or How Much Longer Can We Go On Like This?

The publisher asks $500.00 as the replacement fee for the above score.  Because it’s Out of Print.  And I’m just like, bitch, I can xerox you that shit for seventy-five cent!  Unless that scotch tape was affixed by George Gershwin himself, five hundred dollars seems a rather high asking price.

Out of Print makes precisely zero sense to me.  I just don’t understand it.  Is someone at your organization not capable of typing those notes into a computer?  For $500, I’ll do it in less than a day and replicate every single aspect of your score (minus the Gershwin tape).

In these days of copy machines, pdfs, and Finale, I can’t see any way that the publishing industry will continue on the same model much longer.  Change comes stultifyingly slow in the classical music world, but sooner or later someone’s going to get wise and streamline a TON, and this whole rental business is going to look very different.

Or am I wrong?  Are perpetual copyright laws and publishing monopolies bound to keep things in the same state of disrepair?

I’m sensing the opportunity for a plug.  People, just buy my music.  It’s really good, I promise, and not expensive.  We can make the transaction super clean and scotch tape-free.  Unless you’re looking to increase the resale value, in which case I will gladly affix tape, scotch or otherwise, thereupon.