Record Shop Removed

As of late I have become increasingly frustrated by the dwindling classical selection at music selling establishments. I live in Ottawa, Canada a city with a metropolitan area of over one million people and there is only a single music store that has an acceptable classical section where one can find most recent recordings and many popular recordings. Unfortunately even at this the best store in area it is unlikely one will find anything even on the fringes of obscure. For example a few months ago I was looking for “Mendelssohn: The Complete String Quartets” to no avail, previous to that I was after “Glass: Etudes for Piano, Vol. 1, Nos. 1-10″ again no luck. These are not “obscure” recordings by my estimation, but in a city of one million, not available. Probably one in four visits I find what I am looking for.

If the above was the standard shop or the middle of the road store I wouldn’t be complaining but in Ottawa, at any other shop, the classical section ranges from a full shelf, to a single row on a shelf, to nothing at all. But then there is my personal music store pet peeve - The Naxos Shelf. Nothing against Naxos because they do have some good recordings and I applaud them for their dedication to Classical, thank god for companies like them, but in my opinion the shelf does not sufficiently constitute a classical music section. Ten years ago CDs stores often had a completely soundproof area separate from the rest of the store for Classical / New age crowd. I don’t know when it started happening but it seems classical sections are being removed or scaled down, and as a result I buy less music. Logic indicates that this wouldn’t be happening if people were buying but perhaps this is a localized manifestation of Say’s Law (which states that there can be no demand without supply). More study required.

In any event I end up ordering CDs from the Internet that end up costing me $5 - $10 more when shipping is added, not to mention the wasted fuel and time going to the brick and mortar establishments to be disappointed. I wonder if this is the case in other cities or what the situation is like in Europe… If you have some insight feel free to comment.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 5th, 2006 at 21:21:50 and is filed under Compact Discs, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.