The CD might be dead, but if you’re into classical and jazz music, you probably never got the memo. That’s why you should know about Berkshire Record Outlet, an essential addition to my column today about finding online deals for entertainment and other media.

BRO specializes in closeouts and overruns of just about any classical-music label you can name. But there’s much more, including jazz, world music, blues and film music. CDs are the main format, with more than 11,500 now listed, but there are also DVDs (1,269), books (100), cassettes (137), VHS tapes (106) and even — gasp! — LPs (258 on my last check for $2 to $6 each). BRO has been around for 34 years as a mail-order company, but it recently has optimized its website to make searching through its massive holdings a breeze.

The greatest thing about BRO is that its CDs are not all picked-over junk, as you might expect when you see words such as “closeouts” and “overruns.” You can find acclaimed recordings of just about any composer and artist, and on esteemed labels, many of them imports that are hard to find even at retail prices.  But there’s the catch: These discs typically sell for about a third of that.

Consider my recent order: 7 CDs from the import labels Biddulph, Chandos, BBC and Marco Polo; 2 CDs from the audiophile label Telarc ($2.99 each!); 2 CDs from the independent historical label Music & Arts; 1 disc from the budget label Naxos; and 2 limited-edition DVD-Rs of rare films. They include conductors such as Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy, and composers ranging from Modeste Mussorgsky and Gustav Holst to Erich Korngold and Jerry Goldsmith. That’s 14 discs for $86.16, which includes a paltry $7.30 for shipping — an average of $6.16 per disc.

Now that’s music to my ears.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 10:54 am and is filed under Web pick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.