ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music)

Absolutly, Nightfall is a very good jazz/folk album and Inland Sea is a very fine album in the ECM jazz/world style. Neigher are investigating musical boundaries as the Rocoe Mitchell album, but both have the relaxed ECM intimacy and simplicity.

Stephan Micus is always a very impressing artist and the trio of June Tabor’s voice, Warren’s piano and Ballamy’s sax is a good choice for trio.

I love that the ECM catalogue is both diverse and homogeneous at the same time.

Does anyone know if ECM will ever be on Tidal?

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I don’t think anyone can say that, not even Manfred Eicher himself. The were on Tidal for a short time when it still was called Wimp. That is why you often find “ghost albums” in the Tidal databas.

But having followed the label for a long time I can say that didn’t heard anything suggesting that ECM will be on Tidal anytime soon.

I think they are betting on the high-res download industry and the growing vinyl business.

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Unfortunately, I’m experiencing exactly the opposite. Following a change in ECM distribution channels, highresaudio.com is not allowed anymore to sell ECMs high res files in Italy. Basically, today, I can’t buy them anymore, all online shops have territorial restrictions!
ECM reassured they are working on a solution but it doesn’t look like a good strategic decision

Irritating. They are pushing you into the arms of VPN services!

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ECM’s hi-res distribution is increasingly unreliable for us in the US. New titles arrive on HDtracks late or never. Highresaudio.com shows them, but often it does not allow purchase from the US. For someone with 164 ECM albums including many digital downloads, this is infuriating. Do they care for their customers and artists?

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The store on highresaudio.com contains 73 ECM albums with a Swedish IP as well as a German IP, via VPN. A very very very tiny collection!

Is the Qobuz store not available to you?

Qobuz is available but ECM records have territorial restrictions in Italy.
ECM’s customer service (really nice, by the way) recommended me to check 7digital.com who has actually ECM records available but with a super small catalogue and nothing about latest releases…
I’ve the feeling ECM signed new distribution contracts (apparently with Universal, as I’ve been told by highresaudio.com) and only now they are realising some countries (Italy at least) have not anymore access to their records

ECM has been distributed in the US by Universal since 1999 (and before that, by PolyGram, which was acquired by Universal). What I worry about is that this distribution arrangement will be dragged into the MQA madness through the distributor’s greed and short-sightedness. At that point, I’d rather buy the CDs and rip them, which is a waste of physical resources, but I won’t go along with unnecessary, rent-seeking format changes.

PS: HDtracks in the US has over 300 ECM titles. The 3 most recent ones I’ve bought there: Roscoe Mitchell’s “Bells for the South Side”, Bill Frisell/Thomas Morgan’s “Small Town”, Avishai Cohen’s “Cross My Palm with Silver”. These appeared there right around their official release dates, but in 2016 arrivals were much less predictable. So, there’s been some improvement on ECM distribution through HDtracks, I guess. As for HighResAudio, I complained to them that they show new “arrivals” on their site well before they are available for purchase, and sometimes even when they are available, they are territorially restricted from the US.

I think all titles in 2017 have been released immediately on Higresaudio.com. I had the impression that the highres hassle of previous years is coming to an end - at least for new albums. I really hope I am not wrong.

I do not want to start buying cd:s again, but I will do just that if the highres hassle contiues, or if they start to distribute the albums in a stupid formalt like MQA - It might be somewhat interesting for streaming services as Tidal, but I would not buy a separate mqa-album.

Let the ripping begin!

Does anyone have a list of these ECM SACDs? I’ve seen them mentioned in Tower.jp emails but their website is totally in Japanese so it’s hard to find stuff without leaning on my wife. :wink:

Anecdote: Manfred told me around 2001 when I was at the ECM offices that they would be doing DVD-A. Pity they never did: it’s a better medium.

I never heard of these ECM SACDs! I wonder if the PCM-tracks on these are the same as the CD-version?

I think they’re Tower.jp specials.

In that case, I want!

These ECM SACD are not crazy expensive on Ebay, just a bit expensive :slight_smile:

There are only four such titles if I’m correct, ie, ECM SACD.

May be those of you close to ECM could find out why they did these four titles and not much else.

I would buy Crystal Silence by Burton & Corea (US $59.99) if I still had my SACD player.