Quote Originally Posted by soulster View Post
I just read on another music forum where a member received a message from Universal that reads:



I wonder if this has something to do with advertising something and then not being able to deliver the product. Could there have been another shake-up at the label? If this is true, who is making these decisions at the label?

I do have an idea of why they might be doing this. They have been releasing a lot of vinyl-only titles lately. But, when word gets out, they get criticized from the CD and download crowd, as not everyone does vinyl, and they don't want the potential loss of sales because of their decisions. A while back, they announced a Marvin Gaye EP in vinyl that some weren't too happy about, let alone that it it is a [[IMO) a useless waste of time. On another issue, they are getting criticized for a new forthcoming Beatles vinyl reissue.

As we know, record labels are very traditional, and still haven't quite adjusted to the realities of the internet, except that everyone now has an equal voice and opinion, and can post whatever they want on social media.
I'm not sure I understand your term ' a waste of time' that is surely a personal point of view as you so rightly point out BUT I cannot for the life of me seeing a business model that only produces things that are a waste of time.
It is obvious CD sales have fallen largely do to streaming and formally pirating and sharing all brought about by whoever invented the digital movement in music. Once that particular Pandora was out of the box the writing was on the wall - there was no going back.
Companies exists to make a profit - they are there obviously to sell products that appeal to the market and the CD obviously just doesn't do it anymore and only a foolish CEO would sanction the continued production of unprofitable goods.
So what do you so - you look quite rightly for other revenue streams and the collectors market is the place to concentrate all your efforts, nobody has yet come up with a way of illegally sharing vinyl and the recent spate of box sets have been so dammed attractive you can see why they appeal to collectors even if they don't have a record player.
So if you can sell thousands of collectors box sets or a few dozen CD's what would you do - I know if I were the boss of any company facing a situation like this what I would do and it wouldn't be the latter - it's just the way of the world and if you don't move with it you get swallowed up.
As far as I'm aware very little 'new' material has been released vinyl only, they are all special editions of catalogue material so in fairness at the moment nobody is missing out.