Where to Buy CDs

Compiled by Lukas Kendall

We often see posts on our message board and on rec.music.movies along the lines of, "Did anyone get the new soundtrack to whatever? It's not at my local Circuit City."

If you are struggling to find some CDs, we recommend mail order. I know not everyone likes it, but it's often reliable with companies like Footlight Records, Intrada, STAR, Screen Archives and Super Collector in the U.S. (see our links for contacts).

Here are some additional letters and suggestions from readers:

From: "ROSARIO, MIGUEL" <mrosario@imail.valpo.k12.in.us>

I want to share what a great expereience I had using www.cdconnection.com for some of my latest cd purchases. Anybody that have not used this company have to give it a shot. My recent order included the soundtracks for "Battlestar Galactica", "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", the "King Kong" by the Marco Polo label and others. The order was completed promptly and efficiently. I paid by check and I had my order under two weeks! It is a very convenient way to shop for hard to find soundtracks as long as they are in print. Both imports (Battlestar and Temple of Doom) were under $26.38 brand new!! If you order more than $100.00 shipping and handling is free. Under that amount is only $3.00!! Where I live is pretty inconvenient to hop into a car and drive to the store and gamble if the cd I want is there. Again, if you have not tried this website check it out.

Another website by the name of www.cdnow.com is having a June deal that if you order $20.00 or more you will get a $10.00 off in your order (only a one time use). The user have to make sure to get to the web page that has that announcement. If you can not find that page try linking to it through the John Williams fan page (I am not sure which one but is the one that is an informative one). The good thing about this website is that they take advance order up to four weeks before the release date. Just make sure to check their advance section and see if the soundtrack that you like coming out in July (ex. Saving Private Ryan, Zorro, etc...) is there to pre-order and then get the discount. Get the details in the website.

From: "Randy A. Salas" <salasra@gw.startribune.com>

I wrote the following a few months ago on FILMUS-L. I should point out that the disc I got was one of the TZ discs, which are supposedly out of print:

I have found a reliable, relatively inexpensive online source to order CDs directly from Japan.

The company is Back Trip Record. The contact info is:

BACK TRIP RECORD, Nanba 94 NN Bldg. 4F,1-2-10,Nihonbashi-nishi, Naniwa-ku,Osaka city Osaka 556 JAPAN, Phone: 81-6-634-6016 FAX: 81-6-634-8920; E-mail: heatwave@heatwave-net.com; WWW: http://www.heatwave-net.com

I stumbled across them on the web while looking for the Japanese Twilight Zone CDs. When you go to their web site, it's laughably deficient in film score CDs. But if you ask about any title by email, they courteously reply, in broken English, with the proper label, catalog number and price from their manufacturer catalogs. In other words, they seem to know what you're talking about.

This is the way it works: You email them with the disc you want, and they reply with info if it's listed in their catalogs, including a price. You order it by credit card using an online order form that they email you. They don't know if they can get the disc until they actually order it from the manufacturer (the nature of the biz, apparently, in Japan). But your credit card is charged only if they actually get the disc. Shipping is free if the total for the shipped discs exceeds $100. Otherwise, S&H pricing is fairly standard.

Of the four discs I tried to order, only one ended up being available. But that's all my credit card was ever charged. It cost me nothing to try to get the other three discs, one of which I never really expected to receive. And the price for the available disc after shipping was $5-$15 lower than I've seen it listed (when it was listed *and* actually in stock--Footlight lists many Japanese titles it doesn't actually have in stock) with any other retailer. The disc arrived from Japan in excellent condition about a week after Back Trip said it was sent.

Okay, folks, in the interest of serving the public trust, we invite your tales and recommendations as to which mail order services to use. For the purposes of this survey, we ask the dealers not to write in asking for plugs, since we've probably already got you in our aforementioned links page. (If you want a link corrected or added, tell us.)

Send your stories to: MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com