[Librarian On Fire]

As someone who spent a bit too much time chasing down jingle jangle dream-pop albums from Scandinavia during the mid to late 2000’s I have come to realise that I have a few gaps in my music collection of those albums that just about everyone has. Although I tolerated The Cure I have never been a big fan, but just recently it feels the right time to go and buy one or two of their albums. Thinking this would be easy it hasn’t. 15 years ago (would it really be that many years) CD shops were filled to overflowing with second hand CDs. It really did feel like the shops just couldn’t get rid of them and sold CDs for as cheap as $5NZD second hand. I don’t know where all those CDs have gone. Going online it seems harder and harder to find CDs. The Cure albums re-mastered seem to be on “back order” at those international mega stores. Maybe all those 50 year old senior lawyers who were original fans have either kept their CDs or threw them into a landfill years ago. Even the second-hand buy and sell website in New Zealand have few if any copies come up. There is new vinyl available but I refuse to pay as much as $85+ (NZD) for vinyl re-pressed release.



It was ok buying Manics material as they were most productive around the peak of CD sales. This all makes me wonder about the release of album number 14. How many actual worldwide physical copies of the album on CD are likely to be pressed? I thought 20,000 physical CDs in a standard format would be a reasonable number, but reviewing that it seems perhaps too high in today’s streaming world of content. Would 10,000 units or lower be more realistic?