Tuesday, May 27, 2003

revisiting the HMV revival series [an elucidation of rants generated before]

Took a look at HMV's "innovative" portal HamaraCD.com, which, in their own words, is a unique concept where you have amazing option and complete freedom of creating your own audio CDs of your favourite songs. Your selection can be further personalised with your preferred image, CD Title and a message of your choice. By far, HamaraCD today is the largest, most popular and possibly the only legitimate site offering CD customisation facility for Indian songs globally.

(After the laughter dies down) I took a look at their "Important Facts" and found the official (defensive) explanation of the "Revival" Series, and also a justification for the poor quality of vintage music that HMV releases (The argument for the latter is similar to that profferred by the DVD mastering division of YashRaj Films). I thought I'd add my own emphasis, but every word reeks, so I've dumped everything for your reading pleasure:


  1. REVIVAL SONGS :
    For some of the most popular songs of yesteryears, we have Original as well as the Revival version of the song. Please note that in Revival songs the music is carefully re-recorded, in a modern studio, using the original instruments to give a better sound effect and then overlaid with the original voice track. So, these are not modern remixes or imitative recorded versions. Everything is original, as good as new.

  2. We have only the original recordings of the songs in our database as digitally altering them affects their output considerably and also many customers feel, the song and its sentiments have been tampered with. Hence we have consciously taken a decision to keep the recording as the original one itself. You may find that some of the songs in your CD which are very old ones would have a recording difference vis a vis other songs in the same CD. Would request you to kindly bear with us on this.



The question is: Who are these dumb customers who feel that (to quote) the song and its sentiments have been tampered with?? Most people I see buying and selling hindi film music CDs know as much about them as I do about the Polish language (which is 'nothing', in case you didn't already figure that out).

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