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Reference
Get It While You Can
Tom Maguire
7 May 2006
Movie scores often times go out of print and command high prices, higher than one might expect. The list of limited edition and collectible score CDs is numerous. The first time I encountered this was in 1992 when I went to buy the score for the movie Kafka. To my surprise it was no longer available. Being the pre-Internet era I had to search high and low but eventually I did find a copy. As surprised as I was the time of the difficulty of finding this score, I somewhat understood the dynamics involved as Kafka was not exactly a mainstream blockbuster. However when the exact same thing happened to me last week upon finding that the score for National Treasure is out of print and commanding a price of $20-$40 I thought that something else might be at play. The Princess Diaries was mentioned as another recent score going for big bucks - $50-$60. Interestingly both of these albums are readily available for download on iTunes for $9.99. I'm wondering (and fearing) that as digital downloads become more the norm, physical CD's will go the way of movies in a theater and live in the marketplace for a shorter and shorter amount of time. Since it costs the Record Companies next to nothing to distribute through the internet, as compared to manufacturing and shipping discs, I can easily see a future where The Disc is appreciated by fewer people and at a higher price.
I don't like paying money for things I don't physically own; software, music, movies, tv shows, whatever. Hopefully these examples are anomalies. But if the future of digital distribution drives the cost of physical ownership out of my price range I guess I'll have to either bite the bullet and expect to pay more than I'm used to or I'll have to occasionally leave my liner notes, jewel cases, and shiny discs in the 20th Century and drag myself kicking and screaming into the new Millennium. This time however I picked up a copy of National Treasure for $20 on eBay from a Canadian dealer and even though it was more than I wanted to pay I considered myself lucky to find it at all.
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