This morn­ing I got an e-mail from ESP-Disk’ announc­ing their “Win­ter Blowout:”

“It’s that time of year again. The ESP staff is busy at work doing its annual inven­tory. To make room for the upcom­ing 2010 releases, we are slash­ing prices on these fine titles. Get ‘em while they last!”

Cool. Clas­sic ESPs by the likes of Paul Bley, Low­ell David­son, Giuseppe Logan, Don Cherry, Frank Lowe,  and many oth­ers are priced-to-move. Great news, I say, as I pull out my already-nearly-maxed-out Visa.

But wait. Every album has two prices — one for down­load and one for the com­pact disc. For most, the down­load price is $8.99. Not bad,  except that the price for the CD is actu­ally three dol­lars less. That’s right. For nine bucks you can down­load the album onto your com­puter. For six bucks you can own the phys­i­cal object.

What does this mean? I’d say it makes offi­cial some­thing we’ve seen com­ing for a while now — the CD has become more of a costly encum­brance than a valu­able com­mod­ity, to the extent that record com­pa­nies are prac­ti­cally will­ing to pay cus­tomers to take them off their hands.

Leav­ing aside the ques­tion of whether this is a good, bad, or indif­fer­ent sign regard­ing the state of the music biz, it is with­out a doubt a seize-the-day moment for listeners.

I’m reminded of the early ‘90s, when CDs were replac­ing LPs and cas­settes. There was a time when I would go down to the Tower Records Bar­gain Annex on West 4^th Street in Man­hat­tan every pay day and clean-up on dis­con­tin­ued vinyl. My friend Jack DeSalvo (one of the great under-sung jazz gui­tarists, by the way) worked there at the time, and he’d give me his employee dis­count on top of the already cut-rate prices. It was an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­nity and I’m very glad I took advan­tage. So much of that music became a really impor­tant part of my life. With­out it, I’d be a much dif­fer­ent musician.

I don’t mean this as a com­mer­cial for ESP-Disk’ (though I feel no com­punc­tion about singing its praises, given its his­tor­i­cal and still con­tem­po­rary rel­e­vance). But once in a while a golden oppor­tu­nity to acquire great music at a great price comes along. If or when I find out, I feel some­thing like a civic duty to hip peo­ple to it.

Sure, you can prob­a­bly find a place to down­load all of this music for free, but frankly by doing that you’re just hur­ry­ing wor­thy com­pa­nies like ESP into extinc­tion. Bet­ter for every­body — label, musi­cians, and ulti­mately, your­self — you should lay out a few bucks, espe­cially when the prod­uct is so rea­son­ably priced.

We’re prob­a­bly look­ing at the end of the line for the phys­i­cal pack­ag­ing of this par­tic­u­lar music. If you’re the kind of jazz lover who gleans great joy from read­ing liner notes and perus­ing jewel-box-lined shelves, you might con­sider nav­i­gat­ing over to ESP-Disk’ and sam­pling their wares. Get ‘em while they last.