Ediciones AYUÍ/TACUABÉ
By 1993, Uruguay’s last vinyl record factory had closed down due to a standstill in steady sales, and demanding audiences continued to reproach the quality limitations of audio cassettes.
Compact discs and CD players began to arrive in the country, and a few initial publications of national artists on that format were already available. Ayuí-Tacuabé couldn’t afford to remain on the sidelines before this new challenge.
Along with an organizational restructuring, the company faced the dilemma of keeping up with the times and reformulating its activity, in search of better returns and an improved competitiveness to fight for its niche. All this without abandoning its ever-present original objectives, amidst an increasingly fierce market competition. Following training courses on Improved Business Management, Sales, and Marketing, the winter of 1993 was the time for producing and launching Ayuí/Tacuabé’s first compact disc. It was “Fines” (Targets), by Fernando Cabrera.
After starting with two or three releases per year, the average number of compact discs published was already at twenty-five yearly in 1997/98. The need arises to strike a balance between the launch of new titles and the re-mastering, on digital format, of recordings originally published in vinyl records and/or cassettes.
The lack of compact discs of prominent figures from our musical history sparked off a project aimed at rescuing the work of artists like Lágrima Ríos, Anselmo Grau and Elsa Morán for our cultural heritage. Agreements with diverse institutions were also promoted. For instance, an agreement with SODRE (National Radio and TV Official Services) permitted the publishing, on CD, of the oeuvres of Eduardo Fabini, Héctor Tosar, Luis Campodónico and Diego Legrand featuring the historic versions of OSSODRE (“SODRE’s Symphonic Orchestra”). Another example was the joint pushing, with Postdata magazine, of seventeen popular music titles that hadn’t yet been recorded on CD format.
In 1996, a grand show was held at the Solis Theater, with the support of artists and the mass media, to celebrate twenty five years of publishing.
In the mid 90s, the establishment in the country of the main multinational recording companies, combined with an evident dwindle of the radio broadcasting of Uruguayan music, brought about a new historic plight to be overcome by Ayuí/Tacuabé, whose TV and radio exposure had diminished.
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