Popularity of re-issues

[Aaron Bitman]

So in my book about Herb Alpert, I mention that when Shout! Factory re-issued those classic albums in 2005 (and for several years after that) those albums sold well for re-issues. I thought it would be nice to support that claim with some facts, so I mentioned that five of those CDs – plus Definitive Hits – became top sellers on cdUniverse.com.

I wonder if I could provide any other statistics to support that claim. On these boards, I found mention that, for instance, the first three made it to the Amazon Top 300, with South of the Border making it up to #65. I saw a later claim that Whipped Cream & Other Delights was at #32 at the time. But I don’t see any way to look up Amazon’s old charts to confirm these claims. Nor do I see any other site helpful for these purposes, other than cdUniverse.com.

Can anyone point me to a good source?

 

[Steve Sidoruk]

You might try riaa.com the recording industry trade association. They might charge for research time.

 

[Captain Bacardi]

Frankly, the so-called "charts" of Amazon, CdUniverse or any other online retail outlet are irrelevant. They're not official in any way, shape or form. When Herb appeared on the CBS Sunday Morning show his CDs jumped to the top of the sales for a couple of days. I remember Herb made a quip about the power of TV at the time. None of the reissues made the Back Catalog charts in Billboard.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

And quite frankly it doesn't take much in sales to make the lower reaches of Billboard these days. I'm sure the reason there haven't been more Herb CD releases (of his old material) is just simply lack of sales -- if they'd sold good numbers we'd probably have seen his whole old catalog by now. On the concert recording that played a while back, he mentioned that Lani's albums were "on CD" which isn't quite true, at least not yet.

I wish Herb would embrace the idea of CD-on-demand that Amazon has popularized. That way there's no inventory to worry about and he wouldn't need a label, either. The Baja Marimba Band recordings could benefit from a plan like that too, although the demand for both Herb and the Baja's old stuff is probably dwindling with every passing year.

 

[Aaron Bitman]

Okay, you convinced me. I just deleted those two sentences from my book.

Thank you!