Current Catalogue?

Yes, it does matter, as the end of the "brick and morter" store has hastened the end of the actual CD.
http://www.elvis-collectors.com/forum/v ... ight=tower

Those who congratulate themselves on the cheaper on-line prices have inadvertantly excellerated the download phenomenon- and I'm gulity of this too.

I'm sorry to hear that you never leave your house but the record store as an institution does deserve at least some lamentation as it passes, and that they no longer can really survive does not bode well for the digital platter. I have used on-line stores myself but liked that stores existed for a variety of reasons.

But Greg, I live in a pretty small town. In Sweden. Actually, it's the second biggest town in the whole country, but it's still very small compared to where you live. We don't have anything like HMV or Tower Records around here. When I am in London, I always spend hours at HMV - I do love great music stores. I don't buy my CDs online because they are cheaper but because the record stores in this town ain't what they used to be. They mostly stock Top 40 stuff these days. In order to find more unusual stuff, you have to buy your music online.

As usual I find it difficult to express myself properly in this damn language. But, as online stores grow bigger and bigger, does it really matter if most of the "normal" record stores close? The people who bought their CDs there in the 1990s now buy their CDs on Amazon or whatever, right? The market is still there, the buyers are still there. The only difference is that CDs are now sold through Amazon instead of a local record store. I am not talking about the latest Robbie Williams CD now. There is no doubt that CDs with "new music" don't sell anywhere near as good as they used to do. The people who are interested in the latest hits and so on prefer downloads, nothing will change that. But could it be possible that labels like Ace, Bear Family or Rhino - who only sell stuff that collectors and music fanatics are interested in - are doing just as good as they did 10 years ago? I would like to think so. Maybe I'm wrong.

Keith Richards, Jr.

Keith: I live in a town of 35,000. We have the mass market stores Walmart, Target, K-mart, etc. But the only "music" store we have as such
is Sam Goody. I've stopped going (even though I've known the manager for years) because the only Elvis product I can ever find now are the various compilations. Absolutely no "deep" catalog product. Of course, they can order that for me, but I can do that for myself online.

Rob -- the weekend has passed and gone. How do you like BMG's 2006 edition of the MDQ?

Good question. I was wondering the same thing.

Keith, I don't mean to single you out and I do think devoted music fans will come to their music in any number of ways if they are "off the beaten" path -and regardless of the medium, as much as I must begrudgingly take note of those who only download.

(Your English is quite accomplished by the way...)

I guess the problem is that the popular music acts do in some ways subsidize the Roy Orbison album reissues and the like. We probably can take refuge with our old-fashioned music tastes and taste for physical "records," but the CD as a medium is quietly but steadily dying out across the spectrum, led by the popular mainstream, in the US at least.

Here, it may take some time for working class people who are of a certain age and shop at Wal-Mart or K-Mart or Target to totally give up on the CD, but then the number of people with pricey satellite radio subscriptions is also quite high and common. Someone that plugged in with, say, a great satellite radio station, is that much more unlikely to feel the need to be their own D.J.

I remember how vinyl (LP and single) buyers were shunted aside in the late '80s (as it was, cassettes were doing outpacing even records, as I recall) and slowly and eventually told by the industry to "get lost" as they put bonus tracks on CD only and other ways to tell vinyl types to "get with it." And as LTB would say, tell us to spend $15 for a whole CD when people only wanted one song and there's evidence they did purposely sacrifice the single this way.

So the CD may soldier on for even decades, I do hope. But we'll be in the minority, or so they say. The average music consumer (and I can trace this with my 30-something friends) are slowly but surely (about every Christmas) totally getting onboard with the MP-3 / download/ I-Pod model.


Personally, I think it sucks. ( )

Greg: If the CD soldiers on for a couple more decades I'll be 76. I'll probably not care by then.

I'm also fully prepared to be one of the last of a breed, Jerry, as well, from some VHS' I won't replace, to cassettes, to vinyl records to thousands of CDs, let along actual books and such.

Future (current? )homes will have more space and look less cluttered, but any homier? I doubt it.

I also seem to recall words to that effect. I suppose the poor sales of the first three doomed the project.

I sometimes wonder if Sony/BMG shouldn't just license select Elvis catalog product to Time-Life Music and let them have a go at it. They seem to understand how to mount an ad campaign and move product.
It isn't as if they'd be new to selling Elvis' music.

There is nothing holding back TimeLife, Readers Digest or anybody producing CD's from the RCA catalogue vis RCA Special Products.

But they are not confident af worthwhile sales volumes....and they should know.

I was about to write "aging fan base.... "...but isn't it fair to assume that at one point, and even today, nearly every American home (or a high percentage) has an Elvis record in it, or a CD, or has at one point?

You cannot have achieved much more in terms of sales "penetration" than Elvis Presley. Sooner or later, you're going to see a drop-off and that's not a bad thing necessarily. For BMG/Sony, it's a tragedy but consider it a "market adjustment."