“'Beatles in Mono' CD box set: a lesson in collecting” plus 1 |
| 'Beatles in Mono' CD box set: a lesson in collecting Posted: 27 Dec 2010 06:02 AM PST December 27, 2010 | 6:00 am Judging the market for big-ticket music box sets continues to be at least as much art as it is science. Record company executives I spoke to recently said that even though the Internet has given labels unprecedented ability to target fans of specific artists, there's still a lot of hope and guesswork that goes into these ultra-expensive projects such as the $1,199 Miles Davis 43-CD box set and the $749 30-CD "The Complete Elvis Presley Masters" box. Seattle indie music store owner Mike Batt of Silver Platters, for instance, noted that when EMI/Capitol Records last year issued CD box sets with the remastered Beatles catalog — one in stereo that list for $259 and one gathering all the Fab Four's albums that were originally mixed in mono carrying a $299 list price — the company ultimately created a quagmire for Beatles collectors. "It takes a smart buyer to know the store audience and also the future market value of these items," Batt told me by e-mail. "If played right they can make a profit, but they can also be a large cash hole." The Beatles' mono box from last year is a perfect example. "The Beatles in Mono" box originally was touted as a limited-edition set for which only 10,000 copies would be manufactured. Those quickly sold out by way of pre-orders, sending collectors into something of a feeding frenzy to get their hands on copies. "Most retail never actually had any to sell to someone that had not already preordered it [by] the day of release. Not even Amazon," Batt recalled. "This made the actual marketplace demand so cloudy that Capitol/EMI decided to press more a month later, which then flooded the market. "Today there are hundreds and hundreds of people trying to sell it online and just get something for it. What actually cost retailers $190 each has had a low market value of $110 online so far. Add to that a group of bootleggers and pirates that tried to jump on the bandwagon early and are now trying to recoup their losses by selling the bootlegs in legitimate marketplaces, bringing the value and consumer confidence in the item even lower." What's that line? "I read the news today, oh, boy …" — Randy Lewis This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| The Beatles might still be bigger than Jesus Posted: 26 Dec 2010 12:32 AM PST How curious: the zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios has become one of London's most popular attractions and, in recognition of this, has been awarded listed status, a first for a road marking. This follows the decision by the National Trust to preserve for the nation the Beatles' childhood homes. Where is all this going? Ironically, given what John Lennon said in 1966 about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus, the band does now seems to have a quasi-religious function. Can a Beatles Day be far away? Perhaps we could use Boxing Day, as no one is really sure what today is for anyway, and it does begin with a B. And what about Liverpool? John Lennon Airport was a solid start, but why not go the extra mile and rename the town Beatles-by-Sea? The signs for Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields have, after all, become places of pilgrimage, while the Cavern is now a shrine where worshippers go and light candles. The envelopes on which John and Paul jotted down their lyrics regularly sell for a million pounds or more. Why? Because these are holy relics. Fragments of the true cross. You can imagine the tour guides of the future: "This is the very zebra crossing upon which the four hairy messiahs trod, and verily, it came to pass that St Paul did go barefoot, though the pavement was cold." What's really strange is that, as Lennon tried to explain at the time, if you compare church attendance with the number of people buying Beatles records, they are more popular, in a way. Forty years after they disbanded, the Fab Four still dominate American and European popular culture. They are still in the charts, still selling records in the same quantities they have always sold them. In fact, they are selling more than ever before. Their sales passed the billion mark 10 years ago and – thanks to the remastered collection that came out last year and the long-awaited release of their catalogue on iTunes last month – people are buying their records again and again, even though they already own them on vinyl, tape and CD. There may be two billion or so Christians in the world, but how many keep buying copies of the Bible, year after year? I once got an intimation of the vertiginous scale of the Beatles' fame when I was at the opera with my wife. We were sitting in the dress circle when we spotted, at the end of our row, Princess Margaret. After digging each other in the ribs, we noticed that she was digging the person next to her in the ribs as well. "Look!" she was saying. "It's Ringo Starr!" We swivelled round and saw that it was indeed the second-best drummer in the Beatles, sitting on the other end of our row. When, in 2001, Paul McCartney did his first US tour in a decade, there was much hysteria about how he was "healing" the country after 9/11. No, really. It was because he was playing Beatles songs for the first time since they split. I flew over to interview him before one of these concerts and teased him about this. "Healing, Paul? Healing? " "I know, I know," he said. "Better than bad reviews, I guess. JFK had died a few months before the Beatles' first tour and there was a sense then of America wanting to get back to normal after a world-shocking event. The same is happening now." I shook hands with him that day. Should I have my hand preserved for the nation? Perhaps I should keep it wrapped in cling film, just in case. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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