At 10:57 AM -0800 1/31/03, Patrice L. Roussel wrote:
Really sad to learn (DMG weekly news update) that the label CRI is dead... Any idea what happened?
Thanks,
Patrice.
Steve Smith in his Billboard columnist mode, may have more details of the industry end of things, but to me this was a train wreck that's been waiting to happen for a long time. Simply put, CRI was structured to need much more in revenues than they were able to generate from sales and grants. Many of their releases, including some re-issues of past vinyl, were only possible because the composer and/or performers were able to find funding to pay for the pressing, design, etc.so the label produced many decidedly non-commercial releases. & these discs weren't non-commercial on the level of, say, Eugene Chadbourne compared to Britney Spears. These discs were non-commercial COMPARED to someone like Eugene Chadbourne who, I'd guess, sells a fair number of recordings over the course of a year. &, as I understand it, CRI would release virtually any disc for which the artist had raised the necessary production money. But post-production costs (cataloging, storing, etc) for a label with a catalog that large are substantial and when many of CRI's discs couldn't possibly sell more than 10-20 copies a year on average (& remember that some discs sold MUCH better than that, meaning that lots of discs wouldn't sell any copies in a year, or two, or more), there's not very much cash coming in to cover expenses. I don't think CRI could have been able to serve as broad a range of composers and been able to survive financially, especially with the rise of many, many private labels that were producing recordings that in another time might have been some of CRI's bigger sellers. There's probably something to be said about the relative stability of New World, the other large non-profit label in the States (which I assume is the shadow company that's vaguely referred to as taking over the CRI catalog for CDRs on demand or some such program). While New World is also dependent on grants and donations to keep the overhead going almost everything about the label (selection of projects to release, design, promotion, etc) was more business-like than the equivalent function at CRI. That's what it looks like from here. In New York there may be more depressing details, rumors, and/or facts. Oh yeah, & here's a URL for the Kyle Gann article that Bruce mentions in the DMG e-mail: <http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0304/gann.php>. I always like Kyle's columns that talk about his youth in Texas. Bests, Herb