Message #32255

[calyptorhynchus]

"Recording labels typically aren't in the business of extending courtesies (any more than book publishers are)."

Shame on them then, as far as I am concerned literary and musical creators are enhancing the world with rare gifts and only fools would not acknowledge this and extend the courtesy or recording or publication to them.

"But I wouldn't call the "musical gatekeepers" at such labels as CPO, Toccata, BIS, Hyperion, (and dozens of others we could name) morons. "

I said that I found literary gatekeepers moronic, and I suspected that musical ones were the same. Obviously not all musical gatekeepers are worthy of that description, but if you look at the field of recordings (the vast oversupply of recordings of certain works and the notable undersupply of certain others) then clearly something is going wrong.

"Are you suggesting no standards of quality control are ever justified when deciding what should get an airing, - that the collective obligation among them is to issue everything and let the listener alone have a say as to which works (in retrospect) merited the effort and expense? "

Absolutely not, I believe that there are objective standards of literary excellence (and can go into detail, but here is not the place) and literary gatekeepers in the most cases completely ignore these and publish only the most unworthy; I suspect that the same thing is going on in music. Again I can argue this at length and I have a pretty theory as to why (but again I won't trouble people here with these thoughts).