Re: [ARSCLIST] Folkways Reissues

[John Ross <johnross@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

There's a huge difference between your making a one-off CD copy of a 
recording and operating a business that provides a similar service 
from a catalogue of several thousand titles.

First, there's staff: not only a technician to burn the copies and 
maintain the equipment, but also one or more archivists to catalogue 
and maintain the collection; somebody to accept orders and handle 
billing and payments; a webmaster to create and maintain the online 
catalogue; and somebody to handle marketing and publicity. I'm 
probably leaving something out.

Second, in order to provide that special-order service, it's 
necessary to create and maintain an extensive archive of audio files, 
cover art and images of the booklets that accompanied every Folkways 
LP. That's another cost.

Third, unlike Moe Asch, who was notorious for being slow (or 
stagnant) about paying royalties, the Smithsonian actually keeps 
track of sales of those special orders and sends royalty payments to 
the performers on those special-order items. As Tony Seeger, the 
former director of Smithsonian/Folkways once told me, "As an agency 
of the U.S. Government, we have an obligation to respect copyrights 
and performing rights."

Or consider the same question from another direction: If you're 
really efficient, it might take you an hour to make a clean copy of a 
45-minute LP; more if it requires noise reduction, de-clicking or 
other processing. Isn't your time worth more than $15 per hour?

John Ross

At  12/14/2007 07:35 AM, Garr Norick  wrote:
> Don't get me wrong... please understand that I admire what Folkways 
> is doing, and it is something that needs to be done... Maybe this 
> illustration will show me what I mean... I have a private collection 
> of music... I have been collecting for 20 years, and I am 23 years 
> old... Say someone wanted a CD dub of a recording in my 
> collection... I could transfer it onto CD and xerox the liner notes 
> for them, and this would cost me at most one dollar. I could charge 
> them five dollars for the whole thing, plus shipping, and make a 
> 500% profit... Smithsonian, a government entity, owns the rights to 
> all these masters outright... they probably buy blank CDs, labels, 
> and paper for insert materials in massive quantities... thereby 
> saving money... in other words, they probably don't have 
> considerable overhead aside from paying someone to do these 
> transfers (which, understanding the importance of keeping this music 
> alive, would gladly do for them free of charge)... what I am trying to say
>  is, all things considered, considering that they own the masters 
> and probably get the raw materials at or below wholesale pricing, 
> they could easily charge $10 a CD and make a nice profit on it (and 
> it probably costs them less to make a custom CD than it does me, 
> because I buy my supplies in retail quantities at retail prices). I 
> guess part of my point of view is that I am a collector who has 
> always been on a shoestring budget. I sincerely hope I did not offend anyone.
>
>   Most Sincerely Yours,
>   G.E.
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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