Post by Julien January 12, 2008 (241 of 453)
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bissie said:
Unfortunately the Kempf Trio has disintegrated.
This is such a shame. They were by far the best modern piano trio we had on SACD. My review says it all.
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Post by ramesh January 12, 2008 (242 of 453)
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I want to put a plea to Bissie to consider works such as the Aho symphonies to be put on single layer SACDs-- perhaps like the Bach organ set.
IF this happened, I for one would certainly buy them. It can be argued that this is counterproductive for BIS, since several CDs would result in more royalties to BIS than two or three SACDs covering all his symphonies. However, I suspect that most contemporary music fans don't have SACD players, and the SACD owner demographic doesn't have too much overlap with them.
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Post by bissie January 13, 2008 (243 of 453)
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ramesh said:
I want to put a plea to Bissie to consider works such as the Aho symphonies to be put on single layer SACDs-- perhaps like the Bach organ set.
IF this happened, I for one would certainly buy them. It can be argued that this is counterproductive for BIS, since several CDs would result in more royalties to BIS than two or three SACDs covering all his symphonies. However, I suspect that most contemporary music fans don't have SACD players, and the SACD owner demographic doesn't have too much overlap with them.
That isn't the only problem.
I have nothing against - per se - to help people discover superlative contemporary music by giving a price advantage (although why people don't use the listening service on BIS's homepage is beyond me).
The problem is copyright. One is allowed, for the usual copyright payment (more below) to have 80 minutes of music on a disc. If you have more, you pay pro rata temporis. In other words, if I compile 240 minutes onto a single-layer SACD, I pay 300% copyright. Yes, and?
Well, the copyright payment outside of the USA is almost 10% of the price to the dealers. THAT price is somewhere between 60 and 100% higher than what WE get, since we don't own our distribution but go through wholesalers.
So, let's do the math with a hypothetical 240 minute Aho SACD and 75% "profit margin" for the wholesaler (not as much as it sounds! They have plenty of costs and risks):
I sell at X. The copyrights will then be (almost) 10% of 300% of 1,75X.
That works out at (almost) 0,525X. In other words, about HALF OF MY SELLING PRICE goes to the composer and publisher.
Then there is the bit about royalties to the Artists, the costs of mastering and producing the SACD, well, do I need to go on??
That was outside the US. IN the US it is worse. Here we have fixed copyright fees, regardless of the price you sell for: 1,85 cents per minute or 5,5 cents (I am not completely sure about these figures, but they are close) per work, whichever is more. That would work out at USD 4:44 in our example. Well, I can only say, without going into specifics, that this is a darned sight more than half of what I get.
So I'm afraid that the superlong single-layer SACD:s are only suitable for Public Domain products. Nice thought, though.
The other problem is that one wouldn't really want to box Aho's Symphonies until one knows they are complete and no new ones coming. The ramification of that is so horrible as to not warrant any further comments.
Robert
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Post by Daland January 13, 2008 (244 of 453)
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Edvin said:
As I said, I am merely putting forward my opinions. I have said this a number of times and why you react in this idiotic manner is beyond me. You may think I´m arrogant, I couldn´t care less. So Daland, do you understand? MY opinions, MY wishes, MY MY ME ME, not anyone else.
Your reaction is typical of a conceited egomaniac. Your lack of good manners equals your lack of judgment.
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Post by raffells January 13, 2008 (245 of 453)
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bissie said:
Hi Bissie and many thanks for interesting informative contributions time and effort that goes into the threads.
Apart from educating some if not ALL of the members in this forum you have at least created interest in the sacd and musical parts of the threads.Personally I will at least be buying two items as a result that I had not previously considered.
IS it possible for you to give us an even greater insight into the copyright problems and its related future and effects ? even name names.countries.?..
There have been some comments re another label releasing out of copyright performances and erroneous comments made as a result already.Little was written about the composing copyright.It has become obvious from your recent responses that this is very significant in your planning and costing.It also probably explains a lot about how many performances from certain composers we are going to get in the near future....We consumers seem to be on the outside of the information link.
I ask this to help avoid future requests and discussion which somehow lead off into slanging matches???? for whatever reason.None of which is really informative.
Dave
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Edvin said:
As I said, I am merely putting forward my opinions. I have said this a number of times and why you react in this idiotic manner is beyond me. You may think I´m arrogant, I couldn´t care less. So Daland, do you understand? MY opinions, MY wishes, MY MY ME ME, not anyone else.
A question.
Does being deliberately and openly offensive, using sarcasm (lowest form of wit) and abuse in many of your posts, somehow make you feel empowered?
If so, why do you need that experience,if not, why do you persist in it?
There are ample ways in which to disagree and express those disagreements without sneering and belittling.
Try them sometime. You may find that people actually respect you more and listen to what you have to say rather than feel sad that you need to write in this way.
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Post by tommwi January 13, 2008 (247 of 453)
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Hi Robert.
Are you still committed to a development towards a hybrid SACD only release policy? The market situation must be tough for you and it seems getting tougher…
I think most of the following must be facts:
- The rapid growth of downloads (growing much faster in the classical genre than anyone expected) must take away certain volumes in sales, making such SACD policy even less profitable. This must be a reality also for BIS!
- The market for SACD disc players (HW) is worse than ever and reasonable quality players are limited to a few models. SACD is after all the most problematic disc (the SACD disc doesn't play)currently being marketed often due to quality problems in HW. No SACD player at all have been shown at the HiFi gear exhibitions I’ve been to lately.
- Your competitors have had no obvious problems with limiting or often withdrawing from SACD releases. This applies also to independent company high profile releases.
- And worst of all it: It is more obvious than ever that most and indeed a vast majority of your customers don’t care for (listen to) any of the SACD layers and its possibly higher level of sound quality, limiting this SACD only release policy to an in-house allocation of resources that only will risk the nature of your company by taking away resources and opportunities from catalogue development. SACD ability to bring goodwill values to the company exist but must be questioned somewhat…
Sorry for not joining the SACD cheerleading category here. I’m very much interested in good sounding (high res) audio for natural sounding timbres like in classical music, even in multi channel. But I would never limit this interest to SACD. The only chance to have a sustainable development is to have a market and financial workable situation. And frankly - there was no business model that worked out for SACD in the critical early years! I guess only higher sales volumes will justify SACD releases.
Has the time come to focus on new possible carriers? How do you look at this? I’m more interested in having the “BIS release policy” staying as healthy as possible, rather than risk having BIS going downhill with a questionable SACD policy. Finally I find the last Beethoven 1+6 another success for BIS. The current mix of releases from BIS is to my mind (or ears) making BIS an outstanding company. But I sense you run it with higher risks than your competitors are currently doing... And in the long run it won't work.
/Tommy
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Post by bissie January 13, 2008 (248 of 453)
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raffells said:
Hi Bissie and many thanks for interesting informative contributions time and effort that goes into the threads.
Apart from educating some if not ALL of the members in this forum you have at least created interest in the sacd and musical parts of the threads.Personally I will at least be buying two items as a result that I had not previously considered.
IS it possible for you to give us an even greater insight into the copyright problems and its related future and effects ? even name names.countries.?..
There have been some comments re another label releasing out of copyright performances and erroneous comments made as a result already.Little was written about the composing copyright.It has become obvious from your recent responses that this is very significant in your planning and costing.It also probably explains a lot about how many performances from certain composers we are going to get in the near future....We consumers seem to be on the outside of the information link.
I ask this to help avoid future requests and discussion which somehow lead off into slanging matches???? for whatever reason.None of which is really informative.
Dave
I shall, and with great pleasure, because much of it really IS terra incognita for most readers.
What I described in my previous post was just the payments of copyrights post factum, that is, when a disc has sold a copy somewhere. If that was end of story, I wouldn't mind at all, since composers and publishers certainly are worth their money, however, there is one further problem making the recording of works by composers such as have been pointed out to me by, i.a. our Edvin (Thomas Roth) rather cumbersome, namely Material Hire Charges.
Typically, when a composer has finished his/her work, it is sold/given to a publisher for representing/marketing/selling/renting. In previous times the publisher had to proofread and clear-write the composers' scrawls, typeset them and print both scores and parts. This is now no longer so, in the vast majority of cases, since composers use "Sibelius" or other score-writing programmes. (Incidentally and typically, Kalevi Aho is a glaring exception. He goes to his country place, without water, electricity or any amenity, with a load of score papers and pencils and just writes down the score from the beginning to the end. He doesn't even have an eraser, since he has no need to erase. And what music! The pure GENIUS of that man!!!!!!!).
Back to the Publishers. Yes, they had a LOT of work going into the score and parts, and so they have to have income as well. A great part of that income came from renting out the material to orchestras and recordings. Those costs for a recording can be anywhere up to 100 dollars or more per begun minute on the CD. I can somehow sympathise with this, given the huge amount of work going into it for the publisher, but nowadays - they just take over a computer file and press a button. Somehow, the prices remain the same. This is not the place to go into a debate about this, BUT it means the following equation for the recording of Thomas's suggestions of Roy Harris, William Schuman et al:
1) We have to pay anything up to 7'000 dollars just to get the right to record the CD. To recover that alone necessitates the sales of 2'000+ CD:s!!
2) Usually the modern works are more complicated to learn and record and therefore more expensive. They may also employ lots of "odd" instruments that have to be hired extra, incl. the players. Example: Gubaidulina's Flute Concerto, written for my wife:
Piano, Celesta, double harps, Contrabass trombone, 3 (Three!) sets of Gran Cassas, all percussion invented, all flutes invented, and some not (sic!)(she has to play an alto flute going a full tone below the range, necessitating a rebuild).
3) We are looking at a much smaller market for the product.
4) We have to pay those about 17% (see previous post) of our selling price to the copyright holders.
So, in a way, it is easy to holler for more contemporary stuff, not quite so easy for us recording companies to solve the above equation.
BUT WE MUST TRY, and try we do, at least at BIS.
Robert
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Post by bissie January 13, 2008 (249 of 453)
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tommwi said:
Thank you, Tommy, for your carefully thought-out post. I will answer it in detail later, but just now I need to go to the airport to get my wife, who just is returning from having played the Gubaidulina Flute Concerto in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
Robert
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Post by raffells January 13, 2008 (250 of 453)
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bissie said:
I shall, and with great pleasure, because much of it really IS terra incognita for most readers.
Many thanks for the excellent reply.
Probably 99.99 percent of the buying public would agree on the scandalous amount of megabucks that go to artists and writers nowadays based on the historic priniples.
I must admit the complexity of this simple area of the economic planning stage? is obviously a minefield that is difficult to understand and more easy to forget about when you are not involved.Notwithstanding any varying of these rules/cost internationally.
At least this goes a long way to help explaining the lack of you producing that Manfred symphony that you almost promised us?LOL (huge orchestra plus organ).
It also offers some explanations on other labels policy as to what items are being released as sacd or plain cd.It would appear that the odds are slightly stacked against new works on sacd.
Once again many thanks, I will now leave the forum for those who want to continue the slanging and mudthrowing.
.Bye D
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