... and then I'm sure they'll cry victim when everybody starts copying the damn things and starts giving them all out to their friends because you can't get a permanent copy of the work.
I'll tell ya, the first thing I would do with such a thing is to back it up. Or better yet, I would just return it after it expires and tell them that it never worked right in the first place. It's not like they could prove otherwise.
I think a couple of other people have mentioned CD Baby already. They are by far the most popular way for indie artists to get their stuff out.
While Fat Chuck's is subscription based (you pay a $60 annual fee), CD Baby charges $4 per CD sold. So Fat Chuck's is a better deal if you know you are going to sell more than 15 discs (probably a fair bet).
The other difference I see is that Fat Chuck's only processes the transactions, they don't ship the CDs. CD Baby is a real on-line store and maintains inventory. When they start to run low on stock they send you an email. If they run out they won't sell your disc anymore (but they will issue "rain checks" if they are relatively certain they will be receiving more soon). Derek (CD Baby's president) is a great guy with a lot of music industry experience as well, and he puts out a lot of advice for aspiring artists.
Somehow I think I'd rather just pursue my own online transaction capability rather than go through Fat Chuck's.
Oh yeah, duplication costs came in around $1.25 per disc including jewel box, insert, tray card with UPC code, that stupid sticker they use to seal the jewel box closed, and shrink wrapping. This was for a run of 1000 discs. You'll pay slightly less per disc for a larger run, but not by much.
Of course everybody knows that there is much more involved and it all depends on whether you are with a major label, how many sales you expect, etc.
A project that I've been involved with over the past year is coming in around $20,000 or so after recording everything (11 songs, one of which is a remix), paying the (one) guest musician on the album, mixing everything, mastering, having artwork done, duplication, and initial promotion.
I'm not adding in the cost of putting together the artist's web site since she's my wife and I did it for free. My only cost was to the ISP.
The scary part now is that we're in the hole $20k and need to make it back with sales and performances. We'll just about break even if we sell all of the initial run of 1000 discs we had made. Then we can get more made and start pulling in the profits.
If you were with a major label, you could spend much more on the production of the album and have potentially many more sales, but it is questionable whether or not you would actually get any money out of the deal anyway, even if you did somehow manage to be on of the "hot bands" chosen by the music cartel to be the flavor of the month. More likely, you'll be one of the many bands that the label decides to not actively promote, and then your entire career is screwed since they own your music.
Neverwinter Nights held my interest for about three weeks, as opposed to BG I/II/TOB and IWD, etc.
In spite of (or perhaps because of) all of the work that went into the 3rd edition rules and the graphics engine, the gameplay is far to shallow to be interesting. There was too much attention to eye candy and no attention to the storyline.
I'll grant you that the premise of this particular piece of software was to allow the user community to write and distribute modules, but as of the last time I checked (again, several months ago) there weren't any really great campaigns out there, just a few simple modules that people threw together.
This happened to me a few years back, I think it was 1995. I had an '89 Honda Civic and someone had parked an identical one next to mine in the parking lot. I unlocked the door, got in and started the car. It was only when I started backing up that I looked around and noticed that someone had cleaned my car and the stereo was different!
150 terabytes to manage is not really all that much if you consider the budget that this program will have. Even if it was, the ability to store and process data will increase at a much faster rate than the amount of data generated by telephone conversations, so your argument about it not being entirely feasable from a technical standpoint would only hold water for a few years at most.
After all, they should be paying you for your knowledge and expertise. Would you expect your doctor to write up documentation for you so you can self-diagnose future problems?
No, but I would expect my doctor to keep accurate medical records on me, and be able to transfer those records to my next doctor in the event that I choose to swich doctors.
Until "Terminal Services" is bundled with ALL Windows releases and does not require users to fork out yet more money to billy boy, VNC will remain my prefered way of connecting to Windows machines.
I'm tired of paying extra for necessary tools.... so tired... and cold... hold me...
No matter what the distribution medium is, there are going to be costs associated with it. We have to pay for a web site with a high-speed link, or we have to pay someone else to use their established site instead. We have to pay the recording studio. We have to pay the mastering engineer. We have to pay for cover art (unless we're talented enough to do that as well, which we're not). We have to pay for duplication.
In short, there are costs associated with all kinds of aspects of the project, and there's no way that we will experience $revenue == $profit.
People sign with record labels because they can't afford to do it on their own. We are fortunate enough to be able to afford to do the first album on our own without getting into too much debt, since I have a pretty good nerdly job and my wife also teaches.
The name of the game right now is to:
Release the CD.
Publicize the disc by marketing it to people who can get it on the air, etc.
Start getting gigs.
Develop a fan base.
Pay off expenses
Hopefully make enough to pay for another album.
Middlemen can be really helpful, even downright necessary. They help you get your work out to people that will pay you. The real trick is to maintain control of your art, and these days the costs associated with producing your own album are not as high as the costs of selling out to a big label.
I'm pretty sure that Kristen would be very interested in signing up with an indie label like Ani Difranco's righteous babe records", since it would mean getting a fair deal and getting the music out there easier.
So don't be so closed-minded about who gets the money and how. Just because some businesses are evil, it doesn't follow that all business arrangements are bad. And I certainly hope that you don't boycott or rationalize copyright violations just because you find some minor detail about an artist's distribution choices.
Besides, if you can't afford 75 cents to download a song, you've got worse problems. Maybe you should consider selling your computer to help pay the bills. It's about the same price as a candy bar, for crying out loud!
Well, you have to bear in mind that 1000 CD's is just the initial run. Once we run low, we'll have capital and incentive to print more. Based on the prices we've seen out there, we'd only save around $0.30 per disk for a high-volume run.
This gives us a chance to make back some of our investment and to gauge the demand before we go whole hog and wind up with a ton of inventory we may not ever sell.
We've talked a bit about making some of the music available for free. I think we're probably going to post one or two songs from the album on the web and put clips for the rest. Then we'll see how it goes.
On a related note, I recently bought the Rickie Lee Jones album Ghostyhead from GreatBigIsland
for $0.75 per song over the web. Not a bad price for me or the artist, especially considering that she gets the whole profit and there are no material costs, etc.
My wife is about to finish up her debut album in a few weeks. The total costs for recording, mixing, mastering, and artwork look like they're going to be under $15,000 and it sounds very professional.
For duplication, we're looking at about $1.50 per disc for an initial run of 1000.
Her engineer / co-producer is getting a nominal percentage of the profit.
So for under $20,000 an artist can record and release an album independently and keep almost all of the profits.
The real trick is that we don't have the marketing muscle that the big labels have, so it will take a while to get the music out to people who will actually want to buy the album. However, between local gigs, local and college radio stations, and having a web presense, we are optimistic that we can get the ball rolling.
If I had unlimited funds, I'd hire a bunch of programmers, throw together a bunch of feature-laden crap and market it ruthlessly until people have no choice but to use my software. Then I'd slowly tighten the screws on my licensing agreements until I RULED THE WORLD!!!!! BWAAAHAAAHAHAAHAAA!!!!!
Or I'd buy a nice little house on the coast in Maine, become a massage therapist, go on tour with my wife (she's a musician), and raise a couple of kids.
Hmm... I might do that anyway if I ever have no choice but to use XP at work.
Granted, Ming is American as can be, but that's kind of the point of the way he cooks. He takes the food of his heritage and blends it with the food of the world he grew up in.
BTW, my wife and I just had dinner at Blue Ginger (Wellesley, MA by the way) a few days ago. We bought Ming's cookbook and asked our waitress if we could meet him. He stopped by our table and chatted with us for a while. He's really a pretty cool guy, doesn't come off as egotistical or anything. When he saw that our copy of the cookbook was "pre-signed", he ran off and got us a fresh one so that he could sign it himself.
I especially like the fact that the recipie for his signature dish at the restaurant is listed prominently in his cookbook. Can you say open source cuisine?
Anyway, great guy, great food. Don't pick on him...
I'd say it's okay to do it the first time it happens. Just don't make it a regular bargaining tool to get raises.
The first time it happens, your employer will likely think, "Hmm... Looks like we're not paying you enough." After that, (s)he will just think you are playing games and you'll start to lose all respect.
By the way, if the other company counters the counter-offer, feel free to let the bidding continue until someone drops out. Be happy that you're wanted! But, as I said, don't make a habit of this or your employer will get sick of it.
If it becomes commonplace for CDs to be shipped with such "copy protection" kruft on them, we will certainly have a black market of people exchanging decoded copies of the CDs.
Anything, yes, anything that can be played through your stereo can be copied. The only difference will be that there will be a conversion to analog and back in the conversion process.
So people will just start remastering their own, non-protected versions of the protected disks. Some people will start exchanging these disks and even start filesharing them on the Internet. I guarantee that this will happen if people cannot read the protected versions on their PC's, DVD players, etc.
Eventually the recording industry will learn the same thing that the software industry learned years ago -- that copy protection is counterproductive.
The banner ad at the top of my browser is making me wonder: will the networks start putting banner ads at the bottom of the screen so that you have no choice to have them there?
Unfortunately, ClearCase is not appropriate for most free software / open source projects because it is not architected well for distributed development teams, not to mention that you need to purchase licenses at several thousand dollars a pop for each concurrent user of the repository.
Easy! Just submit a working binary and claim that it is the solution. When the TA insists to see your source code, protest loudly that (s)he is violating your right to innovate!
Slashdot Mirror
... and then I'm sure they'll cry victim when everybody starts copying the damn things and starts giving them all out to their friends because you can't get a permanent copy of the work.
I'll tell ya, the first thing I would do with such a thing is to back it up. Or better yet, I would just return it after it expires and tell them that it never worked right in the first place. It's not like they could prove otherwise.
While Fat Chuck's is subscription based (you pay a $60 annual fee), CD Baby charges $4 per CD sold. So Fat Chuck's is a better deal if you know you are going to sell more than 15 discs (probably a fair bet).
The other difference I see is that Fat Chuck's only processes the transactions, they don't ship the CDs. CD Baby is a real on-line store and maintains inventory. When they start to run low on stock they send you an email. If they run out they won't sell your disc anymore (but they will issue "rain checks" if they are relatively certain they will be receiving more soon). Derek (CD Baby's president) is a great guy with a lot of music industry experience as well, and he puts out a lot of advice for aspiring artists.
Somehow I think I'd rather just pursue my own online transaction capability rather than go through Fat Chuck's.
Oh yeah, duplication costs came in around $1.25 per disc including jewel box, insert, tray card with UPC code, that stupid sticker they use to seal the jewel box closed, and shrink wrapping. This was for a run of 1000 discs. You'll pay slightly less per disc for a larger run, but not by much.
Of course everybody knows that there is much more involved and it all depends on whether you are with a major label, how many sales you expect, etc.
A project that I've been involved with over the past year is coming in around $20,000 or so after recording everything (11 songs, one of which is a remix), paying the (one) guest musician on the album, mixing everything, mastering, having artwork done, duplication, and initial promotion.
I'm not adding in the cost of putting together the artist's web site since she's my wife and I did it for free. My only cost was to the ISP.
The scary part now is that we're in the hole $20k and need to make it back with sales and performances. We'll just about break even if we sell all of the initial run of 1000 discs we had made. Then we can get more made and start pulling in the profits.
If you were with a major label, you could spend much more on the production of the album and have potentially many more sales, but it is questionable whether or not you would actually get any money out of the deal anyway, even if you did somehow manage to be on of the "hot bands" chosen by the music cartel to be the flavor of the month. More likely, you'll be one of the many bands that the label decides to not actively promote, and then your entire career is screwed since they own your music.
Yea! Isn't the music business fun?
Neverwinter Nights held my interest for about three weeks, as opposed to BG I/II/TOB and IWD, etc.
In spite of (or perhaps because of) all of the work that went into the 3rd edition rules and the graphics engine, the gameplay is far to shallow to be interesting. There was too much attention to eye candy and no attention to the storyline.
I'll grant you that the premise of this particular piece of software was to allow the user community to write and distribute modules, but as of the last time I checked (again, several months ago) there weren't any really great campaigns out there, just a few simple modules that people threw together.
All in all, I was not impressed.
This happened to me a few years back, I think it was 1995. I had an '89 Honda Civic and someone had parked an identical one next to mine in the parking lot. I unlocked the door, got in and started the car. It was only when I started backing up that I looked around and noticed that someone had cleaned my car and the stereo was different!
150 terabytes to manage is not really all that much if you consider the budget that this program will have. Even if it was, the ability to store and process data will increase at a much faster rate than the amount of data generated by telephone conversations, so your argument about it not being entirely feasable from a technical standpoint would only hold water for a few years at most.
Sheesh.
How long before the feds start digitizing all of our telephone conversations and using this technology to google our private conversations?
Yay!
No, but I would expect my doctor to keep accurate medical records on me, and be able to transfer those records to my next doctor in the event that I choose to swich doctors.
I'm tired of paying extra for necessary tools.... so tired... and cold... hold me...
I do this everyday to share my keyboard and mouse between my two Win 2k machines. It's called Win2VNC.
In short, there are costs associated with all kinds of aspects of the project, and there's no way that we will experience $revenue == $profit.
People sign with record labels because they can't afford to do it on their own. We are fortunate enough to be able to afford to do the first album on our own without getting into too much debt, since I have a pretty good nerdly job and my wife also teaches.
The name of the game right now is to:
Middlemen can be really helpful, even downright necessary. They help you get your work out to people that will pay you. The real trick is to maintain control of your art, and these days the costs associated with producing your own album are not as high as the costs of selling out to a big label.
I'm pretty sure that Kristen would be very interested in signing up with an indie label like Ani Difranco's righteous babe records", since it would mean getting a fair deal and getting the music out there easier.
So don't be so closed-minded about who gets the money and how. Just because some businesses are evil, it doesn't follow that all business arrangements are bad. And I certainly hope that you don't boycott or rationalize copyright violations just because you find some minor detail about an artist's distribution choices.
Besides, if you can't afford 75 cents to download a song, you've got worse problems. Maybe you should consider selling your computer to help pay the bills. It's about the same price as a candy bar, for crying out loud!
This gives us a chance to make back some of our investment and to gauge the demand before we go whole hog and wind up with a ton of inventory we may not ever sell.
We've talked a bit about making some of the music available for free. I think we're probably going to post one or two songs from the album on the web and put clips for the rest. Then we'll see how it goes.
On a related note, I recently bought the Rickie Lee Jones album Ghostyhead from GreatBigIsland for $0.75 per song over the web. Not a bad price for me or the artist, especially considering that she gets the whole profit and there are no material costs, etc.
We might do something like this as well.
Yeah, unfortunately we're not quite there yet. We'll have it all together by the end of October.
My wife is about to finish up her debut album in a few weeks. The total costs for recording, mixing, mastering, and artwork look like they're going to be under $15,000 and it sounds very professional.
For duplication, we're looking at about $1.50 per disc for an initial run of 1000.
Her engineer / co-producer is getting a nominal percentage of the profit.
So for under $20,000 an artist can record and release an album independently and keep almost all of the profits.
The real trick is that we don't have the marketing muscle that the big labels have, so it will take a while to get the music out to people who will actually want to buy the album. However, between local gigs, local and college radio stations, and having a web presense, we are optimistic that we can get the ball rolling.
If I had unlimited funds, I'd hire a bunch of programmers, throw together a bunch of feature-laden crap and market it ruthlessly until people have no choice but to use my software. Then I'd slowly tighten the screws on my licensing agreements until I RULED THE WORLD!!!!! BWAAAHAAAHAHAAHAAA!!!!!
Or I'd buy a nice little house on the coast in Maine, become a massage therapist, go on tour with my wife (she's a musician), and raise a couple of kids.
Hmm... I might do that anyway if I ever have no choice but to use XP at work.
I just bought a TDK 40x burner for ~$90, and there was a $40 mail-in rebate. Total cost =~ $50.
So there!
Granted, Ming is American as can be, but that's kind of the point of the way he cooks. He takes the food of his heritage and blends it with the food of the world he grew up in.
BTW, my wife and I just had dinner at Blue Ginger (Wellesley, MA by the way) a few days ago. We bought Ming's cookbook and asked our waitress if we could meet him. He stopped by our table and chatted with us for a while. He's really a pretty cool guy, doesn't come off as egotistical or anything. When he saw that our copy of the cookbook was "pre-signed", he ran off and got us a fresh one so that he could sign it himself.
I especially like the fact that the recipie for his signature dish at the restaurant is listed prominently in his cookbook. Can you say open source cuisine?
Anyway, great guy, great food. Don't pick on him...
I'd say it's okay to do it the first time it happens. Just don't make it a regular bargaining tool to get raises.
The first time it happens, your employer will likely think, "Hmm... Looks like we're not paying you enough." After that, (s)he will just think you are playing games and you'll start to lose all respect.
By the way, if the other company counters the counter-offer, feel free to let the bidding continue until someone drops out. Be happy that you're wanted! But, as I said, don't make a habit of this or your employer will get sick of it.
Oddly, this information comes to me just two days after a lightning storm fried the cable modem I purchased not six months ago.
Looks like I'm going back to the lease plan. At least I can get them to replace the modem when it fries.
If it becomes commonplace for CDs to be shipped with such "copy protection" kruft on them, we will certainly have a black market of people exchanging decoded copies of the CDs.
Anything, yes, anything that can be played through your stereo can be copied. The only difference will be that there will be a conversion to analog and back in the conversion process.
So people will just start remastering their own, non-protected versions of the protected disks. Some people will start exchanging these disks and even start filesharing them on the Internet. I guarantee that this will happen if people cannot read the protected versions on their PC's, DVD players, etc.
Eventually the recording industry will learn the same thing that the software industry learned years ago -- that copy protection is counterproductive.
The banner ad at the top of my browser is making me wonder: will the networks start putting banner ads at the bottom of the screen so that you have no choice to have them there?
Unfortunately, ClearCase is not appropriate for most free software / open source projects because it is not architected well for distributed development teams, not to mention that you need to purchase licenses at several thousand dollars a pop for each concurrent user of the repository.
Easy! Just submit a working binary and claim that it is the solution. When the TA insists to see your source code, protest loudly that (s)he is violating your right to innovate!