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Shadows Between the Sky repress?

Started by DroidHunter13, October 10, 2012, 01:26:45 am

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ifitquackslikeaduck

October 19, 2012, 04:27:05 pm #15 Last Edit: October 19, 2012, 04:52:34 pm by ifitquackslikeaduck
Aloha y'all - I just wanted to take another ride on one of my favorite attractions in Bucketheadland , so I found myself here.  This is such an expansive topic I can only imagine the thought provoking banter at the round table with Travis and his colleagues. Do you need another fan opinion? I haven't heard the new pikes yet, I'll wait until I can buy the cds - I'm like that.  I prefer not to do a download right now unless it is the only form that music is in (the rising sun for example). But if I want the music bad enough I'll buy it in whatever form it's being offered. #1 I love listening to music, #2 I am also an avid audio collector.

As for Shadows Travis, my suggestion is let it stay oop. Hey bots...  If you want the music, then buy the download. If you want to collect the cd, then be prepared to pay. I want money spent on pressing more new music rather than re-press gems of old.

I like the idea of thumbdrives or sd-cards, wish I had a player in my car. Package it up nicely with some artwork and I'll buy it. Big B should know he has my wallet in his bucket but he can't survive on kooks like me alone.  But a thumbdrive or cd, or lp is still going to appeal mostly to the collector, not your average consumer. And even if that new blue ray- cd thingy Neil Young has been pushing or cute little thumbdrives shaped like kfc buckets or whatever the band icon is will only be a temporary format imo. The bigger problem of music being free no matter what format it is delivered in will remain.

But really, hasn't music always been free, I don't really feel guilty I get so much free music. I do watch youtube but I don't download anything I'm not supposed to.  As a kid all my music was taped off the radio, friends lps, or stuff checked out from the library. There is so much good music out there that there is no way I can afford to buy all I want to listen to so you goto a friend's house with an older sibling or your Uncles house and pilfer their music and make copies for yourself.  When I found a band I really liked then I would buy the records - that's what started me on my collecting journey. I won't buy any musician's album, my hard earned money only goes to a select few. I think it is a privilege to be a working musician and like to give my money to those that seem to be very grateful to do what they do. As an adult now I am a collector and buy tons of music and merch from the artists I support but there is a lot I'd still like to hear but not pay for, I just can't afford to.

I see one angle of the problem being: we as consumers have seen guys like Ozzy and Simmons make so much money being idiots, and guys on MTV cribs with insane houses and cars that they kinda become stereotypes of what we think musicians are. They obviously are doing well and don't need my money - in fact - they look like they have so much that they won't miss a little if I steal this download. Then you get music exec dudes like Richard Branson - he has made so much money off musicians that he now builds his own spaceships and flies into space. Don't tell me he or guys like him need more money. And when we hear that MC Hammer or David Crosby went bankrupt, there is no sympathy because they made bad decisions, got ripped off by family or did drugs, gambling, hookers, etc..... Life as a musician is a double edged sword.  Here is the twist, most consumers don't differentiate between artists like those mentioned above, and guys like Travis and Buck or your average studio musician. We all know Travis drives a Lamborghini to work and has servants who separate out the colors of m&m's for him before he lays down some tracks while sitting on his 14 karat gold piano bench.  I think most people clump all musicians together and when we rip off the jokers at the top of the mountain justified or not, all the guys below get hurt too - really hurt.

The only real way to make money as a musician nowadays seems to be endorsements. Sell your song/image/name to a big corporation and you'll get a nice paycheck (be sure to stick it away). If you wanna work, you need to tour and sell merchandise (branding yourself). I'd like to see pay per view live streaming of concerts, I think that is an untapped market. Thumbdrives with multiple albums and bonus material is a good idea but wont last too long. Selling music as we knew it is dead. The music industry will claim that it was us, the consumers, who created this problem but I disagree. Overpriced cds and American Idol manufactured mainstream musicians, imo, is what is really killing the music industry not to mention the lack of new ideas in mainstream music. I like musicians like my fish - raw. I'm not sure what the future holds for selling music but I am interested. The corporate music industry destroyed itself from the inside out. Stories of prima-donnas, excess and crooked record managers and moguls make the consumers apathetic to the problems of the music industry, I mean "you guys get to make music while I dig ditches, hard for me to feel sorry if you don't make money" is an attitude I feel sometimes. But that is not my attitude to little guys like TDRS and other independent recording studios. I know you guys work hard sometimes.

As a music lover I will buy downloads, itunes, a netflix model or whatever the form is because there is no escaping it. People don't like change and are afraid because they don't know how to burn a downloaded album to disc or print the artwork on the right paper, but when those bugs are worked out, downloads is the way. Most music is recorded digitally nowadays and will be sold that way - get used to it. BUT there is still the collector and small runs of vinyl, cds, or thumbdrives will still be made available - you HAVE to give me something with a colorful package that I can hold in my hands and collect. But I know that market is shrinking and the goods are gonna cost more. But I've been a collector all my life from 25ยข cds at yard sales to $250 cds on ebay, I'll continue to pay cause that's what I do.

Wow - I forgot how easy it is to type away and you forgot how long winded I can be. I should go back and edit all those random thoughts but............eh, you get the point right?!

Mahalos for your forum Travis! Aloha everyone - duck

Nubbins

Good to hear from you Duck, and I agree with you 100%!

ifitquackslikeaduck

hey nub, thnx! I know I went off a little above so I'll keep this short and not derail the thread too much.

I'm not too interested in the repressing of Shadows but I am interested in the topic of selling cds and digital media. My question to Travis is, are major record companies even trying to sell me music?, I'm in my 40's. Now my kids are a whole different story, they are young and I know the digital world is already embedded in them. Listening to music, reading books, watching movies is SOOOOOOO different than when I was young. I'm trying hard to keep up because I don't want to be out of touch with my kids generation. I guess it is the marketing that gets me so pissed, my daughter came home from school last week and now loves "bustem veever". Why is their so much Justin Beiber merch? (backpacks, purses, tshirts, games & junk). Is he really that good or do the music companies just push him so much and mainstream people gobble it up so that now my daughter wants a Justin Beiber folder because all the other sheep at school have one? She has never even heard one of his songs afaik. When I was 6 I can't think of any music or musicians that were marketed towards me. My kids already are asking for one of those nooks or kindles, a tablet or a smart phone. It's hard to say no, they are like wizards on those things and I feel like it is just a sign of what is to come. They can't sell it to me because I'm too old and unimpressed but my kids eat this stuff up and that is who I think all this digital media is being marketed to ultimately. I think these devices are going to some extent replace cds, dvds, books - they already are. The thing I don't like most about paying for a download is I just don't feel like I'm getting the same value for a download as a physical cd but I'm not sure the younger generations feel that way and they are driving the car imo. I don't think cds are going to go extinct anytime soon because there are still alot of old dudes in the music biz who like doing things the old way, not too mention the whole collectors market but in 20 years or so when my kids are adults I think cds will just be a thing of the past.

Travis

Hey Duck, good to see you back.

I agree with most of what you said above. I would add I don't blame anyone for downloading music. It's there, it's free. It's a bit like selling skipping stones at the beach or maybe a better way to look at it is selling water. Water is basically free, you pay a little to have it piped into your house, better than carrying it. And you can pay a premium if you want it packaged nicely in a little plastic bottle. Now that so much intellectual property has been digitized it's extremely difficult to find a compelling reason to pay for something that can't be controlled. I think this is a failure of the producers of the content not to protect it, not a failure of the consumer to exercise some as yet unknown capacity to do the right thing. To get people to do the right thing has always involved a consensus that it's the right thing and a viable alternative and with music ( and all other digital media) that just doesn't exist yet.

I'm not quite sure why there isn't more attempts to protect digital property. It's potentially big business and to date very little in the way of viable DRM exist and ways of plugging the analog hole are weak. Usually these just inconvenience the few who are really doing the right thing and to those that don't its a joke. I do think this will change.

The music business has always been a tricky one. Music needs to be free to a certain extent or no one would hear enough to know they want to own it. Before the digital age it was FM radio. I think Youtube and the like play an important role. Also, popular music only became big business when the baby boom generation came of age. The great age of popular music started with Elvis, through the Beatles and ended with the CD. Generation X and subsequent generations have splintered the music business in to very small demographics  . These groups largely are invisible to each other and between the small numbers of fans and the inability to capitalize on product the record companies have abandoned them ( this is you!). Record companies are still around doing what they have always done and that is trying to create or capitalize on megatrends. Justin Beiber is just the latest.
In the heyday of baby boom rock, one strategy was to sign unknowns and try to bring them along to the mainstream. Most failed but enough succeeded to create a secondary existence of lesser popular music, the underground of baby boom rock. Thats is all gone. The CD is dead! It's not coming back.

Music is not gone. In fact there is more than ever. That may not necessarily be a good thing as there is an unbelievable amount of static you have to get through to find good stuff. If your not a musician you know somebody who is and they have a band or a record and Facebook page and videos on Youtube and music on Bandcamp in the millions. The underground music scene has fragmented down to every individual on the planet. Try to market that!

So...

I think it comes down to, things are changing radically. If you don't get why CDs aren't repressed because it sure seems like there is a market for it, it's because your assuming the market is much larger that it is. I post this every few years as old fans move on and new ones come along. The last time we did a pre-pay repressing it was for two CDs and after two months we had 60 pre-pays.  I repressed them anyway and it took almost two years to brake even tying up cash I might have used to produce newer music.

Music is not going away. This will get sorted out. But in the meantime......


X

There is one particular thing about Shadows that makes repressing this album different than any of the other albums for me. I primarily buy music via iTunes if it's not available on CD (I did so with Jordan and Forgotten Trail). However, the iTunes version of this album is still missing City of Woe which I've heard is one of the best ones on the album. iTunes also forces all the files to be downloaded as AAC which takes up too much room and often glitches on my computer. With CDs I have more freedom with how to process the information. Otherwise I would've downloaded the album from iTunes a long time ago.

nick_reinstein

October 24, 2012, 11:05:24 am #20 Last Edit: October 24, 2012, 11:11:30 am by nick_reinstein
Forgotten Trail is on Albino Slug and iTunes has some settings to choose what format you want.

What I want from the Big B is a box set.  Imagine having his entire collection with original artwork all in one set.  Imagine how heavy that would be.

DroidHunter13

Quote from: nick_reinstein on October 24, 2012, 11:05:24 am
Forgotten Trail is on Albino Slug and iTunes has some settings to choose what format you want.

What I want from the Big B is a box set.  Imagine having his entire collection with original artwork all in one set.  Imagine how heavy that would be.

Forgotten Trail IS on Albino Slug...but there is a different version on Itunes with an extended jam solo. It's much better than the CD version! You should check that out.

nick_reinstein

Where are there different versions?  I feel like I now have no idea how incomplete my Buckethead collection actually is now. 

What other albums have different versions depending on which media I want?

beau810

I had a student let me listen to another version Jordan with what sounded like Bootsy Collins on bass.  It was an extended jam session... that was the only time I have seen or heard about it. 

Still need to get the Forgotten Trail extended jam too.
Support underground music!!!

X

Quote from: nick_reinstein on October 25, 2012, 12:14:33 am
Where are there different versions?  I feel like I now have no idea how incomplete my Buckethead collection actually is now. 

What other albums have different versions depending on which media I want?


As far as I'm concerned, Forgotten Trail is the only Buckethead song in which you benefit more from buying it on iTunes rather than on the CD. Shadows Between The Sky works vice versa though, so it makes the CD more valuable.

Slaw_Slinger

I miss the actual brick and mortar record (book, movie-DVD/VHS) buying experience.  Especially sad as I was at Tower when they were shutting down.
Whatever Travis does is fine by me! 
Like Duckhead. I remember the days of waiting for a favorite song to come over the radio to tape it.  It really wasn't that long ago!
OK, just my two cents.  Have to go batten down the hatches in anticipation of this crazy storm.
Missed you, Duck!