A Child's Garden of Verses on iTunes


Ok, so I read that Disney is releasing vintage material on iTunes.

The Billboard/Reuters story references 10 albums, including ones by Mary Martin and Hayley Mills (previously available via the Wonderland system or the Archive Collection CDs), as well as "A Child's Garden of Verses."

Aha! An actual album title! So I go to iTunes, and sure enough, a beloved vintage Disney album is available there when I searched for it, with the release date noted as November 7. The tunes are familiar - Beverly Gile and Frances Archer!

But I have questions for those who are savvy with iTunes. How do I get the artwork for a CD jewel case? I know that defeats the purpose of iTunes, but I just don't feel like I'm truly buying an album if I just buy the songs. At least the iTunes site shows a tiny miniature front cover of this album that I own on vinyl. Is there rest of the art on there somewhere?

And more important, how in the heck do I find out which of the other nine albums are also being released for the first time? Are any other of these 10 also titles that were never before released to CD or the Wonderland-on-demand system?

If so, I would be interested in buying them, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to iTunes. How are they categorized by iTunes? How are they promoted? How are they advertised? How in the heck will anyone know which 10 are the new releases? I checked the "new release" listings on iTunes and didn't spot any familiar names.

I try to be an optimistic Pollyanna, but I honestly don't see how more than three people will ever find out about these releases, much less want to buy them.

Don't get me wrong - I am appreciative that at least this one's being released, but at this stage, it would be easier for me to keep on converting my vinyl collection to CD and making my own artwork. At least it feels more personable, and I got that from the Wonderland releases and I bought EVERY single vintage re-release through that system to complement and preserve my vinyl versions.

And in the case of Disney records, the tiny cassette covers and then the CD covers were hard to swallow during those conversions when new technology came along. I'm only 35, so not entirely an old fogey - but I just dunno about this new style of music - all electronic and no heart.

Just my take and would be interested in the input of others...
 

MusicMoose

New Member
First, type Disney Archive into the search engine to find the 2 collections that became available. I'm going to check out the Garden of Verses album you found.

Welcome to iTunes! Give the "New Releases" section a chance to catch up: they are very inconsistent regarding when they update it. For some reason, today it's not even organized alphabetically. That's better than 2 weeks ago, when it turned into a blank page for several days.

I personally think iTunes is the greatest thing that ever happened to music (besides Randy Thornton), but the search engine maze...let's just say it helps to treat it like "An Adventure." You come across great stuff by accident (Try Disney's "The Forest of No Return" by Sun Ra!), but their categorization system is...wonky. I mentioned in another post that they'd listed an album of Disney World Carousel music as "New Age."

When you download a song, the tiny album art file comes with it. As evident in the latest version of the iTunes software, they're trying to give the site more of a "Record Collection" feeling. Some albums, like the 2 archive sets, come with Adobe Acrobat art files/booklets if you buy the whole album. BTW, iTunes's CD burning feature is quick, easy and painless.

Please post if you find any other archive material!
 

Top