Since they are distributed the world over... I would think much more!

serifiot, March 20, 2006; 5:51 AM

Depends quite a lot on the movie itself. Blockbusters sell very well, see "Titanic" (last results I've read were 46 million score albums of regular volumen and 23 millions of "Back to Titanic") or "Star Wars" which continues selling extremely well over the years. But for soundtracks these are exceptions !
Intrada sold 30000 copies of it's "Tombstone" release and they say this to be exceptionnel.
Some years ago Prometheus' Luc Van de Ven told me that calling a 3000 copies release of a soundtrack "limited" was nonsense as most soundtracks don't sell that much. Just look at Film Score Monthly - not many of their 3000 units releases are out of print by now!

birnam, March 20, 2006; 9:58 AM

Quite true. It's been like... 10 years and David Shire's ''The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three'' is still around.

serifiot, March 20, 2006; 11:56 AM

That's as I thought. 3,000 seems like an awful lot (so-called limited edition or not). After all,
most of the releases from Varese or Intrada or Prometheus or whoever are being purchased
by us, the same crowd of collectors each time, and are very rarely of any interest to anyone
outside of this small clique. I think that if we (the hardcore soundtrack collectors) numbered
as a group in the 10,000s, then the standard run of these limited editions would grow
accordingly.

And on the occasions when items like The Kindred and Making the Grade sell out instantly,
it's not due to some booming public interest in the release, it's because of a few greedy
collectors who buy multiple copies to resell later at inflated prices.

After all, who in the general public even knows about the Varese Soundtrack Club (or Varese
Sarabande in general) other than the people who hang out on sites like this?


glenngarv, March 21, 2006; 4:38 AM