Most Persuasive Non-Death Certificate Yet

i thought you were jazz.

KG replies: Having mastered classical, postclassical, and jazz, I'm now on to ambient. I realize it must be difficult to keep up. :^D

Interesting stuff. Classical listeners are supposed to be, ahem, of a certain age so maybe they are more inclined to actually buy a CD than download a ripped MP3. I'm an old guy so I have all my classical CDs neatly arranged chronologically from Schutz to Reich; there is something comforting about having it all on a shelf rather than somewhere in an IPod. Maybe CD sales figures are becoming skewed by demographics. Now it was just here that I was going to go into a rant about PostClassical CD availability. I once went to Barnes & Noble to buy "Concerto for Piano & Wind Ensemble" by Kevin Volans. They didn't have it, and could not order it. I tried on-line, but nothing seemed to work. So just now, to make a point, I looked again on Amazon. They had 4 copies in stock... so I bought one. The Long Tail lives.

KG replies: I've learned, when I can't find something interesting, to go to Amazon's foreign sites, like http://www.amazon.co.uk/ (listed at the bottom of the Amazon page).

Paul, on the contemporary repertoire file-sharing community I spend a lot of time in, there are about 40 people active at any given moment, and we'll almost all under the age of 30.

I should mention that t the the effect of young-person file-sharing on sales is less than one would assume when you consider that a good portion of these people live in Eastern Europe or Central America, where there are no stores selling a decent stock of traditional stuff, let alone kooky avant-garde stylings.

Well Chris,

It's gotten more difficult here in the US as well. Smaller stores sometimes have gems but it's usually still a limited collection. After Tower closed, it's really hard to find stuff in general. Fortunately, Amazon seems to have discovered the right business model...everything one click away!

Cheers...umm...for capitalism?