From Marc 3 Poirier Sent Mon, Jan 25th 1999, 20:38
From Marc 3 Poirier Sent Mon, Jan 25th 1999, 20:38
Someone on this list must know the answer to this question: What has happened with 7"s? Last I remembered, I was getting domestic (U.S.) 7"s for $3-$4 & imports for $4-$5. Then I turned around & all of a sudden the imports went up to $10-$12. Well, not all of them, but particular ones I wanted, namely ones put out by V/Vm & Skam, 2 lovely UK record labels. Granted, both labels are releasing limited runs & that can increase production costs a bit, but I cannot fathom how that alone has led to a 200-300% price increase. This is the most incredible discrepency in pricing I think I've ever seen in all my years of record buying (I've even seen lathe-cut, New Zealand born, limited to less than 100, hand-packaged 8" records sell new for less than these). I thought that the whole attraction to 7"s was that they were cheap to make. Sound quality-wise, they are surely the poorest choice of a format. Unless I'm mistaken, they are the worst at reproducing audio out of all the formats presently available, but they are so cheap to manufacture. That's usually been the reason why I've seen them latched onto: because small-time musicians with little funds can use them to start to spread their music to others. The musicians don't have to put up much money & the record buyers can experiment with buying 7"s with little financial risk. So where did $10-$12 come from? I am not trying to stick out & blast our friends V/Vm, who I know are on this list (don't know about Skam), & I believe them to be honest fellows & fine music-makers & they do say that they are trying to get the prices down, but how did they get up there in the first place? That's more than most 12"s & many CDs. As much as they're some of my favourite musicians right now, I might have to drop them & pretend they don't exist because I can't afford their music (one CD of the "Machine Components" set would've cost me a third to a quarter the price & would've been sonicly much preferable; I wince at the amount of money I sent out for those today, even after searching for the lowest price I could find). So someone, please let me know what happened because I'm very puzzled & having trouble justifying supporting certain musicians who I want to support. Marc Poirier