by WILLIAM ANDERSON
DISC QUALITY REVISITED
Tor topic in reader mail this past month (see "Letters to the Editor") has again been the deteriorating quality of the Great American Phonograph Record. Righteous indignation is the tenor of most of these letters, but a number of correspondents have moved beyond initial outrage to give a little thought to possible solutions.
One of those solutions--the "two lines" idea--has been proposed many times over the years but has never been seriously tried quite probably because the industry still remembers the (seemingly) endless difficulties it experienced during the years of mono-to-stereo transition as well as the more recent experiments with stereo/quad double-stocking. And they are probably right in their contention that it would be economically infeasible to market their products in two (or more) "grades" because of the "catch twenty-two" involved: if the premium were small enough to tempt a reasonable number of buyers, it would be too small to pay the costs; if it were large enough to pay the costs, it would be too large to attract enough buyers. There is therefore, I think, only one reasonable solution: one quality level, and that level a high one.
Against the arrival of that great day, our advice to quality-conscious record buyers is to complain loud, long, and vociferously-but civilly, reasonably, and persuasively as well.
Remember that the people you address are dealing with pressures you probably don't know exist. A few you might think about:
(1) Competition Between Record Companies--It is extremely difficult to raise record prices unilaterally (unless you want to go out of business in a hurry). And, of course, record companies could not conceivably get together and agree to raise prices-even to se cure better quality-without opening them selves to the charge of price-fixing.
(2) The Great American Stockholder--He will insist that his company make a profit for the simple reason that those profits are probably what he lives on.
(3) Labor and Materials--Like many other industries in these inflationary times, the record industry is caught in a price squeeze be tween consumer resistance to higher prices (resistance is easier when the item concerned is a luxury-bought any coffee lately?) and rising production costs.
Another common proposal is that we get the government involved in "policing" the industry. Frankly, the thought of getting another bunch of "experts" down in Washington spending their time and our money trying to solve problems Solomon couldn't get a grip on gives me a case of the pip. Chances are that such an assembly of sages would be made up of ex-record-company pensioners (the only ones who know anything about it) still in the grip of the fallacy that is at the root of the problem: the notion that cost-cutting (and the low quality that goes with it) is the only way to make a buck in the record business.
What we face in overcoming this myopic view is a simply enormous project of re-education. The public must understand that higher quality will mean higher prices for records.
Manufacturers must be willing to face up to the seriousness of the quality issue on an industry-wide basis; this should probably be done through their own trade association, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America). And individual companies must re educate their employees and their stockholders to see that the quality issue, if not tended to now, will inevitably affect company image and long-term profits whatever the short-term gains may be.
Signs of the times: RCA has just announced an increase in the price of its Red Seal line (to $7.98); it is reasonable to expect that others will follow shortly. It would be nice to think that at least part of this increase will go into higher quality, but more realistic to trace it to rising production costs (phono-disc vinyl is made out of oil, after all) and retailer pressure to provide more headroom for discounting. It is salutary to remember, however, in this March Tape Issue, that cassette quality continues to improve (almost everybody, including RCA, now Dolbyizes) and that those little tapes use very little vinyl. Provocative thought: do we not already have-almost-a kind of quality-based double-stocking?
Also see:
THE POP BEAT, PAULETTE WEISS
GOING ON RECORD, JAMES GOODFRIEND