WARM (and others) Gone Again

[Michael Hagerty]

Got an unpleasant surprise browsing my Spotify playlists last night...WARM is there, but the album art and all the tracks are missing. I searched to re-load and found they're not in the Spotify library, so I went hunting and found Amazon is back to only having used vinyl and tape of the album, and it's also nowhere to be found on iTunes.

It appears the albums that got only digital release (VOLUME 2, WARM, THE BRASS ARE COMIN', SUMMERTIME, and YOU SMILE-THE SONG BEGINS) are all gone from the major online sources.

HerbAlpertPresents.com has all of those but SUMMERTIME, remastered. Anybody know if there's a plan for Herb to make the remasters available beyond his own site?

 

[Harry]

I don't recall SUMMERTIME ever getting a digital release. CONEY ISLAND, yes. But not SUMMERTIME.

Harry
...am I losing it?...online...

 

[Rudy]

A lot of artists are pulling their recordings from Spotify since they pay less than a pittance to play the music. (Personally I'm surprised Alpert even allowed his recordings to be on Spotify.) Some indie artists I know avoid it as well--they make literally pennies on what they've offered, if they even get paid at all. I would not tie what Spotify does to the availability of releases overall, since it is both morally and politically a real mess at the moment. I tried it for a month last year just to use a few holiday playlists, but beyond that I thought their sound quality was dismal and the selection was sorely lacking.

As for sales, I've still held out: NO SALE for me if all I can get are lossy MP3 files. I refuse to assault my ears with that sonic trainwreck. The future is now, and more and more places are releasing files in lossless. MP3s are an outdated technology from the last century.

 

[Michael Hagerty]

I don't recall SUMMERTIME ever getting a digital release. CONEY ISLAND, yes. But not SUMMERTIME.

Harry
...am I losing it?...online...

I may be hallucinating SUMMERTIME having been released digitally, Harry. For some reason, I thought the digital release covered it, but maybe not.

 

[Captain Bacardi]

Summertime has not been released. If you recall Randy said they were having some problems with those master tapes and would require extra work, so it may be a while before they get a release.


Capt. Bacardi

 

[Michael Hagerty]

Rudy: The problem is the albums aren't just gone from Spotify...they're history at Amazon and iTunes, as well.

 

[Harry]

Well, they've been available for the bulk of eight years, so if you haven't got 'em by now, I guess you can always go back to vinyl. (WARM, in particular "The Sea Is My Soil" sounds better on vinyl anyway.)

Harry

 

[Rudy]

Rudy: The problem is the albums aren't just gone from Spotify...they're history at Amazon and iTunes, as well.

Ah OK, gotcha. I only mentioned the Spotify angle since more than a few artists are starting to pull their catalog from them.

Well, they've been available for the bulk of eight years, so if you haven't got 'em by now, I guess you can always go back to vinyl. (WARM, in particular "The Sea Is My Soil" sounds better on vinyl anyway.)

I have clean copies of almost everything Herb or TJB related so, as opposed to listening to fatiguing and unnatural-sounding MP3 files, I'd far prefer sticking to the vinyl, which is pure analog all the way. I'm hoping to get around to doing a shootout of various vinyl versions of some of the releases next year, as part of another project I'm working on. (For instance, I find my Monarch-pressed version of South Of The Border to be more murky/muddy than other pressings I've heard.)

It's getting harder to find clean vinyl though. I finally thought I nailed a clean copy of Bacharch's Futures on a WLP version no less, but it was highly over-graded. (It was listed as NM but plays and looks like VG or worse.) And on the same order, the WLP of Gino's Crazy Life was a bit noisy but worse, was in mono. I'm keeping it due to the sheer rarity of it, but I still need a good playing copy.

But back to MP3s. It just confounds me why, when Alpert was such a stickler for quality on his recorded output, the only releases we can get now are on digital files that sound worse than cassette in quality. Makes no sense. At least cassettes were analog, and weren't run through "algorithms" to remove 90% of the allegedly "inaudible" information from the files to reduce their size. This is the 21st century, ferchrissakes, not the dark ages of digital. The online world is headed towards lossless and high-res. MP3s belong in a museum of failed technology.

 

[Harry]

All of the Signature Series CDs that were released are still out there, so you can at least acquire all of the albums in CD quality. Most of those are pretty good with some rough spots here and there.

Harry

 

[Rudy]

All of the Signature Series CDs that were released are still out there, so you can at least acquire all of the albums in CD quality. Most of those are pretty good with some rough spots here and there.

Harry

They did quite a good job on those! A few strange things here or there, but we're talking about tapes that are decades old. And don't forget how some tapes are actually faulty (like the Ampex 456 "sticky shed" issue, where tapes have to be baked for one final playback).

There's no reason why the others can't be released on CD. Amazon has a program where they manufacture CDs on demand. No inventory, no waste. It's been around for years. At least it gives those who want physical copies a chance to buy them. And quality isn't poor like those shameful MP3 files.

 

[Captain Bacardi]

Rudy: The problem is the albums aren't just gone from Spotify...they're history at Amazon and iTunes, as well.

That's not true! Warm, Brass Are Comin' and Volume 2 are still on iTunes. Albums like You Smile and Coney Island, along with several solo albums are exclusively on the herbalpertpresents.com site - and at a higher bit rate than what iTunes or Amazon made available.



Capt. Bacardi

 

[Michael Hagerty]

Captain: I swear they were missing two days ago....glad I was either wrong or they came back fast!

 

[alpertfan]

The reason they're disappearing is simple-poor sales. The original audience for these recordings (and some us "young-ins") want physical product, with actual artwork and linear notes, not to mention excellent sound quality, as already pointed out. I'm not paying for tinny-sounding digital files.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

The whole notion of albums "disappearing" from services like iTunes and Spotify is the biggest downside of the digital era, in my opinion. Just for example....a long time ago I had "cherry picked" a few Bob Welch songs from iTunes. Then just the other day I remembered some other song of his I liked, so decided to look for it...but guess what? His albums aren't on iTunes anymore!

At least in the old fashioned, outmoded CD (or LP or cassette or 8 track) era, you could go into ANY store, buy or order ANY item you wanted, play it back on ANY player you happened to have and it would actually work. When they solve all of those problems, then the digital era will begin to live up to its promise. Right now....not so much.

By the way, there is currently a "mint" copy of WARM on Amazon available for $15. It looks like it's been opened, but still has the original shrink wrap on the jacket.

 

[Michael Hagerty]

I see your point, Mike...though in the old days, if a record was out of print (and A&M was ruthless about cutting catalog that wasn't selling), it could be very hard to find...especially in cities without used record stores.

 

[Harry]

Mike's point about disappearing albums from streaming and download services applies also to movies. So many people seem willing to stream movies rather than buy them on DVD and/or Blu-ray. The problem I see is that titles come and go seemingly at will and are not always available when one wants to see them.

I've seen titles on Amazon and Netflix and Hulu appear and disappear in relatively quick fashion. I can't count on any one of these services to have a title that I want, when I want it, so I maintain my own library of the films and TV shows I love.

Harry

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I do that too. I have yet to own a "download" movie. I am sure the day is coming when there will be very popular titles that are "download only" (or there won't be DVD/BluRay players anymore). Hopefully I'll be about dead by the time that happens, but with the pace of things I'm not going to count on it.