http://www.emil-berliner-studios.com/en/chronik1.html
I'm not vouching for 100% accuracy, but Peter Burkowitz is not ill-informed or ignorant, so I'd give
him the benefit of the doubt.
Another interesting written piece by Berkowitz is his 1977 AES Journal article, "Recording, Art of
the Century?"
http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=3311
In the timeline linked at the top, interesting vector of how the classical music business went off
the rails in the 1995-2005 period. First they glutted the market with product, then started nickel
and diming all the most-qualified people to death, then the megaglomeration and resultant
consultants (ie "fire anyone who costs anything, in other words anyone with experience or historical
knowledge" and "why do you have all those slow-selling old CDs in print? cut them out" -- which
shows a complete ignorance of the lucrative "long tail" aspect of a classical catalog), then the
outsourcing (what is now called Decca Classics no longer oversees its own archives, no longer owns
mastering facilities and no longer owns manufacturing plants, so it's more a production company than
any traditional notion of a record company). Sony has followed very much the same route, but I think
they own at least some of their manufacturing still, and they do have remastering operations,
small-scale compared to the 90's, in NYC and Japan. EMI has had a similar but somewhat less drastic
trajectory (we'll see if Abbey Road and Capitol Studios end up staying under the UMG umbrella). The
result is much less new product, but a last-ditch bonanza for collectors of back-catalog (all of
those wonderful $2-or-less-per-CD box sets of recent years).
-- Tom Fine
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