{"id":6048,"date":"2013-01-15T15:02:40","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T20:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mondomark.com\/wordpress\/?p=3703"},"modified":"2013-01-15T15:02:40","modified_gmt":"2013-01-15T20:02:40","slug":"varese-sarabande-under-new-ownership-soundtrack-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=6048","title":{"rendered":"Varese Sarabande under new ownership + Soundtrack Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The New York Times reported last week <\/a>veteran soundtrack label Varese Sarabande was purchased for $100 million by the Cutting Edge Group, a British company with a portfolio that includes music rights management, repping composers, and underwriting the production costs of film scores.<\/p>\n

Apparently Varese had several interested buyers over the past few years, and the final sale was an effort to ensure the company\u2019s continued existence in a market that\u2019s both highly niche, and been affected by the whole morass of illegal downloads, and dwindling CD sales. Not singled out in the Times piece are two other factors worth considering: \u00a0an aging generation tired of re-buying music in different media guises; and a younger generation disinterested in older, more \u2018classic\u2019 works from the 40s thru the 60s.<\/p>\n

Shifting demographics are a key point, and the old illegal download villain is arguably a minor player when there\u2019s a generation less interested in buying physical media and more accustomed to sampling if not acquiring albums gratis.<\/p>\n

Unlike the major labels who first feared digital media and held out far too long before embracing the technology used to satisfy consumers with a hunger for portable, immediate acquisition (and perhaps more fickle manners), the soundtrack labels were perhaps better equipped to deal with the changes because their market were collector-based. The downside to sticking to CDs, printed booklets, and everything physical was perhaps a longer wait time to recoup costs, if not a slower realization that exclusive CD editions may limit the sales of any given title.<\/p>\n

With most collectors working on tight budgets, the increasing costs of shipping has made CDs a commodity that mandates second and third considerations before clicking on that Complete Purchase icon. While not the fault of distributors, or the labels handling the sale of CDs themselves, it\u2019s an added cost that limits the success of a CD\u2019s full potential. My preference is still for a disc (and the occasional vinyl platter), but undoubtedly a physical disc has come to represent the audiophile format for connoisseurs with broader budgets.<\/p>\n

What does that mean in the long term?<\/p>\n

At least the inference of the Times piece is that the Cutting Edge Group has bought a brand name with solid clout that might be malleable to different streams of exploiting its vast catalogue, and using its brand to sponsor concert venues and related events – perhaps even online broadcasts – to ensure the art of film music goes wide(r).<\/p>\n

Another quick point: the Times also uses the success of The Bodyguard<\/strong> album as an example of a 12 million copy success story compared to Twilight<\/strong> franchise. It\u2019s a poorly drafted comparison, and ignorant of what most non-film music writers fail to realize: a soundtrack album doesn\u2019t always contain film score<\/em> material<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The 1992 Bodyguard <\/strong>album\u00a0featured primarily Whitney Houston songs and one <\/em>score cut. Now, this is not a score<\/em> soundtrack album, but a classic \u2018music from and inspired by\u2019 creation typical of a bygone era where labels larded albums with songs in and not used in the film<\/em>,<\/em> plus a token score cut, and for every high-profile success story, there were plenty of delete bins \u00a0littered with failed concept albums which were likely ground up and recycled when they\u2019d knocked around for years.<\/p>\n

Varese\u2019s exclusive specialty is the score album<\/em>, which includes the\u00a0Twilight<\/strong> films<\/strong>, which themselves are different animals from a song album, and will never<\/em> sell 12 million copies. It\u2019s like comparing U2\u2019s Rattle and Hum<\/strong> \u2013 a classic, 1988 best-selling concert soundtrack album \u2013 with Captive<\/strong>, a 1987 score album composed & performed by U2 guitarist The Edge and Michael Brook which itself littered delete bits. (Yes, there was a song performed by Sinead O\u2019Connor, but the largely instrumental LP and CD also ran a hair above that dreaded short 35 minute running time.) These are both soundtrack albums, but different animals aimed at different markets in spite of sharing the same function: offering music from movies.<\/p>\n

As Varese evolves under its new owner, the coming years may yield significant changes in the way film music is marketed, sold, and distributed, but hopefully the dedication that\u2019s been strong at Varese won\u2019t weaken. In addition to the composers, film scores involve a tightly knit group of creative minded producers, administrators, and personnel who often work across several labels, and Varese has worked with the best since its creation in 1978.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s corporate talent pool essentially created the template of how to run a successful label featuring a soundtrack catalogue and new music often ignored by its owners \u2013 studios, music labels, and publishers \u2013 and they\u2019ve weathered a lot of changes, and perhaps their own maneuvers were valuable lessons for some of the smaller labels which have similarly evolved into major players.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also important to distinguish Varese a little from its competitors \/ allies, because each of the veteran labels \u2013 especially Intrada \u2013 have juggled the challenges of reissuing classic albums, restoring scores for expanded releases, coughing up huge rights to release new studio product, and re-recording classic scores using their own funds. With the exception of La-La Land Records, few have maintained a consistent release slate; even Film Score Monthly eventually folded because of the frustrations in spending years to get an album out, and the odds a CD may not even sell well 5 years after its release.<\/p>\n

Moving on.<\/p>\n

The Atli Orvarsson podcast will be up Wednesday \u2013 construction work next door kind of fubared the recording of intro \/ outro material \u2013 so I\u2019ve uploaded a pair of reviews meant to run in tandem: Orbital\u2019s Pusher <\/a><\/strong>[M<\/a>] (Silva Screen), and Ramin Djawadi\u2019s Red Dawn <\/a><\/strong>[M<\/a>] (Sony Classical).<\/p>\n

I\u2019m currently getting through a set of Twilight Time Blu-rays, as well as Synapse\u2019s Hammer House of Horror <\/strong>(itself turning out to be surprisingly good). Coming up in a few days is a review of John Huston\u2019s worst film, the 1980 CanCon stinker Phobia<\/strong> which, as is typical for our home and native vintage cinema, has yet to appear on DVD.<\/p>\n

Scorpion Releasing? Code Red? You gentlemen seem to be the most ardent supports of our tax shelter classiques<\/em>. Any interest in this fragrant hunk of fuzzy green\u00a0fromage<\/em>?<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor
\nKQEK.com <\/strong>( Main Site<\/a> \/ Mobile Site<\/a> )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soundtrack reviews of Orbital’s Pusher (Silva Screen) and Ramin Djawadi’s Red Dawn (Sony Classical), plus some thoughts on the recent sale of veteran soundtrack label Varese Sarabande to the Cutting Edge group for $100 million smackadoodles (which is about the same in Canadian smackadoodles).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[1803,1804,1796,1795,1802,1801,1344],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1zy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6048"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}