There are lots of things to tell you about this week so the newsletter seems to have turned into more of a bulletin than the usual article to get your teeth into, but nevertheless I hope you’ll find some interesting things worth reading about.

Sheet Music now available online

Firstly a new development: Sheet Music. In our shop in Leamington Spa we’ve been selling sheet music alongside CDs and DVDs for many years, so it has always been an obvious thing to offer on the website as well. However, with a much bigger available catalogue than CDs, and information from publishers generally ranging from inconsistent to downright poor, it was in many ways a much more complicated undertaking. We’ve been working on it for quite some time now and hope that you’ll find the recently launched sheet music part of the website both logically laid out and full of information. It is not the finished article by any means (there are some titles still missing and a number of improvements on our 'to-do' list) but if you play an instrument or sing, and need to buy music now and again, I hope you’ll consider us a possible source. You can access the sheet music part of the site via the green tab near the top of every page.

Next, another new development: Sound Samples. I know from both email correspondence and talking to people that the opportunity to listen to or watch short excerpts of CDs and DVDs before buying is highly desirable. As you can imagine, providing this on a catalogue of tens of thousands of items spread across hundreds of labels is a monumental job, but I’m pleased to say we’re starting to make significant progress in this area. You’ll probably have noticed already from these weekly newsletters that quite a few major new releases (both CDs and DVDs) now have short video trailers to watch, and as you browse the website generally you’ll come across increasing numbers of discs boasting a ‘listen to sound samples’ option. These now account for about 20% of items and include virtually everything on labels like Chandos and Naxos. Again there is still a long way to go in this area, but we hope you’ll appreciate and enjoy the ones already there.

Finally the dreaded ‘C’ word: Christmas. I was planning to say that for customers in the UK at least there is still plenty of time for Christmas orders. As many of you know we carry over 10,000 items in stock (identified on the website by the “In stock - usually despatched within 1 working day” message), and with the last official posting day not until tomorrow (December 21st) and the fact that we will carry on despatching right through the week, there is every chance that stock items ordered in the next few days will still arrive in good time for Christmas. However, I’m sure it can’t have escaped anyone’s attention in the UK that the weather is causing some disruption at the moment and if there is more significant snowfall again this week, there is a chance that both postal and courier deliveries will be affected. That said, Royal Mail brought in extra staff this weekend to help keep on track and they have not seen any reason to bring the last posting day forward so the probability is you’ll be OK.

However, if you want to be sure, there are always our Gift Vouchers which you can order any time of day or night (including Christmas day) and have delivered (by email) within minutes – to anywhere in the world! See here for full details.

It only remains for me to say a huge thank you for your custom over the past year and to wish you a very Merry Christmas.

Chris O'Reilly - chris@prestoclassical.co.uk