Rhino Quadio Batch 5 for August 2024!

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Not just KTEL…Rhino used to be pretty good at this type of thing once upon a time… 😉
Been in my collection for many years…
 

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Been in my collection for many years…
That's a very cool set, but to be fair, that's just a promotional-only sampler of different Rhino albums they had available at the time.

I was thinking along the lines of the K-TEL type compilations that were their bread and butter for years.

OIP.Hb_ZneNc2Xhgya4ThGlPSAHaGk
 
From this series, did you get one of the "Promo Only" samplers in the denim wallet? Oh I'll have to dig mine out.
oh that sounds familiar! I think I must have. But I no longer have it if I did.

Back in my retail days working for Tower Records I was given literally thousands of promo CDs. I sold or gave away all but a few hundred. (Including this full Rhino set and a couple of others of theirs). A lot of things I wish I had held onto for sure. But that was a vastly different era and SO long ago now.
 
oh that sounds familiar! I think I must have. But I no longer have it if I did.

Back in my retail days working for Tower Records I was given literally thousands of promo CDs. I sold or gave away all but a few hundred. (Including this full Rhino set and a couple of others of theirs). A lot of things I wish I had held onto for sure. But that was a vastly different era and SO long ago now.
There is also a faux black leather wallet with Rhino R&B from Atlantic and Atco from about the same time. Just 10 or 12 tracks but both of these are adorable.

Indeed there should be a “Promotional Use Only” Quadio wallet. Maybe a thin wooden box with four little speakers grills glued on front?
 
There is also a faux black leather wallet with Rhino R&B from Atlantic and Atco from about the same time. Just 10 or 12 tracks but both of these are adorable.

Indeed there should be a “Promotional Use Only” Quadio wallet. Maybe a thin wooden box with four little speakers grills glued on front?
If there were still record stores or radio stations to hand them out to, there probably would be. 😕

I don’t remember the black leather wallet one. Sounds totally cool though.
 
Those "Have a Nice Day" CDs are/were awesome. I somehow stopped around #20. It turns out the last few volumes are very hard to come by. They probably were made in smaller quantities, but I have no clue.

However, those were put out at the dawn of the CD era (or close to it) and they helped to support the CD format and the WB/Rhino brand as a CD leader, which made the amount of paperwork to assemble them worthy.

Trying to do that today with quad tracks would probably not make it past the 'wish' phase. Marshall was able to do one because he was the guy signing off on it. Today I would imagine that Steve would love to do a lot of the stuff we suggest in our zest, but to pull it off would just be financially impossible.

We got real Quadio's coming out every 3 months or so, and now these great Atmos BluRay Audios. Anyone who thought this would happen just a scant 8 years ago would have been called a dreamer, so you never know
 
Those "Have a Nice Day" CDs are/were awesome. I somehow stopped around #20. It turns out the last few volumes are very hard to come by. They probably were made in smaller quantities, but I have no clue.

However, those were put out at the dawn of the CD era (or close to it) and they helped to support the CD format and the WB/Rhino brand as a CD leader, which made the amount of paperwork to assemble them worthy.

Trying to do that today with quad tracks would probably not make it past the 'wish' phase. Marshall was able to do one because he was the guy signing off on it. Today I would imagine that Steve would love to do a lot of the stuff we suggest in our zest, but to pull it off would just be financially impossible.

We got real Quadio's coming out every 3 months or so, and now these great Atmos BluRay Audios. Anyone who thought this would happen just a scant 8 years ago would have been called a dreamer, so you never know
I was wondering more if they could do it by licensing some of the single tracks mixed to Atmos where the entire albums haven’t been mixed. Or any tracks where the original labels have no intention to release physical product. But I guess licensing might be different now than it was 30 years ago.

Those last 5 “Have A Nice Day” volumes were a bit odd. Before that they all moved chronologically through the 70s. The last 5 went back with tracks they “missed” so they don’t really flow the same for those of us who lived through that decade. Still good collections though.
 
We got real Quadio's coming out every 3 months or so, and now these great Atmos BluRay Audios. Anyone who thought this would happen just a scant 8 years ago would have been called a dreamer, so you never know
I think about it like this. We got 16 individual Quadio discs over a 12 month period. Add four Joni Mitchell albums in quad, and then add in one Deep Purple album in quad to that and that is 21 quad albums from Warner Music Group in 12 month period. That is about one new quad title coming every 2.5 weeks from the Warner family. If you had told me that this would be the case five to eight years ago I would not have believed it. I would have thought that with the decline of physical media we would see fewer quad masters released than we were seeing when Audio Fidelity were putting out their best multichannel SACDs. In fact we all were in agreement (at that time) that streaming and/or downloads was about the only way to imagine a future with more surround audio (especially quad) in it.

Yet here we are now awaiting news on four more Warner quads from Rhino (which promise to be equal in quality to what has already been released). Dutton V just issued a stack of quad albums including some key albums (in the quad discography) and a few very rare and and unusual things. And Sony Japan has been hitting them out of the park (if rather slowly) on the high-end of the pricing options.

The only question is how long can this quad gravy train last? It looks to me like we have a few more years of quadraphonic glory. I can see this pace keeping up through 2026 provided we are still purchasing them, and have welcomed yet more surround fans into the world of immersion.
It really is up to us to keep purchasing them, and keep them releasing more.
 
The physical media waning seems to be real. I just added Roberta Flack to my discogs collection, and I was the SECOND member to own the disc. I tried to put Enoch Light in the collection, but it seems I’ll have to make a new release.

I know we’re a niche market, and the numbers of sales are none of my business, but I’m awful glad that folks like Rhino and D-V are providing product for us.

I’m currently trying to list my laser disc based music collection on there, and they had less than half of my discs.
 
This is not directed at anyone or any specific comment.

The reality is that these quadio releases are sitting on a shelf almost ready to go. They are low hanging fruit that can be plucked, shined up, and put out to market with very little up front investment. Acquiring the rights, having to take the original masters and create something new from them requires a lot more up front investment.

I have no idea what the profit margin per disc is or how many quadio discs are being sold, but I'd assume it relatively low given that most physical disc sales are low across the board. The point being, that if the up front costs are too high then the profit margin shrinks even more, and no company is going to go through the exercise if they aren't going to have a worthwhile return.

The people that green light projects like this aren't doing it to make us happy, they are doing it to turn a profit and that profit has to be worth the effort. If they were to take on a new project from scratch then it most likely would have to be an album that was multi-platinum. I think the best thing we can do to support this process is buy those recent releases: Fleetwood Mac, The Doors, Alanis Morresette and Hootie, more so than the quadios.
No one has said it better. You're spot on with this
 
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