I have been FUMING here since I saw the original posting from Garr Norwick, just itching to reply but having trouble posting thru web mail right now. I am glad that there have been a couple of very good replies, such as this one from John Ross and earlier from Jim Nelson. But with his recent posting now I understand where Garr is coming from. Without him admitting he is 23 I wouldn't have known it because his writing is more mature than that. I don't know whether it makes me feel it excuses him or if he needs an introduction to the real world. After all, we were all 23 once, many of my students are that age, and so is my daughter, Leah, who many of you know from here attendance at ARSC. I was once a young whippersnapper sitting at the feet of the pioneers of this field. So Garr, come over here and listen to the Ole' Perfesser tell you about the real world.
Back around 1986 at the Chicago ARSC, when Tony Seeger first unveiled the Smithsonian's plans for the Asch and Cook archives, you could hear the room heave a sigh of relief. They were going to do a good job and it was going to be CHEAP!!!!!! Garr, FIFTEEN BUCKS IS CHEAP!!!!!!! It was cheap twenty years ago in the days of cassettes, and it is even MORE of a bargain now in the days of CDs and inflation. Dubs off the MASTER TAPES!!! Photocopies of the original notes!! We sometimes didn't get them with the original LPs. (Moe admitted that sometimes he didn't include them to force the purchasers to send in the postcard so he could enlarge his mailing list!!!) This was better than going to Moe's office and trying to find a copy of the LP.
Have you ever tried to get a recording out of the Library of Congress or the National Archives thru their technical service depts? Go on their web sites and take a gander. Also look at the hoops you will have to jump thru at LC to get clearances before even getting permission to pay them to do the job. Then take a look thru the names of some of the posters on this list who are professional restoration engineers. Sorry guys, because some of you are my friends of long standing, but some of your charges make LC look cheap!
Garr, you and I are in a different world and different league from the pros. We do it for fun, they have to feed their families on this. Even at the Government. As Bob Carneal, the then chief audio engineer at LC told me 30 years ago, "Mike, the audio lab here at LC is not taxpayer supported. We have to pay our way with the work we do. And we have to be able to defend ourselves if we are accused of unfair competition with professional studios."
Some of the guys on this list were also good friends of the late George Blacker. We all have at least several boxes of reels of tape of all sizes of some of the rarest records in the world with slips in them typed so full of information that there are no margins on them. George never asked a dime from us. We usually didn't know the tapes were coming. We had just chatted with George at a Syndicate meeting or on the phone and the subject of the record came up or he just found it and knew we would also be interested in it. Boy do I miss George. Not because of all those tapes, but because he would have been the number one poster on all of these internet lists. George, George, George, what you missed, and what we all have missed without you. And lonely Bill Bryant up in Maine. These lists are what he craved way up there. Bill also sent out tapes of rare records. No charge. And Milford Fargo. (I don't mean to break out the Kleenex box guys, but the story fits. And these guys DO deserve our reverent memory)
And these certainly were not and are not the only ones freely exchanging time, information, and recordings.
Perhaps it is not so ironic that as soon as I finish this I am going down to school, and now that exams are over, I'm doing two dubbings I promised a few weeks ago. The Kiddierecordking is getting a dub of Molly Bee's Willy Claus a client of his needs, and I am sending scans of the disc which Molly autographed for me in October. No charge, but I'm sure he will be returning with a dub of the one childrens record I've not been able to re-collect from my childhood. He showed me he did have a copy of it when I was over at his place. Then I am doing a CD dub of an uncoated aluminum disc for someone from California. It was a Walter Garwick recording and we were hoping it might be a folkie, but it is just a better version of a Florence Foster Jenkins type. And next week Neil Shell and I are going to exchange dubs of the one disc of the 1932 Shilkret RCA broadcast series that we each has that the other one is missing. And I have also done dubs of home discs or wires for people here in town for just 5 or 10 bucks. But this is not my business and I am not doing any fancy restoration work.
Garr, you and I are in the same boat as each other, just that I've been doing it for forty years longer than you. And some of the pros on this list started out the same way but then went into business doing it. Maybe you will too. George, Bill, Milford, and I didn't. We all had our day jobs. (Well, maybe George didn't, but he said he wanted to get a day job.)
We should all be thankful that the Smithsonian provides that service. Very few other archives do at that price. And remember, all that we are doing is without paying any of the royalties that would be due in the commercial world and would increase the price. Since all of this I've discussed has been in relationship with research and educational work that we do, or a technical job for the owner of the non-professional original, we don't have the rights questions that was mentioned by others concerning the Smithsonian.
Don't mean to lecture, but it come naturally.
Mike (the old perfesser) Biel mbiel@xxxxxxx
Quoting 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.