jon abbey

good to see you're making progress on reissuing some of your back catalog, Chuck! if you're interested in advice from someone who started in this biz about three decades after you, I'd suggest not putting the liner notes on the web, as that's a part of the physical package you're hoping to sell that's at least slightly more of a pain for people to illegally copy. I can see arguments both ways, but I'd personally lean towards keeping them off the web, at least until the discs have been available for purchase for a bit. I know you're trying to drum up excitement, but maybe just an excerpt would work? just my two cents...

well, I've done that, so I'm still allowed to critique, I guess (just seeing this thread now). Werner's work with Hat Art was pretty inspirational for me as a fan (and as an eventual producer), the 6000-6200 series is pretty remarkably high quality, music and sound quality. I don't understand most of the musical choices he's made in recent years, but whatever, maybe that's just different strokes. the one thing I do have a major issue with that hasn't really been broached here relates to something Adam said (Adam Hill? is that you? if it is, hey): "Show me another niche label like his that has $5 sales for new CDs. " that's fine and dandy for the consumer, but it's terrible terrible business, not just for the label but for anyone wanting to distribute his titles (I know it's one of the reasons I decided not to, after some discussions back and forth with him). not to mention, it cuts into the number of people who will buy the discs at a reasonable price in the first place, because they'll just wait for them to be given away at a loss down the road. I have a sale every February, which ends up basically being six single CDs for $50, and even those prices border on too low (at least I guarantee the purchases will be in bulk). I especially don't understand how a European label can sell CDs like this in dollars, with the dollar seemingly dropping in value every day. obviously it's his label, and he can do whatever he wants, but I don't see how this can be anything but self-destructive as a business practice. I am curious about the Polwechsel/John Tilbury that's still supposedly in the works from Hat, their last project with John Butcher in the band. hopefully that emerges before too long...

yeah, and it's not just Harlem, it's all of Manhattan.

Byron Coley is much more accurate (although he's probably indebted to Meltzer in turn), Meltzer never loved music (or never showed that he loved music in his work) anywhere near as much as Clem.

that's hardly the only conclusion to take from that (pretty interesting) example. look at the raw numbers (33,897 for the previous record, 28,322 choosing to pay for this one even though it's not a physical object), and you can make an educated guess that most of those choosing the free DL would probably just ignore this music entirely if it wasn't free. maybe some of those would purchase a physical object if it was available (again, there's resale value here, I've made thousands of dollars in the last few years selling OOP CDs from my collection on eBay, probably over $20 on average), maybe some of them will buy his next record, maybe some will go to his concerts and buy CDs or merchandise there. I personally have yet to pay for a DL, I'll either DL something for free or buy the CD (sometimes the first, then the second), I'm not paying for electronic files, at least as of now.

that's certainly a big factor, although I'd guess that a major percentage of people in that category don't have the money to buy too much anyway. but the point is that we all know that, I'm trying to add a bit of nuance to the discussion.

further to this, and touching on a different facet, there's an interesting piece in a recent Rolling Stone here: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/177...f_high_fidelity this isn't news to anyone paying close attention, but when you've experienced shelling out $15 for a CD that sounds decidedly worse than the 192 MP3 of that same CD that you've been playing quite a bit (Paul Wall's The People's Champ, if anyone cares), it's a pretty strong discouragement against shelling out $15 the next time around. I don't think these issues are too prevalent yet if we're only talking about the jazz/improv world, but it's yet another factor to consider when discussing illegal file-sharing in general.

well, since no one really knows how it actually precisely impacts anything, including Chuck and myself, that's a pretty damn limited topic.

the hole in this is that most of American's expenses are still dollar-denominated, rent, food, the subway, CD printing at a US plant, etc. none of those go up especially because the dollar sucks (it does affect things more here in NYC than most places, but still not too much, I don't think). overseas expenses do obviously go up proportionately, but unless I can stop the idiots running the country from running massive deficits, not much I can do about that.

not sure exactly what you mean, the dollar isn't actually going to go to zero. it is true that with imports to sell to the US market (CDs on European or jazz labels), that if I can trade Erstwhiles for them as opposed to paying cash, that I can keep the dollar-denominated a lot more reasonable than if I have to buy them with wholesale Euro or yen prices, but I don't think that's really what you mean. edit: reading back and trying to understand what you mean: dollars are still worth the same within the US, unless you're competing with a European to buy an apartment or something, so that's why the barter thing doesn't make sense. it's the purchasing power outside the US that's affected.

um, sometimes people see concerts and later buy CDs, you are aware of this occasional phenomenon? But you also admit that cd sales are down, so clearly on net the labels are worse off. well, yeah, but that's reality, I don't understand the argument. look around, bookstores are closing, newspapers are laying people off and folding, record stores are closing, the Internet is affecting every area of media. people can vent on discussion boards all they want, the RIAA can try to stuff the cat back in the bag all they want, but none of that is going to reverse the underlying reality of what's happened and what will continue to happen. yes, "the labels are worse off" as a whole, but under that umbrella is a whole range of individual stories, from raging successes to total busts, the question is how to best deal with it as a label owner going forward and hopefully nudge your way towards the success end of the spectrum, making the records you want to make while selling enough to get by. anyway the obvious option that many labels have taken, as I mentioned above, is to also sell digital versions of their releases, I don't do this myself, but may do it with lossless versions at some point. what I've done since the start with Erstwhile to try to combat what's been an obvious trend since the late nineties is attempted to offer great music in nice packages at cheap prices, and tried to build a worldwide fan base. the Internet isn't going away, so the challenge is to figure out how to best use it to work for you (worldwide e-mail list for press releases, for instance) and try to minimize how much it hurts you. getting people to pull down Rapidshare uploads may make you feel better for an hour or two, but it's meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I'm sure many of you guys are old enough to remember "Home Taping Is Killing Music", doesn't that seem a bit silly in retrospect? and Chuck, you've decided to take the elaborate road to reissue Nonaah, and more power to you, but clearly you know that the more you spend, the more copies you need to sell. if you really can't sell enough of a remastered Nonaah with bonus material to make back your money, maybe you shouldn't be doing it that way, or maybe you should be partnering with someone in Europe or Japan or something. selling abstract music has never been a sure thing, in any way (I'm sure Chuck knows this way better than me), and the market hasn't just started trending down this week or this month or this year, it's been like this for at least a decade. if it makes you feel better to vent about the state of the world here to your buddies, that's cool, but part of the blame is on you for not recognizing the trends sooner IMO (and all of this is said with all due respect, without groundbreakers like Nessa, Erstwhile wouldn't exist). amusingly enough, by the way, this whole perspective is coming from someone who's in the midst of spending more than I ever have on a single disc project, The Magic I.D.-till my breath gives out, doing it on both CD and 180g gatefold vinyl. hopefully there are enough customers out there for me to break even in a few years, but some of that is on me and on my shoulders to try to sell a record that I so strongly believe in (and it is fucking incredible). same thing with Nonaah and Chuck, we all know nothing is a sure thing, even a reissue of a record deemed to be a classic. illegal DLs are simply part of the landscape now, and short of the CD going up lossless on the biggest file-sharing site within 2 days of its release (which happened to me this spring with my major 2007 release, Keith Rowe-The Room, on the now defunct Oink), you have to suck it up and live with it, or find something else to do with your life. complaining just seems like wasted energy to me, this is the way the world is now. anyway, none of that is meant to be insulting or disrespectful, I'm a blunt guy. I can see this from a lot of perspectives, I'm an American running a US-based label whose musicians are primarily European and Japanese, my wife is from Tokyo, I've bought or acquired close to 10,000 CDs as a consumer in the last 20 years (and yes, that math is scary), and I run a distributor for other labels from around the world, ErstDist. at 41, I'm in between the kids and the baby boomers, and I spend a fair amount of time hanging with both on sites like this and others, plus SLSK chat rooms (file-sharing service), and am in touch with people from all over the world (I had customers this year from India, Chile, China, Russia, South Africa, Mexico, there are seemingly a handful of fans for what I do in quite a few countries). I've also got a journalism background, working at Time for a while, and writing for both The Wire and Signal To Noise on occasion. so I see this complex situation from a lot of different angles, I'm just trying to add a more balanced perspective, like I said. the discussion IMO shouldn't be about assigning blame, it should be figuring out the best way to proceed from here.

is this not clear? Chuck (and I) sell things in dollars to customers worldwide. as the dollar continues to plummet against virtually every other currency, it becomes easier for most non-Americans to purchase goods priced in dollars, since it costs less in their currency.

um, sometimes people see concerts and later buy CDs, you are aware of this occasional phenomenon? Yes, but in the example you posted the band doesn't have any CDs. I said "Thomas Ankersmit, a saxophonist based in Berlin, has barely any physical releases available but has toured worldwide largely based on his work circulating via file-sharing." in his case, there isn't really much of a label, and on the rare occasions that there is, his CDs sell to a worldwide audience because he's built a bit of a following via file-sharing and live shows.

um, sometimes people see concerts and later buy CDs, you are aware of this occasional phenomenon?

sure, I pay a lump fee to each musician per 1000 copies I print, when I print them. I have about 55 titles in my catalog since I started in 1999, and about five of them are OOP currently, all early titles I don't think are essential to the catalog. I've released music from well over fifty musicians, and have literally never had a financial disagreement with any of them.

honestly, the specifics weaken your position to me, unless you have doubts about how good the music is. if the originally released version sounds really exciting to people encountering it for the first time, then of course they'll buy the new and improved edition once it's out, especially considering you'll presumably be selling them worldwide in increasingly worthless currency units. in your position, I believe I'd be totally fine with MP3s of the original version circulating, maybe building up a bit of a buzz. if you really have such an issue with that, maybe you should make your own MP3s available for sale of the original until the new one is ready. that'd be my advice, not that you asked for it.

wow, this is what you're going to go by? how do you feel about the ESP royalty situation?

I don't want to be in the position of blindly defending illegal file-sharing here. I make my living from selling CDs (the ones on my label and other labels), and I have bills to pay every month just like everyone else. all I'm saying is that it's an incredibly complex issue.

no, but it's also not necessarily fair to a musician/group to have some of their best work kept OOP for years or decades. Not everything is fair in a market economy. And nothing is for free... Any way you put it, file sharing is still in conflict with traditional laws and rules. Of course, when too many people are thinking otherwise, something might happen. But just the ease with which digital music files can be copied is not the right incentive for rewriting intellectual property law. There's much to take into account; what to do with copyright in general, how will it affect patent law, trademark rights etc. I'm not talking about what's legal or not, I'm talking about how to function in the world of 2007 as a record label or a musician or a consumer. whether this is illegal or not (it obviously is) really doesn't matter. smoking pot isn't legal either (most places), but that certainly doesn't stop most people interested in doing so.

this isn't true, they could very well get more concert bookings from a wider exposure of their music. for instance, Thomas Ankersmit, a saxophonist based in Berlin, has barely any physical releases available but has toured worldwide largely based on his work circulating via file-sharing. many EAI musicians have done South American tours/shows over the last couple of years, and that's also largely attributable to illegal file-sharing.

no, but it's also not necessarily fair to a musician/group to have some of their best work kept OOP for years or decades.

well, it's not America we're talking about here, it's the whole world. those Nessa discs are just as likely to have been posted from Russia or Japan or Slovenia as they are from the US. also, one thing on the potential side of the small labels trying to survive is that you only need maybe 500-1000 purchasers of each title, so a few dozen in each country can add up fast. I agree with the first part, though, which is one reason why I spend quite a bit of time in different discussion forums and chat rooms on the web, trying to put a face on my label so that people realize they're not just pirating a faceless corporation. also, reading back more closely, I'm not sure I agree with Chuck's complaints about Nonaah being put up for DL. first of all, it was presumably not a lossless file, but more importantly, it's been OOP for decades, right? are people not supposed to hear music because you've chosen to keep it OOP for whatever reason? I wonder how Roscoe feels about that specific situation? I can see the potential argument there from your side, but I don't buy it. I think a label has a much better argument if the release under discussion is actually in print, otherwise you've left consumers with no alternative.

it's a pretty tricky situation. what exactly would you suggest, Chuck? I can make arguments on both sides, I both run an indie label as well as a mail order distributor of other labels, and have bought an absurd amount of CDs as a consumer (including one of those AEC boxes, #157, and not that I'm telling you anything you don't know, but you should be very proud of that release). pro-illegal file-sharing: some people have a chance to be exposed to something they wouldn't otherwise hear. I know for a fact there are people who first heard Erstwhile stuff via filesharing, and went on to buy the entire catalog. also, there are large chunks of the world where people can't afford CDs, much of Eastern Europe for instance. to say they shouldn't then be able to hear this music seems like cultural imperialism to me. also, illegal filesharing allows me, as a consumer, to make much more informed decisions about what I buy. I still buy approximately as much as I did before, but now I'm decidedly more satisfied with my purchases. anti-illegal file-sharing: these arguments are mostly more obvious, but I tend to think that overall, filesharing cuts into CD sales. by how much? it's impossible to say, but I'd guess somewhere between 20-50 percent in the area of music I focus on, depending on the release. I know that sales of my releases have generally trended down over the last decade, even as the profile of the label has continued to go up. but more to the point, there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about it now, no matter what silliness the RIAA gets up to when really they should be focusing their efforts on actually making some good records once in a while. this is the reality of life in 2007, and nothing will put the genie back in the bottle. adapt or die, those seem to be the choices.

I couldn't agree more, my tag line on the main music site I post on is: 'criticism is always the easiest art'-cornelius cardew what's a shame is that Clem is pretty damn knowledgable and an entertaining writer, so if he just channeled that bile in a bit more constructive manner, he'd be an asset to most publications.

I don't think the writers are really out there, Clem. and give your mom the new UGK, way way better than any Chamillionaire (which you probably know, namechecking Pimp C, but I'll take any chance to alert the masses to these guys).