So, Barnes & Noble is suddenly listing a vinyl edition of Christmas In The Heart, with a release date of November 24th and a current price of $23.99. In the light of Sony/Columbia’s recent history of putting an inferior, excessively loud mastering of Dylan’s music on their CDs, while putting a superior version on the LPs, many might prefer to wait for the vinyl.

However, it makes for a frustrating situation, and it illustrates how bad for business is this practice of altering the audio quality in the hope of “competing” with similarly too-loud offerings from other labels and music acts. Many customers who might prefer the vinyl (assuming it is better, which of-course no one knows until they hear it) may have already pre-ordered the CD. It might still be possible to cancel those orders as of today, but they will be shipping any minute now. So some people will end up buying it twice: once on CD and then later on vinyl. This makes Sony more money, but does not create good will, to say the least.

For me, I am most frustrated now that I might not be able in good spirit to buy additional copies of the CD to give as gifts, which I had been intending to do. Why would I give a potentially inferior product as a gift? Why not wait till the vinyl edition comes out, and — since none of the relevant persons has a turntable — record the vinyl to the computer and burn a CD for them? A copyright violation, of-course, and I’m not saying I will choose to do that, but this is the position that Sony’s bad business practice is putting myself and others in; it’s a position of trying to make the best of some bad choices simply in order that the music be heard properly.

In this case, Dylan’s own royalties are going to charity, of-course, so that’s another factor to figure into the ethics of all of this.

In a perfect world, Sony would always deliver the best possible product on both CD and vinyl, not to mention downloads. In a slightly less perfect world, they would fully inform their customers as to the nature and quality of what they are selling in the varying formats, instead of sneakily attempting to manipulate different markets with different standards.

Ugh.

On a more pleasant note, I notice that Amazon has put up an image of the rear cover of Christmas In The Heart. It’s another image that seems to come straight from a Christmas card, this time showing those three wise men following that star.

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