Falling Sales mean No New Recordings
That’s why it’s become more or less impossible for record companies to make new classical recordings. Certainly, the big-budget productions – major operatic projects or big symphonic cycles – are now (almost) a thing of the past. It’s sad. But really you can’t blame the record companies for not wanting to invest in expensive projects – not when skinflint punters like me hold off buying until the price drops by 70%…
The early 1980s were a good time for classical LP deletions. It seemed that most of the major record companies had huge stocks of vinyl that wasn’t selling. Once CD hit its stride in the mid to late ‘80s, classical vinyl was all but finished. During that period, I worked part-time in a big classical record shop, and almost every week (or so it seemed) there’d be fresh supplies of deleted LPs at cheap prices.
