Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum to accompany a music score with the recording or not?

Here lies the question...

With EMF, we're about to publish a few educational works for solo piano. And the recordings are available. So we have 3 choices.

1. Not add the recording to the score, since a recording will facilitate the bad readers to remain such and won't be of help in that essence.

2. Add the recording in CD format, but the score price tag will have to raise.

3. Add the recording through a link in the Internet, thus avoiding the raise in the price tag.

Comments, please?

Internet.

Definitely the Internet.

You can also showcase other works, too, and maybe get some publicity for the other works/composers.

Offer the recording online as an 'added extra' (paid download).

AZN and ROB. Thank you.

I think that offering it as a paid download would be a bit too much, given that people would be buying the score already and don't need to pay extra. They are paying rather less, in order to avoid the inclusion of a CD...

And yes we should work more on the ad part of the website I think. It's almost too clean right now!

Good morning. From a commercial point of view, definitely include the CD. A very great many people will be more likely buy educational material when there is a CD included. From a pedagogical point of view I don't think that it is the best way to go, but the fact is that recordings are taking a greater and greater weight as a teaching tool.

Landorrano: I find that a CD would increase the price of the production, and thus that of the end product. Plus I find that many people now don't even own a CD player any more and it feels like a hassle to find a way to listen to a CD. I mean even I, with my large CD collection, I tend to make mp3s of the CDs and listen in my studio... So I'm not too sure... CD seems like a more traditional approach...

By how much does a CD increase the price of production? I would suppose that the CD in itself isn't very costly, but then you have to put some sort of jacket in the score.

If you're talking about, say 2€, added to the price, I don't think that that would be a problem ... although I may be wrong. If the price goes from 15€ to 17€, your margin goes down but your sales don't. If you're talking about a 10€ cost, that will surely discourage buyers.

What you say about mp3, is surely true. If you mention in a prominent way in the publicity that there is free access to a site with free downloadable recordings of all of the pieces, that is definitely a plus. Whether it is enough of a plus to eliminate the usefulness of a CD, I don't know.

I would offer it as a download on the website. You can advertise that as an option in the book itself so they can always go and download it at a later time if they wish, or right away when they purchase the book. I think that would be easy to offer for free, thus making your music more of a bargain for people to buy because they can always listen to it.

Hi Nikolas,

I just wanted to say that I appreciate print editions with a CD included. When I do downloads, I always run into problems. It's much easier for me to pay an additional $5 or $10 for a CD than deal with trying to get the recordings online.

landorrano: It really depends... As a music scores publisher I've done such a high number of scores that I know the ins and outs now. but I've NOT idea about CDs (yet, though I plan on learning more)... So I'm not too sure. Plus since I'm going for rather low numbers still, I don't think any factory can build, lets say, 100 or 150 CDs. They go for at least 500... which is a capital that I can't spend right now light hearted.

You also need to remember that even through the turmoil that Europe is going through the US$ is weaker than the euro, which means that a 15 euros score looks like an 18$ score, plus shipping goes to around 23$ or so, which is considerable as a number... And there's no way around that!

morodiene: Exactly right. Although I'll be honest that from those who bought Piano Stories, very few decided to go to the download area and get the audio files (there's a text in the score that gives the link and with your email you can get all the solo audio files in order to practice...)... Not sure why is that, but I plan on continuing that path.

Ann: I see what you mean, but remember: You've got your own personal tech support service right here! Of course I'll grant you right that a printed score (thus a physical object) seems to make sense to be accompanied by a physical CD rather than a download (since the used would have to type in the address in a browser or so...). hmmm... something to consider here.

Thanks everybody!

Keep them coming, please! Your opinions might change the future scores, so it's definitely worth it! And I'm very keen on listening to you all!

Personally, I rarely will bother with CDs except as a singer if I need a quick accompaniment.

Me too actually (not for the singing part... I sing along Freddie Mercury! And that's all I need)...

But really, nowadays I rarely bother with a CD, as I said earlier. It's too much trouble (imagine that... This is what we've become: Bothering for too much trouble in regards to a CD).

Which makes me wonder: Will it be too much trouble to open up a physical score in a little while?

I think much depends on the age group of your target market.

When my students have books accompanied by CDs, and I ask if they have ever listened to them, they invariably say 'No'.

But when they are learning/have problems with a particular piece, and I put my own mp3, or video online (privately) for them to listen to, they almost always access it.

For many young people today, going to find the CD, putting it in the player, or computer, is just too much hassle, when they can download an mp3 with just a couple of clicks.

Got to get an American distributor. Unfortunately I cannot offer my services but if you want a nationwide distributor for Andorra I'd be happy to oblige !

Thank you so much!

Yes I know...

right now we've got a German distributor an soon a UK one, so things are moving ahead (remember that EMF has been running for like 14 months now, so I think we're clearly moving ahead! :)).

But as far as the USA is concerned, we've started dealings with amazon.com (if you check for various of our scores they are already there, and ready to be shipped, but I haven't filled in the images, so it's kinda lame right now. Should be fixed in a couple of days).

I've been bugging continuously sheetmusicplus.com and other websites but as of yet there's no reply (I guess we're too small for the time being). But this will change in due time!

So... Andorra huh? let's talk about it a bit further... Email me at nikolas *AT* musica-ferrum.com if you can (my inbox is almost full here...)

Yes, Nikolas, it has been great to have you as a resource for tech support. I can see how including a CD could be cost prohibitive. In that case it is nice to have access to online recordings.

To listen to a CD, I rip it onto my computer and listen to it in iTunes, with speakers attached. (If I need to send it somewhere, I convert it to mp3 since CD files will crash emails, etc, because they're not compressed.)