Hi Bob!

I’m a regular reader of your email blogs & a music enthusiast who is not involved in the industry.

Here’s my curiosity (or pet peeve) which you might be able to expand upon:

Why does it take so damn long for a finished CD to go on sale? Listening to the radio via Internet these days, you will hear about Wilco’s new album which will be available on May 15th. That’s over 6 weeks away yet the album has already been distributed to the "industry" and the music pundits that you hear regularly on the NPR music shows have already been listening to it for a couple of weeks and are busy discussing it like a 10th grade high school student analyzing a scene from "Hamlet." The same goes for the last Lucinda Williams album which was being played on the radio about 2 months before it went on sale.

So what’s the deal? I can understand if there were physical constraints in manufacturing things and then distributing them to stores around the globe. But we live in the days of the digital download, high speed CD manufacturing, and Fed Ex. Nothing needs to take as long as it once did. Would love to get the real dope on why this archaic distribution method still rules the day and why we need to wait so damn long for music that is already in the can.

Jeffrey Zoldan
Discount Office Furniture
132 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011