MUSIC NEWS : Lower Price and They Will Come

What were six--count ‘em six--classical CDs doing on Billboard’s Top 200 April 13? The bestseller list, which tabulated sales for the week ending March 31, put a classical collection called “Famous Overtures, III” by the Rundfunkorchester des Sudwestfunks Baden-Baden at No. 126; No. 130 was Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” by Camerata Antonio Lucio; and Nos. 174, 175, 195 and 196 were also familiar classical repertory by unfamiliar artists.

The label in each case was Digital Masterworks, and the total sales of the six CDs came to 82,000 units. Geoffrey Mayfield, Billboard’s charts editor, says it takes sales of at least 6,000 units for an album to show up on the Top 200.

Of course, it’s not unprecedented to see classical recordings among the Top 200--think of the Three Tenors, whose 1994 CD hit No. 4 on the chart--but it is, in the words of Mayfield, “highly unusual” to see six at once, all from the same label and all newcomers to the chart, in one week.

The solution to the mystery is simple: price point.

In this case, a special promotion. During the last week in March, at Target Stores nationwide, Digital Masterworks, distributed in the United States by a company called PPI, offered 17 of its titles at half price: two for $5. According to spokesperson Carolyn Brookter, at Target Stores’ headquarters in Minneapolis, no special gimmicks or sales strategies were involved.

“We just put the product in the record bins, where they always go,” Brookter said. “Somehow, when the price is right, the buyers find them.”

Shelly Rudin, vice president of sales for PPI, explained that Digital Masterworks is a European label--called Digital Meisterworks on the continent--that records regional orchestras and ensembles--”all legit,” he said.

Even without the price reduction, DM’s recordings, which PPI began distributing as a budget line in the United States in the spring of 1995, were priced low enough to have had a market impact. On April 6 and April 13, DM titles had taken over all 15 slots of Billboard’s Top Off-Price Classical chart though they hadn’t cracked the regular classical poll.

The DM recordings, said PPI sales administrator D.J. St. John, are “a good budget-line product.” But even St. John was surprised by the breakthrough into the Top 200. The Target promotion, she said, “was probably what triggered it.”

More evidence: In the April 20 Billboard, which reported sales after the Target promotion ended on March 31, all six CDs had fallen off the Top 200. However, Rudin predicts that DM will make a comeback on the big chart in May, when the next special promotion takes place at another national chain, Best Buy stores.

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“Opera in Fusion” is the name of the annual national conference of Opera America, its 26th, Wednesday through next Sunday at the Hotel Inter-Continental in downtown Los Angeles. This 26th annual meeting of the opera service organization is being hosted by L.A. Music Center Opera.

Delegates to the conference, representatives of opera companies throughout North America, will hold general sessions and troubleshooting operations meetings, as well as attend opera performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (“L’Elisir d’Amore”) and San Diego Civic Theater (“Aida”).

Saturday afternoon, Opera America’s first-ever Bravo Awards will recognize the national and local business people who support opera. Awards will go to Texaco Inc., the Dallas Morning News, ADVANTA Corp. and Norfolk Southern Corp., among others.

Controversial stage director Julie Taymor--remembered here for her “Fliegende Hollander” at LA Music Center Opera--wil be keynote speaker; tenor Placido Domingo, head of Washington Opera and artistic adviser and principal guest conductor of L.A. Music Center Opera will join Taymor and Hollywood writer/director Garry Marshall in a panel discussion on opera and popular culture.