxos covers and booklets are quite good (excellent even)
compared with other labels at the price. I even like the font and the
consistency of layout of Naxos artwork.
>Therefore I suggest a unit of price/time for CDs the "Naxos/Hyperion".
I won't comment on this except to say I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
In my experience, the average length of a Naxos disc is only a little
over a minute shorter than the average Hyperion CD. That's less than a 2%
difference. How do I know? Well, I decided to generate a table of average
CD lengths for any label in my database represented by 20 or more discs.
Turns out I have 289 labels represented in my database, but only 49 of
those have 20 or more entries. These 49 labels cover 79% of my collection.
For reference, I've included an alphabetical listing of the 49 at the end
of this post along with the associated data.
But for the sake of discussion, here are the top twenty labels in terms of
average disc length:
Rank Label Discs Tot. Mins Average
---- --------------------- ----- --------- -------
1. Olympia 45 3143.47 69:51
2. Dabringhaus & Grimm 45 2993.25 66:30
3. Hyperion 219 14482.47 66:13
4. Dorian Recordings 34 2244.15 66:00
5. Delos 24 1583.47 65:59
6. Musica Sveciae 21 1377.38 65:35
7. Gimell 20 1310.95 65:33
8. Sony 69 4519.88 65:30
9. Vox Music Group 161 10539.08 65:28
10. Virgin 42 2748.97 65:27
11. Dynamic 40 2602.93 65:04
12. Naxos 211 13726.80 65:03
13. Etcetera 24 1546.35 64:26
14. Melodiya 26 1671.77 64:18
15. Nimbus 81 5194.55 64:08
16. Thorofon 28 1795.45 64:07
17. Marco Polo 249 15957.30 64:05
18. BIS 95 6086.98 64:04
19. Harmonia Mundi 162 10321.58 63:43
20. Academy Sound & Vision 79 5020.40 63:33
I was pretty surprised to see Olympia as the winner, and by such a large
margin. I had forgotten that they also won back in 1993 when I last did
this. The top twenty stayed fairly consistent too. A few positions
shuffled around - which you'd expect with just a few seconds separating
most labels. An exception is Teldec, which dropped from 3rd to 23rd,
losing an average of three minutes per disc. Overall, average disc lengths
increased about two minutes over the past seven years from about 60 minutes
to 62 minutes.
What does all this mean? Frankly, I'm not exactly sure we can draw many
specific conclusions beyond the fact that CD timings, on average, are
pretty close for most labels. In the big list of 49, there are a few
labels whose average time is notably low, such as Denon, CBS (pre-Sony),
and Erato in the 55 to 58 minute range. I wouldn't read too much into
this as I primarily collected these labels in the early days (I've been
buying CDs since 1985) and back then Denon was releasing discs as short
a 35 minutes at full price, and they were one of the only games in town.
I'm sure their more recent releases fare much better. Philips too is
suppressed for approximately the same reason. In the early days I bought
a number that were direct disc-for-disc transfers of LP releases, so some
are quite short. Philips, the label best represented in my database, came
in 40th with a average of 59:37, but it turns out that of the 280 Philips
discs I have, only 33 were purchased in the last five years. Then there
are the complications such as labels selling two very short discs for the
price of one (such as BIS's recent release of Alberic Magnard's Symphonies
#2 & 4 coming in at about 83 minutes for the set but selling for the price
of a single disc). I don't have many of these, I don't believe, but I
didn't take the time to weed out the possibly anomalous entires.
If anyone is interested (is anyone still reading this?), drop me a line and
I'll forward the old and new data. I may eventually post this information
at the web site.
>(This proposal also rectifies a slight problem with Richard's proposal -
>the price of a Naxos CD varies from CD to CD)
There are two prices for Naxos CDs, at least here in the U.S., one price
for just about everything, and then a dollar per CD more for opera
recordings. This is the only variation I've seen in price.
The complete list (alphabetical):
Label Discs Tot. Mins Average
----------------------- ----- ---------- -------
Academy Sound & Vision 79 5020.40 63:33
Accord 31 1770.08 57:06
Adda 28 1734.12 61:56
Arabesque 20 1203.27 60:10
Archiv 86 5257.67 61:08
Astree 68 4224.95 62:08
BIS 95 6086.98 64:04
Capriccio 57 3381.12 59:19
CBS 51 2803.98 54:59
Chandos 244 14744.32 60:26
Claves 33 2055.77 62:18
CPO 152 9373.72 61:40
Dabringhaus & Grimm 45 2993.25 66:30
Delos 24 1583.47 65:59
Denon 61 3371.52 55:16
Deutsche Grammophon 136 8607.98 63:18
Dorian Recordings 34 2244.15 66:00
Dynamic 40 2602.93 65:04
EMI 213 13019.75 61:08
Erato 73 4218.63 57:47
Etcetera 24 1546.35 64:26
Gimell 20 1310.95 65:33
Harmonia Mundi 162 10321.58 63:43
Hungaroton 54 3305.53 61:13
Hyperion 219 14482.47 66:13
Koch 120 7133.20 59:27
Kontrapunkt 21 1282.08 61:03
L'Oiseau-Lyre 57 3275.25 57:28
London/Decca 87 5421.42 62:19
Marco Polo 249 15957.30 64:05
Melodiya 26 1671.77 64:18
Musica Sveciae 21 1377.38 65:35
Naxos 211 13726.80 65:03
Newport Classic 20 1269.78 63:29
Nimbus 81 5194.55 64:08
Nuova Era 25 1557.57 62:18
Olympia 45 3143.47 69:51
Orfeo 22 1320.93 60:03
Philips 280 16692.05 59:37
RCA 127 7866.90 61:57
Reference Recordings 20 1132.93 56:39
Sony 69 4519.88 65:30
Sterling 20 1200.22 60:01
Supraphon 66 4030.98 61:05
Telarc 24 1423.42 59:19
Teldec 63 3980.10 63:11
-------------------------- ------ ----------- -------
Subtotals 3934 245526.42 62:25
Grand Totals (all labels) 4964 308677.20 62:11
Dave
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