Mohsen Chavoshi’s new album “13″ will be released 1.5 month from now. This is consistently the second number-titled album he appears on this year, after the contribution to the religious compilation “Hasht”! The ill-numbered album is considered a sub-genre to traditional music and will be featuring classic Persian poetry from likes of Baba Taher and Vahshi Bafeghi, while traditional singers such as Ashrafzadeh and Jasemi will be guesting it. According to the record company Avaye Barbad the album will first receive a low profile and low quality release for sale in supermarkets and once it has reached a certain number of sold copies a more decent edition of the album will be available in music stores!
This bizarre-sounding strategy is actually becoming a praxis in the domestic industry and supermarkets are taking over more and more of the retailing. I understand that an availability in the supermarkets makes the merchandise more accessible for customers who might end up buying an album which they would otherwise never visit the music store for, what I do not understand however is why they explicitly market the item as a “low quality” merchandise and by doing so they themselves, as we say in Persian, “too sare maal mizanan”!?!
