[78-L] Billboard charts

[Chris Zwarg]

At 20:05 11.11.2008, you wrote:
>From: "David Weiner" <djwein at earthlink.net>
>> Man, do I hate Joel Whitburn!
>> http://membran.net/Serien_Label/Jazz_Blues/Jazz_in_the_Charts/index.html
>
>Actually there are 100 CDs of good stuff here, but I find no info
>specifying they did the selection via Pop Memories.  It is not as if
>each CD is one year.  As we all know, jazz was not really the best
>selling records in those (or nearly any) years, so it is not as if these
>are picking the top selling records.  They might be picking the "best
>selling" JAZZ records, but I do not have Pop Memories so I can not tell
>if that is the case. 
>Any indication of price of these?  Are the perhaps in one or two huge
>boxes for a small price per disc?  

Probably - after all, Membran must be the World's leading pirate CD producer (outside China that is...). Probably nobody in this company has ever seen, let alone handled, an original 78; everything derives from earlier reissues. Usually, their 4-CD / 100 song packages go for € 9.99 (ca. $ 12.00) or less, and you see piles of them everywhere *except* in reputable CD shops. dl will probably recognize some of his work in their catalogue which he did for other companies, and so do I. They even swipe photos off other CD booklets, in at least one case including a faithful reproduction of the staple that held the original booklet together :o)

I have no sympathies for them whatever, as they drove two of my former steady remastering clients into bankruptcy a few years ago; earlier this year, they tried to talk me into doing "mastering" (read: swiping and recompiling CD tracks) for them for a ridiculously low payment, expressly stating that my job would be make the tracks "different" (read: disguise their origin) by changing the sound in terms of EQ and pitch, no matter whether the result would be an improvement or not.....

Chris Zwarg