MikeH
Well-Known Member
My point is that the major selling point of MM now was that the quality is top notch and there are certain titles you can only get in that quality of pressing unless you go for an original or very early pressing. But the gap in quality between MM and cheaper pressings is shrinking rapidly. This was not the case when the BN75 series came out. You had MM, AP and BN75 as your options pretty much for new pressings/remasters on vinyl. And AP and MM were a similar price point. If Blue Note released Speak No Evil in the BN80 or Tone Poet quality, nearly nobody would be buying the SRX. You'd have the people who want to complete their collections of MM, sure, but most others would skip it. The SRXs selling out so quickly and then popping up on ebay and selling for $200+ also shows there is the market for the $75 price point on certain titles. I know they didn't press a ton of them, but still. I don't typically shell out $75 for a 1LP album but Speak No Evil is hard to find as an older pressing or anything high quality for $75 or under. It's the only MM album I have bought directly through them as well. Had it been on BN80 or TP, I would have skipped the SRX.I was referring to adding these titles to the BN80 campaign (or whatever, the basic, no frills presses). No conflict 5 years ago, no conflict now. And honestly, I'm not sure I get your point about pricing, most people aren't prepared to pay 75-100 bucks that MM are asking for a record now.
The MM pressings started out at $35 and went up to $50 list price. People were absolutely willing to pay that. It's why nearly every 33RPM MM pressing is out of stock, and they all sell for way more than that now on the resale market. MM has started the shitty practice of trying to get a slice of resale on their own by not letting other retailers sell them and hiking their prices up as inventory goes down, which is why some of the 45s aren't selling out. Why would you pay $125 for the MM version of Takin' Off when you can get the BN80 for over $100 cheaper? Is a nicer jacket and slight jump in sound quality worth $100 to a lot of people?
Blue Note selling high quality pressings of classic albums at lower prices screws over MM while they have the licenses to press. If you're flooding the market with titles at various price points where the quality isn't all that different, what's the reasoning for buying the most expensive pressing? Blue Note's biggest currency is their titles and being able to dictate who presses what. They can license more popular titles to places like MM, make a decent chunk of change and really have to do nothing else. It's pure profit.
There's a reasoning behind the different tiers of pricing and quality that BN does. The idea behind the BN75 series was get new people into jazz by pressing really cheap copies of classic titles. It's very easy to get someone to double dip on buying BN albums when you have a cheapo copy, love the record and then want to bump up to a MM or AP pressing of it. You're not going to get many people double dipping on a BN80 or Tone Poet and then something of AP/MM quality. The TP series is designed to A) expose people to the other catalogues like Pacific Jazz and Solid State) and B) press lesser known titles at a higher quality. They are reaching pretty deep into the back catalogue for a lot of these TPs. The quality gets the "audiophiles" to purchase them and the price gets people who are newer into jazz to buy them as well. You're still getting both markets.
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