emaidel
11-28-2008, 02:23 PM
Several years back, Concord Music bought Telarc. Like many other acquisitions, heads had to roll, and Concord decided the first to go was perhaps the most important in Telarc's lineup: Jack Renner, then president, chief recording engineer and founder of the company. Jack speaks well of Concord Music, but I detected a hint of dissatisfaction when he discussed his "retirement." He's very happy now pursuing his other passion - photography - but I sense he'd still like to be involved with recording music.
Since the acquisition, the recorded music industry has continued to nosedive, with more and more digital downloads becoming the major source for many, and the sale of CD's and SACD's continuing to plummet. Telarc has always enthusiastically endorsed the SACD as "the best thing out there," and had priced its SACD's one to three dollars higher than the same material on CD.
All that has changed just recently. Logging onto "telarc.com" takes you directly to a Concordmusic.com page, featuring telarc products. Even my old Telarc password is no longer of any use in buying discs.
One initially positive change, but, I feel, a sign of imminent disappearance of the brand, is that all Telac SACD's are now priced the same as their CD equivalents: $13.95, which is fully $6.00 less than the same items were only a month ago. Additionally, oder Telarc CD's can be had for as little as $8.00!
All of this may initially seem to just be a terrific bargain, but I sense an underlying current on the part of the "top brass" at Concord Music to eventually dump the sales of Telarc CD's and SACD's, and these drastically reduced prices would seem to indicate that's the direction the company may be headed.
I can only hope this isn't so. While it's really terrific to be able to buy some of the finest sounding recordings made anywhere for so little, I hope that this is not a harbinger of bad things to come. time alone will tell.
Since the acquisition, the recorded music industry has continued to nosedive, with more and more digital downloads becoming the major source for many, and the sale of CD's and SACD's continuing to plummet. Telarc has always enthusiastically endorsed the SACD as "the best thing out there," and had priced its SACD's one to three dollars higher than the same material on CD.
All that has changed just recently. Logging onto "telarc.com" takes you directly to a Concordmusic.com page, featuring telarc products. Even my old Telarc password is no longer of any use in buying discs.
One initially positive change, but, I feel, a sign of imminent disappearance of the brand, is that all Telac SACD's are now priced the same as their CD equivalents: $13.95, which is fully $6.00 less than the same items were only a month ago. Additionally, oder Telarc CD's can be had for as little as $8.00!
All of this may initially seem to just be a terrific bargain, but I sense an underlying current on the part of the "top brass" at Concord Music to eventually dump the sales of Telarc CD's and SACD's, and these drastically reduced prices would seem to indicate that's the direction the company may be headed.
I can only hope this isn't so. While it's really terrific to be able to buy some of the finest sounding recordings made anywhere for so little, I hope that this is not a harbinger of bad things to come. time alone will tell.