When I first started working in this industry, Audio Sound & Vision was a well-respected company with a wonderful record label: Living Era.

Over the years, Living Era has proven to be a very popular label with our own customers inside the Music & Memories catalogue - and with the help of Andy West at Sanctuary Music, we brought to you about 200 titles ranging from Winifred Atwell and Semprini on piano to voices such as ROchard Crooks and Howard Keel.

With Universal Music purchasing the last large independent record company, Sanctuary Music, the label Living Era will come to a close. I met yesterday with the man behind the label, Ray Crick, and he feels as if he is losing a child - something he has nurtured and grown over the past 25 years or so.

The reason Universal is killing off such a fabulous record label is that there is an unwritten rule among the four major record labels -Universal, EMI, SonyBMG and Warner Music - that they will not exploit recordings and albums in the public domain. In essence, they want to make money only from newer material and leave anything that was recorded over 50 years ago on the shelves in the vault. In essence, the major record labels are killing off good, old music.

I salute Ray and his team at Living Era and they have left a legacy of albums that will no longer see the light of day and I, for one, am sad at another nostalgia label passing into the dark of night.

Ed - The Music Man

This has been some year for the entertainment industry, especially the DVD retail and mail order side of the business. First DDHE.co.uk, then Green Umbrella, and now: Choices UK.

Choices UK competed with Blockbuster on the high street for rental DVDs. But one of their smaller companies was Choices Direct, which again specialised in our wonderful world of nostalgia. They used to have great 8-page spreads in the People's Friend and My Weekly every year selling everything from Inspector Morse to Agatha Christie in terms of mysteries to The Walton's and The Thornbirds from television favourites.

Business Story On Choices UK Administration

It really is a sad state of affairs. I do hope that we here at goodmusic.co.uk can keep you abreast of the developing situations in our industry and that we alone can fill the boots of all these disappearing outlets for your nostalgia needs!

Ed - The Music Man

As a student I always read The Wall Street Journal. As a businessman in the home entertainment industry, I still read The Wall Street Journal, albeit more often on line than by print.

As it's a Sunday in Britain, I am reading The Sunday Times, a paper owned by News Corporation, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. I am reading a story in the business section about how Rupert Murdoch managed to convince the Bancroft family, which owns The Wall Street Journal, to sell him not only the newspaper and its website, but but all the other assets of Dow Jones, an enormous company valued at approximately $50 billion if you look at the price tag. The Times' story then goes on to list all of Rupert's companies and holdings.

I am nervous. I never like too much power or wealth in too few hands. In our times now, wealth is power. We need to look no further than The House Of Lords. Or private equity. Too few holding wealth and power on behalf of the rest of us just doesn't work. It didn't work in the former Soviet Union, and I fear it won't work in media either. It will provide a disservice to us, the people and buyers. But it's not just power and wealth we are talking here with Rupert Murdoch. We are talking about movies, entertainment and television, all wrapped up within news organisations.

If you look at what Rupert could do...

Imagine that Oliver Stone, director of Saving Private Ryan and JFK, owned the biggest media company in the world. Oliver could produce an historic epic film, relating history to a younger generation as he sees fit (which I believe he already does), and then comment and review his production and history teachings through his own newspaper, television and media outlets. What could be worse? Well, if Oliver Stone owned the film studio and the distribution rights. Rupert Murdoch does.

Although Rupert does not profess to be a film director, he owns, amid his many assets 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest studios, producers and distributors in Hollywood history. Every time you see stone logo you are watching something owned by Rupert Murdoch. So therefore, Rupert could create a movie he felt passed on history in the way he wanted, distribute it, comment on it, and even advertise it - and never have to answer to anyone else but himself. He can create a whirlwind on the internet about his production or idea of history or evencensor what you say about it through MySpace.com - he owns that too. The internet is certainly not free from his supervision.

One hopes that Rupert Murdoch is above doing such rewriting of history through film and media and will allow the wonderful paper The Wall Street Journal (both in print and online at www.wsj.com) to flourish without any hindrance from him or his family. But sometimes the opportunity to redefine, repaint or even retell history and to leave an indelible legacy through film and media is too strong an elixir for even a well-versed businessman such as Rupert Murdoch to ignore. Only time will tell.
Ed - The Music Man

Well, unfortunately this morning, terrible news reached me. DD Home Entertainment has gone into receivership. Not only does this affect customers of theirs and ours, but it is a sad loss for the industry.

DD Home Entertainment for years has specialised in military aviation. It had the best catalogue in the world for fans of The Spitfire, The Hurrican and The Lancaster. More recently, with the help of their master aquirer of programming Colin Higgs, DD Video had brought back some of the great comedy and costume dramas from the BBC, Granada, and Carlton.

Things like The Huggetts and Oh! Brother and All Gas And Gaiters on the comedy side to Hannah Hauxwell on the documentary side. DD Video also brought back all the BBC Shakespeare productions from the 60s, 70s and 80s. Great stuff.

We shall miss them and their product. We are hoping to resolve all backorders with them and, in fact, are approaching the owners of some of the materials to get them directly from the licensors. But all this takes time.

DD will never be replaced. I don't think one can build a business on military aviation in this present economy and fast-paced world. DD Home Entertainment built its business in an age where there was more time to look at the past and remember its glory. Let's hold DD Video in fond memory.

As you probably read today, The BBC is no longer going to make as many new programmes, but, instead will provide more reruns for us of older productions. Guess their profits and cash are down - small wonder as we are not ordering any new products or items from them anymore.

I wonder if this is caused by the fact that we are finding it very difficult to deal with the BBC and their industry distributor, 2 Entertain, based in London.

As a supplier, The BBC appointed 2 Entertain as its agent about two years ago to distribute its programmes to firms like Haysbridge (UK) Ltd. The BBC, first of all, does not allow a lot of its owned programmes to be produced and manufactured on DVD. I must say that the BBC is stuck in the old days. Where are the Black & White Minstrel Shows on DVD? We sold over 30,000 discs in just three years of the Black & White Minstrels on CD. I wish I could bring you their shows on DVD - the BBC owns the footage though and have not released or licensed it.

2 Entertain used to be a lovely company to deal with - but Sundaram Manian and I find them very difficult these days. Since the BBC has put its stamp on 2 Entertain, they have become unwieldly. They rarely campaign prices, nor do they really ever give you, the customer, a deal. Have you noticed that BBC products are expensive? We have!

So, I have decided to leave most of the BBC products off the website and outside our catalogues. It's not just worth it to you - their prices are too high.

Please forward me your comments either here or by email at edward@goodmusic.co.uk and I will be sure to pass them along to the right people. Maybe it will help them.

Looking out for you... Ed - The Music Man

I learned, as most of us did yesterday, that Royal Mail has lost £8 million worth of business from Amazon.co.uk

I am not surprised. The conditions that the mail order industry are facing working with Royal Mail are not getting easier. The changeover to Pricing in Proportion was not managed well by Royal Mail management, and packetpost rates went skyrocketing. Packetpost is the method most mail order firms use to deliver packages to customers.

Postage for our A4 catalogues has risen almost 20% since last August as well. Pricing In Proportion (or PIP as industry experts call it) was a well disguised price hike, but it was also aimed at modernising the post office. Too bad Royal Mail can't do one without the other. Or could it? Either way, the post office saw a chance to raise prices.

I do love the quaint feeling of Royal Mail (even the name seems old fashioned) with the logo, the red trucks and the "posties". But long gone are the days when the local postie knew every face on his or her route. My postie over the past year has changed three times. I miss my old postie, whom I had for something like 6 years. But the politics of which route is easier to walk and faster to complete is at the heart of the changes. Posties can no longer just choose a route as they used to. Modernisation.

But Royal Mail needs to modernise. Royal Mail needs to sort the post automatically to keep prices competitive - hence why they don't like our A4 catalogues. I like our A4 catalogues - they are bigger than the little booklets other cataloguers now have. Our bigger catalogues mean we can use bigger font and point sizes and show more on a page to help sell a product. These smaller catalogue are tougher to read - small print and small pictures!

But, let's look on the bright side. Perhaps there is a way Royal Mail can stay traditional looking on the outside to us the consumer - with a friendly smile and good, local service - and yet become technically well founded and established. I hope so. I hate it when I hear of local post offices closing - I watched sadly in October last year as they closed the sub post office in Port Looe, just near our own warehouse in Cornwall. A very sad day indeed. I live in hope.

I heard through a little birdie that Razamataz is being sold. It's actually a sad moment, as yet another outlet for nostalgia is being sold off and its future is unknown. They had a nice catalogue in the past, but I heard that they have been having delivery problems. Razamataz had a sister catalog known as Boogaloo. I never quite figured out what the idea was behind the names, but each catalogue had some lovely memorabilia in their pages.

Steve Allen was complaining about non-delivery on his radio show The Steve Allen Show on 97.3FM LBC.

With the Royal Mail possibly going on strike this summer, it should prove interesting what other nostalgia outlets will be around - I know we have to move forward, but I do like to look back and remember those halcyon days!

The Music Man