UPLOAD! CD Booklets

[Frank Forman]

UPLOAD! CD Booklets

http://www.filefactory.com/f/0ef97b5e7fcfb055

I have uploaded 952 booklets of CD albums (up to 171 CDs) , irregardless
of their copyright status. Most of my collection, CD and before, had been
disposed of before these ones on the booklets, so they give a poor
indication of my evolving tastes. And they don't include the material I
have or had on cassettes.

I did not make pdfs in a few cases where there was nothing on the booklet
that could not have been put on the track names. A very few times I simply
forgot to make a pdf. I also made a very few pdfs but could not locate the
discs to convert them into mp3 files. My biggest sorrow here is the Dvorak
Sym. 8 (on4), in a performance by Haitink that glows more than any other.
It's less than 50 years old and I couldn't upload it in any case.

I even uploaded a 272 MB files that incorporated all 147 booklets that
came with Hänssler "complete" Bach Edition, as repacked by Bohemian Music
Service on MM 4000 (171 CDs) at a vastly cheaper price. I don't think
there was a single perfomance that knocked my favorite one off my list.
The closest was the first movement of the first clavier concerto in d, S.
1052, played by Robert Levin. And very good, no doubt because close to
Walcha's were four CDs played by a lady organist, Bine Katrine Bryndorf.
These are in copyright, though.

Coming at the end of the month are 1962 LPs, all Scherchen, as it happens.
I also now include several *reissues* less than fifty years old (forbidden
under American copyright law if after 1973 iirc) but of performances
before 1963. Better sound than on what from my less than fifty year old
LPs in some cases, maybe. The significant addition is the first stereo
issue of the VSOO Marche Slav. (I have this done with the Soviet anthem
replacing the original Russian one! It is awful.)

Happy browsing, even though I don't plan to upload very much of what I
haven't uploaded already, either because they are in Dutch (where
FileFactory's servers are) copyright, or because I don't want to undermine
the profits of labels that put out CDs of historical recordings. In the
case of the majors, this means albums that have apparently not one out of
print. In the case of *active* minor labels that specialize in historical
recordings, this means their entire catalog. In the case of defunt labels,
which cannot be undermined, this means anything I have on them, all of
which I have uploaded. [I should say, here and elsewhere, "I think,"
repeatedly, for I do make errors.]

What do you think about my uploading a CD to a secret place in FileFactory
and giving the URL out to someone who wants it badly, but only one album a
month per person? What I hope for is that the one getting it will sing its
praises to the label (but don't mention me) and urge its re-availability
for purchase. This would achieve the opposite of undermining, for all
subsequent acquistions of the performance would either come from buying a
used copy on e-Bay, Amazon, or whatever, or a new copy from sales by the
label.


This is a matter of information costs, for signalling the high value of
recordings that have been dropped from a label confers valuable
information to the label. The issue of information costs is a major one in
economics, since 1957. It came, not from an economics article, but from
Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, the first book of what
later was called the Public Choice School (the economic analysis of
politics). (I wrote my dissertation under one of its Founding Fathers,
James M. Buchanan, thus making me one of the Founding Sons!)

Downs observed that the amount of information gathered by a voter deciding
which candidate he should vote for is a product of the chance that this
further information would lead him to change his vote, the expected
difference to him of having Tweedledumb replaced by Tweedledumber (not
Downs's words), and the chance his vote would decide the election. This
latter probability is minute by several orders of magnitude, whence voters
tend to be what Downs called "rationally ignorant." They may learn about
politicians and the reliability of their promises because they enjoy the
show or because they have some non-economic incentive to vote out of duty,
but not for their personal gain. And so, we have an elegant explanation of
the massive ignorance of voters. The puzzling thing is why democracy
remains the darling of intellectuals.

The book is openly imperfect, for under his seemingly plausible and
careful assumptions, the incumbents are always defeated. The reader is
thus challenged to find out which of these assumptions need to be
modified. The book was near heresy in 1957 but is rather commonplace
today.