Ĉi tiu intervjuo aperos en sia originala Esperanto en la revuo Kontakto (majo 2011), do abonu tuj, por certiĝi, ke vi ricevos ĝin ĝustatempe.

Since July 2009, the Esperanto music label, Vinilkosmo has offered a service to buy and download music, but sales have not been as good as originally hoped. A lot of effort has gone into the system, but it can be a bit confusing to buy music, since you buy CDs at vinilkosmo.com, mp3 and ogg files at vinilkosmo-mp3.com and lossless FLAC files at cd1d.com. A bit complicated to say the least. Floréal Martorell will explain how these complications came to be and help you understand how things evolved the way they did. Learn how to navigate this cybermaze to enjoy Vinilkosmo’s music the way you want it.

Why aren’t there links from vinilkosmo.com to vinilkosmo-mp3.com?

I’ve been working with Mark Eaton since 1994. He created the graphics for the CDs and Rok-gazet’. Later, he put the collection online at www.vinilkosmo.com. He continues to administate it and it seems to me that only he can do that, because the system is complicated and needs to be renovated. Unfortunately, there’s neither time nor money for that now.

In the meantime, technology evolved and people asked for the possibility to download music from our website, and at the same time the CD crisis began along with the fall of CD sales. I asked Mark to add a download service to the website. He immediately opposed the idea and refused. For him, creating a download area for Vinilkosmo would be speeding up the death of the CD, effectively drowning the publishing company and collapsing production. He absolutely refused to participate in that and announced that he would not make downloading easier. That’s why there are no links between Vinilkosmo.com and the two download sites.

Even though Mark was right, we couldn’t go against the rapid flow of evolving Internet technology and customer requests becoming more and more insistent from people to make our music downloadable. I then needed to research possibilities alone and find a way, because I couldn’t wait without doing anything since I saw the fall of CD sales. I needed to find a solution to at least try if digital download sales would compensate for CD sales falling… and also to continue production for new artists and albums… and try to keep the balance that way.

In our next part, Flo will answer why you can’t buy Vinilkosmo’s music on iTunes!