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Topic: CD Albums: Time To Bite The Bullet Pt. 1 The Problem

22nd May 2017, 6:31 AM
	Apollo59 the future ain't what it used to be Member since Feb 2013 459 Points	Hi Lee Wrecker and ev'ry body. All the possible combinations as suggested make sense to me and I think I've caught grasp of it. Two heads are better than one, as they say (unless it's your wife!). Speaking from personal experience, I used to buy CD's in several regions of the world because my job was outwith Europe. So, basically I know that it would be highly unlikely for me to readily find a Roy Harper CD in Turkmenistan. However, I'd like to offer some info from an entirely different angle which may or not be of interest to some. Here's an example for perusal, that being south east Asia, such as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta. I bought maybe a 1,000 CD's during my time there throughout the 1990's. Suffice to say all of them were western artists. Occasionally some would be made in Australia, so fairly straightforward in that respect. However, the vast majority were either UK or EU. There was nothing on these discs regards to distribution in any other territory other than what they were intended for. This suggests (as I've said to Lee previously) that any entrepreneur can go buy, export and sell and has nothing to do with any record company's global marketing strategy or such. The only time I did see evidence of some kind of distribution management was in UAE, where they stick a sticker on top of the front paper sleeve (under the casing) with "For Sale in Gulf Region Only". Yet every other facet of detail on these discs is as if you bought it in HMV on Oxford Street. What I did find out with regards those that I bought in Jakarta, probably 75% of the 1,000, is that they weren't in fact marketed there at all. They were only in shops (a handful at most) because the people owning these shops, just 2 companies involved, went and got them from European distributors and arranged their export off their own backs. Included were also large selections of Italian bootlegs which they termed 'imports' to differentiate the 20% marginal price difference between the boots and something on say, Polydor label. I'm talking of stock levels of thousands of CD's, just as you'd see in HMV on Oxford Street. I found the same thing going on in Nairobi, Kenya and St. Lucia in the Caribbean. Not that these places are of the slightest concern, but indicative of practices to be found around the world. Following on. Later, I was in Sydney, Australia, and spoke to the owner of this pretty good going independently owned shop. I asked him how easy it was to get stuff over that wasn't directly released in Oz. His answer was along the lines of easy if it's mainstream, but a lot of a my punters aren't wanting that stuff. So I called a friend - trader, back in UK to fax me his lists. The short and sweet is he had loads of good Indy stuff. The owner made up his order, down payment made. stuff shipped. Again, nothing to do with any record company marketing strategy. That was the beginnings of my other "weekend job", that of importer/trader. Another thing that goes on which isn't strictly legit. As you can imagine, Sony Universal produce millions of CD's. There's two details in particular that continuously cause production problems. 1) Printed material. All too often upon initial releases of CD's, they find printing errors with regards the small print stuff for publishing rights and so forth. You'd think by now they'd have a better standard of proof reading, but apparently not. Typical large company modus operandi - gleaming on the outside, a crock of shit within. These discs get batched up and sent off for destruction as it's cheaper to do that than have people removing the incorrect sleeves and inserting the corrected. Only they don't get destroyed. The destruction plant management people are kinda sussed with what to destroy (as proof they're doing what they're contracted to do) and what's worth something on the side.They're sold on from the destruction plant after hours to people in the know for very little. These are the discs that you'll find in certain well known stores at "very reasonable prices". Similarly with above, these discs gets distributed all over the place, to all corners of the globe. 2) The back sleeve of CD's. When the machinery belt is running at full tilt, sometimes sleeves stick to one another or don't fall into the tray correctly. Subsequently they concertina when the next phase follows with the insertion of the tray on top. Each line holds around 100 CD's at any time. They switch off, clear the line into big skips and send them off for destruction. At least in theory. There's some canny people out there who have no difficulties at all reproducing carbon copy back sleeves as replacements. These discs get shipped out to pastures wide. Either the industry is blindly stupid or makes so much they don't care, but I haven't been referring to a couple of hundred here and there. I've been in this so-called destruction plant place myself on several occasions. My trader buddy orders 7 to 8 pallets worth at a time. 7 pallets = 62,000 CD's. At £1.50 each, he trades them on for £3. He has people from all over Europe buying from him at his storage facility, in person and on-line. Bear in mind that my trader buddy is only one of such customers and the scale of this operation is remarkable. I'll keep my dealings with this enterprise stuum. Did somebody mention International? Edited by Apollo59 on 22nd May 2017, 6:40 AM