Is Telarc finsihed?

[emaidel]

I just read that three former Telarc executives are now involved with a joint effort to record the Cleveland Orchestra for Deutche Grammaphon. Additionally, those three have started either new recording companies, and/or labels. Michael Bishop is now head of "Five/Four Productions," a new recording company starting operations now (January, 2009). Elaine Martone and Robert Woods have created a new recording label - Sonarc.

When Concord Music acquired Telarc several years back, the first to go was the founder/president/chief recording engineer, Jack Renner who "retired." Now these three top executives appear to have left also. I don't think it takes rocket science to feel that things aren't what they used to be at Telarc, or if Telarc is even a viable business anymore.

I'll check into this further with my "contacts" and post whatever I may be able to. In the event this is indeed the end of Telarc, its a sad day for this industry if that's so.

[mlsstl]

Don't know if this is the case, but it is hardly unusual for a company to be acquired only for their name and reputation with little intent of continuing the practices that gave the name the good reputation in the first place.

The general hope is that they can cut costs and corners without the bulk of the populace noticing. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. They probably figure they'll lose 10% or 20% of their customers who'll figure out that things aren't as good as they used to be, but hope they hang onto the other 80% who'll never know the difference.

Marantz is an interesting example to view over a 50 year time span. When Saul Marantz was in charge, their reputation was impeccable. When they sold to Superscope and subsequently started manufacturing in Japan, the brand lost a lot of luster among the cognoscenti but did fairly well with the conversion to a mass market mid-fi company in the 1970s. They've even since gone back upscale just a bit, though still don't have the revered status they did in the 1950s. However, from a business perspective of sales volume, I imagine the whole process was pretty effective.

Contrast that record to AR (Acoustic Research) which was a highly regarded front runner in speaker design in the 1950s and 60s but now has been reduced to a "Home Decor" series of speakers. (Have no idea if they are any good, but they certainly aren't targeting the audiophile market with that name.)

[Feanor]

....
When Concord Music acquired Telarc several years back, the first to go was the founder/president/chief recording engineer, Jack Renner who "retired." Now these three top executives appear to have left also. I don't think it takes rocket science to feel that things aren't what they used to be at Telarc, or if Telarc is even a viable business anymore.
...

Chances are the current Telarc recordings will be available for a reasonable time into the future, but as for new ones, they could well be few and/or of lower quality.

Regarding SACD, according to ArkivMusic's SACD labels list, Telarc is No. 2 for numbers of titles. (I suspect Arkiv's label/titles list is incomplete since it accounts for only 1381 of the 2095 classicals they claim are available.) The number of "minor" labels among those with more than a couple of dozen titles is -- maybe -- a bit surprising. Or maybe not surprising, given "major" labels are backing away from classical issues in general.

LABEL	Recordings
Pentatone	145
Telarc	114
BIS	109
Channel Classics	101
Sony	92
Linn Records	67
Harmonia Mundi	58
Md&g (Dabringhaus & Grimm)	53
Chandos	49
Audite	48
RCA Victor Living Stereo	44
CPO	36
Hyperion	34
LSO Live	34
Deutsche Grammophon	33
Arts Music	32
Alia Vox	28
Capriccio Records	28
RCA	25

[emaidel]

Well, the rumors are "official:" This is information I've been keeping inside since I was made aware of Concord Music's decision months ago. While Telarc hasn't been completely eliminated as a brand of recorded material, the entire production staff (save one or two) was given its walking papers last November. Their final work date was to be this March, but most of them, smart people that they are, founded their own recording company (Five-Four Productions) and a new label (Sonarc). There will likely be no more new SACD releases under the Telarc brand, but we all have good reason to look forward to new material released on the Sonarc label.

Just why Concord Music purchased Telarc in the first place is something I'll never understand. The name is still around, and will be for a while, but just how long that "while" is, is anybody's guess.

[Woochifer]

Well, the rumors are "official:" This is information I've been keeping inside since I was made aware of Concord Music's decision months ago. While Telarc hasn't been completely eliminated as a brand of recorded material, the entire production staff (save one or two) was given its walking papers last November. Their final work date was to be this March, but most of them, smart people that they are, founded their own recording company (Five-Four Productions) and a new label (Sonarc). There will likely be no more new SACD releases under the Telarc brand, but we all have good reason to look forward to new material released on the Sonarc label.

Just why Concord Music purchased Telarc in the first place is something I'll never understand. The name is still around, and will be for a while, but just how long that "while" is, is anybody's guess.

Bad news all the way around given Telarc's great history.

Even Concord Music is more of a corporate conglomerate nowadays. They started as a Bay Area-based specialty jazz label, but expanded when they added the Fantasy library to their holdings. Then they moved their headquarters down to L.A. and began stockpiling other smaller specialty labels.

The value of Telarc to Concord Music is pretty obvious -- it's all about the music library. Once Concord Music added the Fantasy stable (which includes a slew of historically significant jazz and vintage rock recordings), they became more of a reissue label. Telarc has primarily been driven by new recordings, but they now have a large enough music library to sustain the label with reissues.

It's no secret that classical budgets have been slashed to the bare bone, and orchestras are now taking it upon themselves to issue their own recordings and offer up more of their content via online downloads. Most classical labels have drastically cut back on the number of new recordings that they issue, and focused more of their energy on repackaging and reissuing recordings from their libraries. With classical music sales declining by more than 20 percent last year, I would guess that this trend will likely accelerate.

That's why the SF Symphony and Chicago Symphony formed their own record labels, and that's why the LA Philharmonic issues the vast majority of their recordings as online downloads with only a few CD releases. The LA Phil has a contract with DG, and through DG, they sell digital downloads of nearly all of their season series concerts. I would guess that the orchestra pockets more by selling digital downloads of their entire concert season than whatever they get for the one or two CDs that they release in a given year. Tickets at the LA Phil's Disney Hall are already hard to get, and demand for these concert downloads will likely skyrocket when 28-year old phenom Gustavo Dudamel takes over the podium next season.

In a way, the formation of Five-Four and Sonarc is reminiscent of how indie classical labels like Telarc and Teldec got their start by riding the initial wave of interest in digital recording and CDs. With the major labels pulling way back on their classical recording schedules, smaller more nimble labels can find a good niche. And this also presents new opportunities to get creative with distribution. In addition to CDs, classical labels can also issue higher resolution digital downloads, and even Blu-ray.