Wednesday (7/20) on the NPR blog Deceptive Cadence, Anastasia Tsioulcas writes, “In addition to the grim truth of another 11,000 jobs lost and 400 retail fronts closing, the news of the Borders failure marks the end of another chapter in how classical music is distributed, sold and enjoyed. … Borders was never another Tower: You wouldn’t encounter clerks who could reel off their objections to the Penguin Guide’s picks, share a moment of mutual discovery with another giddy fan, or glimpse a renowned musician or two browsing the racks, but it still was a store that acknowledged classical music exists. … However, industry insiders say the demise of Borders was both long foreseen and almost inevitable. René Goiffon, president of Harmonia Mundi USA, says his label had decided to stop selling to the chain in July 2010. … ‘For years,’ he notes, ‘we pushed in vain to get them to target buying geographically: Instead of sending most of their stock to the biggest markets for classical music, such as New York, they’d send four or five copies of each title to every single store they had—so New York would sell out and be stuck, while all those other copies languished in other stores around the country.’ ”
Posted July 20, 2011
