A real shopping trip

Computer Life column for 12/20/97 by
Richard Gordon

It's the Saturday before the big day and your holiday shopping isn't done. Like you really want to fight the crowds at the mall.

You think that music CDs are small enough to ship quickly, and everyone in your family likes music; maybe you should try ordering musical gifts online.

That was the thought process I used to research this column, and I came up with a challenging list of music to shop for:

• Bluegrass: Nashville Mandolin Ensemble's Plectrasonics, released in 1995;

• Classical: Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols and Missa Brevi, 1997;

• Country: Patty Loveless' The Trouble With the Truth, 1996;

• Folk: Pierce Pettis' Making Light of It, 1996;

• Jazz: Charlie Haden and Hank Jones' Steal Away, 1995;

• Pop: Backstreet Boys' self-named album, 1997

• Soundtrack: Cirque Du Soleil's Alegria, 1994.

It would have been too easy to look for Patty Loveless' most recent album, more WSTW-fodder like Savage Garden or Hanson, or the soundtrack to Anastasia. But I didn't want to make the list too difficult.

Further, all these CDs match someone I know, and all have at least one song or piece that I really like. For example, you haven't lived until you've heard a zillion mandolins play the theme from Star Trek, and Pettis' "Miriam" is a moving call to reflect upon the religious nature of the Christmas season.

Log on and shop

I began by going to Yahoo's Holiday Shopping area (shopguide.yahoo.com) and following the link to "Music."

The first item I saw was a way to search many music stores at once. I tried it and found that, for example, the Patty Loveless album was priced between $10.49 at CDnow (cdnow.com) and $14.38 at CDUniverse (www.cduniverse.com). I searched for some of the other items, and was surprised to find that even the more obscure Pierce Pettis and Cirque du Soleil albums were widely available.

Next, I started going directly to the individual music stores to see how many of my 7 CDs could get delivered by Christmas.

One site so frustrated me that I never managed to finish my shopping trip to their site: Camelot Music's (www.camelotmusic.com) top-25 driven approach made it very hard to find things. I gave up after 20 minutes.

The other sites were much better, but they would have been slow to use if I had been browsing instead of attacking a specific shopping list.

CDUniverse, EMusic (www.emusic.com), Mass Music (massmusic.com), and Tunes.Com (www.tunes.com) surprised me: they each had all 7 items in stock. CDNow and Music Boulevard (www.musicblvd.com) had all but the Cirque du Soleil album. Microsoft's Music Central (musiccentral.msn.com) had all listed except the Britten CD, but one other item turned up as "out of stock."

All of these online merchants appear to be reputable, although none have joined the Better Business Bureau's online project. But the prices and shipping options varied from site to site.

And the winner is.....

Mass Music ended up being least expensive of any of the sites--even if you paid $11.80 for overnight Federal Express delivery, the total bill was $86.47 for all 7 items. EMusic was the most expensive of the sites that had all 7 items: $105.80 including 2nd day delivery, but with no listed option for overnight service. CDUniverse and Tunes.Com both tallied my bill (including shipping) at about $101. But neither order would be sure to get here in time for Christmas.

Another way of judging the cost is to look at the per-CD cost. Including shipping, Mass Music was the winner here by over $1.50 per CD over Microsoft's Music Central.

Music Boulevard and Tunes.Com, two of the more expensive sites, did have superior search engines. Both also had a separate search engine for classical music (e.g., by composer, orchestra, conductor, etc.).

So, if you're panicked, log in, get that credit card out, and brace yourself for overnight shipping costs. It's not too late to give the gift of music.

Copyright © 1997, The News Journal Company

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