Making the most of the bootlegs

[John L]

Some of you may have noticed that T.S. Monk has taken an interesting strategy with respect to live bootlegs of his father's music. Rather than chase them down with legal and other actions a la Sue Mingus, T.S. Monks gathers as many of them as he can and sells the MP3s on his website for $10 a disc! Not too bad. Not only does he make money this way, including money off of now defunct discs and labels, but he does a fine service in making a lot of rare Monk available to the public.

Maybe Sue could learn a thing of two from T.S.?

http://www.theloniousrecords.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?

[WD45]

I love this.

I was surpirsed to see the MFSL titles on there.

[king ubu]

Nice strategy, but 5$ would be more like it... I would not be willing to pay 10$ for crappy (check the sizes, these ARE crappy) MP3s with no artwerk and all, even if it wasn't a boot.

[Claude]

These seem to be 128kbs MP3s (at that bitrate, 1 minute = 1MB). For the price, they should offer 192kbs files.

Edited December 15, 2005 by Claude

[John L]

It is also interesting that some of the boots made available include Blue Note material. I wonder if Blue Note is aware of that.

[Rooster_Ties]

I thought Zappa did a pretty decent thing, offering silver-disc copies of bootlegs, complete with simple artwork. Most were only $10 or $11, if I remember.

But I agree, downloads should be more like $8.00 -- you know, something a tiny bit less than the average price of a used CD (which I would peg at $9).

[Claude]

It is also interesting that some of the boots made available include Blue Note material. I wonder if Blue Note is aware of that.

True, this doesn't make sense at all. He is offering bootlegs of material that is in print on a legit label, which is supposedly paying royalties to the Monk estate.

[Chalupa]

It is also interesting that some of the boots made available include Blue Note material. I wonder if Blue Note is aware of that.

True, this doesn't make sense at all. He is offering bootlegs of material that is in print on a legit label, which is supposedly paying royalties to the Monk estate.

Yeah but how much of a royalty do you think Blue Note pays per disc?? A dollar? Maybe two?? This way he gets it all. Pretty sensible if you ask me.

However, I would think that BN must be aware of his d/l service and has worked out some sort of arrangement.

Edited December 15, 2005 by Chalupa

[medjuck]

I guess this is off topic, but last night I watched a DVD of The 40 Year Old Virgin and someone in the background of one shot walked by with a shoppng bag that said "T.S. Monk"!

[RDK]

Yeah but how much of a royalty do you think Blue Note pays per disc?? A dollar? Maybe two?? This way he gets it all. Pretty sensible if you ask me.

Is that really relevant (and legal)? So T.S. basically tells Blue Note "fuck you, we want it all" despite whatever legit contracts Blue Note might have made with his father or the estate? If BN is only paying a buck per disc in royalties... well, that was the deal, wasn't it? How do you think Chuck would feel if members of the AEC were to sell mp3s of his box set on a website, thereby cutting him out?

Now I think it's pretty ingenious that T.S. is offering the bootleg recordings for sale, but I agree that $10 per disc is way too much, especially for crappy mp3s. (There can be good sounding mp3s, but these ain't them.) Actually, I find that the traders on sites like Dimeadozen often do a better service to an artist's "underground" legacy by offering the best quality recordings in uncompressed audio formats. They also strive to find the best versions available, often trading (for free!) versions that sound much better than the bootlegs that have been sold over the years... and possibly better than the versions that T.S. is now propogating for a price.

[Chalupa]

Yeah but how much of a royalty do you think Blue Note pays per disc?? A dollar? Maybe two?? This way he gets it all. Pretty sensible if you ask me.

Is that really relevant (and legal)? So T.S. basically tells Blue Note "fuck you, we want it all" despite whatever legit contracts Blue Note might have made with his father or the estate? If BN is only paying a buck per disc in royalties... well, that was the deal, wasn't it? How do you think Chuck would feel if members of the AEC were to sell mp3s of his box set on a website, thereby cutting him out?

Hmm.. you do have a point there. Okay so he doesn't get it all but I still think that they must have worked out a deal w/ him that allows him to sell their stuff. Maybe the reason why he's selling it on his website is that he gets his royalty up front as opposed to waiting for BN to cut him a check??

[sidewinder]

I guess this is off topic, but last night I watched a DVD of The 40 Year Old Virgin and someone in the background of one shot walked by with a shoppng bag that said "T.S. Monk"!

Are you sure it wasn't a 'Cecil McBee' shopping bag?

[medjuck]

I'm never sure of anything. I'll check it again someday.