Just Hook it to My Veins!
Location: František! How's the foot of your turtle?
Posts: 32,743
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30/03/2009:
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THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
ARCHIVE NEWSLETTER #3
Hello SP World,
Hello again from the archives! I hope everybody had a good weekend. I would like to dive into the subscription service idea a bit more. It looks like there are a couple major artists that are also jumping on the subscription service idea for releasing music. I touched on Neil Young and Prince in my recent blog post. I would like to go into further details about the pros and cons of what they're doing and how it will relate to what we're going to do. Neil Young's Archives set isn't marketed as a subscription service, but they do offer additional download content if you buy the $300 Blu-ray edition. The good thing that they're doing is using Blu-ray technology, because of the high-definition picture and sound quality. It is the best quality consumer technology that is available right now. The way they are going to deliver additional content is through a technology called BD Live. That is where you hook up your Blu-ray player to your Internet connection, and the player will download additional content and features and place them in an interactive timeline on your Blu-ray player. This is a very innovative idea, but I had a few questions when I first read about it. The first thing is that they don't list what additional content is available and they don't list a schedule of delivery. They leave that topic open by stating that future shows, songs, and pictures will be delivered through this technology. The next concern I had was with the BD Live solution that they are using. Many people listen to music on their computers, portable music players, and old fashioned CD players. There are also many people who listen to music in their cars. It seems with the Neil Young set, you can only hear that additional content on your Blu-ray player.
Prince also announced a subscription site for the release of his three latest albums: Lotusflow3r, Mplsound, and Elixer. He put up a cryptic website where you had to solve a riddle in order to sign up. The service costs $77 a year and includes a digital download of the three new albums, a t-shirt, information about concert tickets, and various extras on the website. He also sold all three albums exclusively at Target for a price of $11.99 for the bundle. Many fans are crying foul because most of the extras that are on the website were already available through other channels.
When Neil Young announced his Archives box set, they were very detailed about what was included in the set, but they were vague about the extras that will come down the pipeline at a later time. Prince's service on the other hand doesn't go into much detail in what you get for the yearly subscription besides the digital downloads of his newest albums. What we want to do for the SP Archives is look at all of these concerns and create a service that will offer content that is accessible to many different people. If you listen to your music in your car or on your digital portable player, you should be given that option. Also, if you are going to spend the money on our subscription service, you should have a heads up on what to expect. Of course there could be surprises along the way, but you will have an idea on what to expect when you sign up. I just want to reiterate that we are looking at all angles, options, and concerns as we look at a subscription service. As always, I do encourage all of you to voice your thoughts in the SP Archive Project Forum on SP.com and through e-mail at [email protected].
Have a good week!
Frank
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07/04/2009:
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THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
ARCHIVE NEWSLETTER #4
Hello SP World!
I hope all of you are doing well. I want to give all of you your weekly dose from the archives. Quite a few of you have asked me what exactly is in the archives. There are thousands upon thousands of tapes in the archive! Every era of the band has a wealth of material in the archive. If you’re a fan of the early days, there are songs like Death of a Mind (Sun) and Not Worth Asking from live shows in ’89. If you’re a fan of the Mellon Collie era, practically everything was recorded. The same goes with Adore all the way up to Zeitgeist. There is definitely something for everyone. The task of going through and picking individual items to release is a tall order. This is why we’ve been talking to all of you about different avenues on how we are going to release this material.
Say for instance we just put up a batch of 5 shows for sale online. We would have to go through the archives, and pick 5 shows that would be worthy of putting up for sale. That’s not an easy task when you’re looking at 20+ years of shows. Also ******* the mountain of studio and demo material. Then you look at what happens if a show we put up didn’t do so well. That time, money, and effort would have been wasted. You have to remember that a lot of these live shows are unmixed multi-tracks. They would have to be mixed down in the studio in order for us to release it. It would be difficult to break even if one of the shows didn’t sell well. This is where the idea of a subscription service comes in. We wouldn’t have to cherry pick the top 5 shows to put out on an individual basis. We can take things from all different eras, and deliver them all to the subscription members. There could be something like a rehearsal from the Arising tour that would be passed through the subscription service that might not do well as its own individual release. Then we can pick out a few of the favorites that we delivered to the subscription members, and offer those as individual releases to everybody else. By having an upfront subscription service, it would make sure that we have enough capital to cover all of the expenses in mixing and transferring material and the digital and/or physical methods of getting it into your hands.
That’s where we stand right now. We’re still in the brainstorming stage, but we’re leaning towards the subscription service idea more than individually putting up material for sale. If you agree or disagree, or have a better idea, please tell us. I frequent the Archives board on the Trading forum on sp.com and I check my e-mail account at [email protected]. This is all for you. You are all in on the ground floor on helping us design the best way to open up the archives.
Frank
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15/04/2009:
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THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
ARCHIVE NEWSLETTER #5
Hello SP World!
I hope everybody is doing well. I’ve been keeping busy combing through the archives, and setting up figures for the subscription service idea. Now it’s time to take all of our ideas and try to make them work in the real world. I have received a lot of responses about which formats people prefer. I’m looking at both lossless files and regular MP3 files. Lossless files (like FLAC) are audio files that retain all of the original fidelity of the recording. MP3 is where the audio file is compressed, and you lose some of the fidelity in the recording. If you have an iPod or MP3 player, it is probably filled with either MP3 or M4A (Apple’s MP3 standard) files. There are many audiophiles within the niche community that this project is geared to, and I know they prefer lossless files for this material. There is a concern about piracy. We live in a world where people rip and upload material without any regard to what they’re doing. It is so common these days that it has turned the whole music business upside down. If we set up a subscription service, people share it with all of their friends, and it ends up on torrent sites, it would be hard to get additional people to sign up for it. We would need a certain number of subscribers to make this into a long-term project. When we start, it might be the case of the more subscribers we get, the more material we put out. I’m also looking at including an extremely limited tangible item that would make it worthwhile to subscribe if you were a collector.
I mentioned in my latest blog about finding a show from ’89 with "I Am One, Part II" opening the show. There are many shows that are in the archive that are unknown to the fan community. I know sites like SPFC.org do a great job at researching and gathering the tour history of the band. They’re not always correct though. Many of the early dates are missing set lists or venue names. Most of this information comes from bootlegs or show listings in old newspapers. I found another early show from ’89 that we posted the set list for in the Tour section of SP.com. The archives don’t just have a wealth of recordings; it contains a wealth of information too. I bet most of you didn’t know that the band played "Stars Fall In" live in the early days. As we get more into pulling recordings for release, we might find songs that the band worked on for tours that were never played. If you’re interested in this kind of stuff, then the subscription-model would be right up your alley.
If you have any ideas on what would make this worthwhile to you, I would definitely be interested in what you think. If we ******* a tangible item, what would you want it to be? I’m hoping that we can create a nice tight community for the archives, where there would be communication on both sides. It might be something where I’ll use your feedback on what to put out next in the subscription service. That’s the road I hope we’re heading to, but we need your help along the way.
Frank
[email protected]
The information provided in this email newsletter is not to be re-published on any other website and is meant for your personal enjoyment. Please do not copy and paste this onto the web in any form.
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20/04/2009:
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THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
ARCHIVE NEWSLETTER #6
Hello SP World,
This is the 6th newsletter for the Archives mailing list. I've been here for over 6 weeks, reading and talking to fans about how we should put out the archives. During these past few weeks, we've put out the idea of a subscription service where we would charge $300 a year for 200 releases. We received a lot of feedback, and there are three issues that keep coming back. The first one (a major one) is cost. The majority of fans who have contacted me through e-mail and on the message board have flat out said that they can't afford it. The second issue is that there is a line drawn in the sand between people who want only studio outtakes and demos, and the people who want live shows. I on the other hand am the type of fan who wants everything. Back when I collected everything I could get my hands on with U2, I didn't care what it was. I wanted everything. I even have CD's of drum takes from the Achtung Baby sessions. I just thought there was a lot more people who shared the same sentiment. The third issue is that people wanted CD's. They didn't want to spend the money on digital downloads. People want artwork, liner notes, and something they can hold.
We're going to make some changes to the business model. The first thing we're going to do is throw the $300 subscription service model out the window. The next thing we're going to do is set up a fan club for the band. There will be details about this very soon on SP.com. We're going to look at including a limited edition CD of rare tracks as a special gift if you're a fan club member. Next we're going to sell hard copy releases from the archives. This will be CD's (possibly vinyl) with liner notes, and a special package. These releases will be limited to not much higher than the total number of fan club members. If you're a member of the fan club, you will have GUARANTEED access to purchase these releases. If you're not a fan club member, we will sell whatever is left over once the fan club members have purchased their copies. There might be cases where we might not have any left to sell once fan club members purchase theirs. If you want access to this, you'll want to be a fan club member. The reasoning for tying in the archival releases to the fan club is to get a good perspective on how many copies to print, and what material we'll make available. We know that there are going to be people out there that won't care about the fan club and will rip and torrent this material. I can say that only fan club members will be the ones that will work with us to figure out what to release next, and will be an integral part of documenting the band through picture and sound. If you want to be part of the small community that will have a special relationship with the band, the fan club is the way to go.
I have another piece of good news. We're going to start putting releases out as soon as possible! We're going to start with the early days of the band. Billy talked about the lawsuit with EMI a couple weeks ago. Nothing has changed with the lawsuit; we're still working that out. We're not going to wait on that to start releasing material. That is why we're starting with the early days of the band. This will ******* rare shows that nobody knows about, demos, and rehearsals. We even have Billy's demos from 1985, after he graduated high school. By doing this under the fan club system, you can buy whatever you want. If we put out a show an '88 show from Iowa, it might sound pretty raw and it might not appeal to everybody. The people that are interested in it can buy it if they want, and it would be an extremely limited edition release. We'll rate shows and put up information on the quality, so you can be sure that you aren't going to buy something you'll be unhappy with. I can assure you that whatever we put out will be the best quality that exists, and will be the definitive version. If we put out a show that already exists in bootleg form, ours will be better quality. If you already have a bootleg copy of a show or demo that we release, think of our version as an upgrade. I can't say an exact date on when we'll start to release stuff, but we're looking at the first releases to come out in fall of this year.
Frank
[email protected]
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Smashing Pumpkins subscription newsletter - Message from Billy Corgan
22/04/2009:
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MESSAGE FROM BILLY REGARDING
THE SUBSCRIPTION MODEL
On Monday, SmashingPumpkins.com announced that an online 12-week subscription service will be made available in the near future, that is, if demand is ample for the project. Today Billy has sent a message to those than have shown interest by signing up for updates via an email newsletter.
From Billy:
Hello, thank you for signing up for these updates. Because of the nature of today's post, and how the different ideas interact, I will be touching on both proposed business models; the archive fan-club and the new 'window' into the album songwriting sessions. Around 6,000 of you have shown interest in these updates, so because I am assuming you are on the dedicated side already, I will try to get to the center of the issues without a whole lot of contextual explanation.
Our first concept that we threw out for the archives (300$ for 200 songs) was met by a whole lot of complaining. Because we desire a harmonious relationship with those who would most want a completest approach to the bands history, we have revised this to a 40$ (proposed) fan-club sign up and this has been met much more positively. I think this demonstrates a willingness to work together to find a balance that will sustain over the next decade plus. The average mainstream fan doesn't give two hoots about that gig in Iowa in 1989, so we aren't even going to bother them with this kind of stuff, hence creating the relationships with you. We have enough on our hands to get them (the mainstream) to listen to newly recorded work. As you can see, everyone in the record biz these days is having the same problem, so it not particular to SP.
With that in mind, I have additionally proposed something quite unique as far as a 'window' into my songwriting processes with the idea of 12 weeks of mini-TV (about 25+ minutes a week broken into 5 updates OR 5+ hours of content). This would dwarf the kind of access that was given for example in the 'if all goes wrong' dvd, where one could see me briefly working out some idea. Having seen some of the raw footage from what Kristin shot at that time, there were moments that played out over 5 or 7 minutes that were quite interesting on their own but were definitely too long for a movie that had to hold a plot narrative. One of my favourite moments not shown in the film was the morning I wrote the riff for 'Sunkissed'. You see me playing some bs blues and I stop, take a deep breath, and then the idea comes out fully intact in one crystalline moment. Even I was surprised, and for the next few minutes you see the song just pour out of me. I realize for most this is not interesting at all, but this is interesting for some and that is the point of a project this is an optional, pay-if-you-want to see it deal. You would get to participate in moments essentially as they unfold. Here however is where it indeed does all go wrong...
'Take a walk with me
Tell me what you see
Take a walk with me tonight"
-lyric from an unreleased song I wrote last year
Last night I made the mistake of reading some of the feedback to this proposed idea. To say I was dismayed at some of the comments would be an understatement. The reaction was 50/50 mixed and very negative on the one side. I was so upset that I wrote a very long post in reaction, mocking the arguments made and canceling it altogether. Reading how something as open-hearted as inviting you into my inner-world of creativity turns into a sick, capitalistic manipulation is really disappointing to me personally. I speak not as the head of a multi-million dollar corporation, but as someone who lives and breathes being a musician. (I unfortunately made the vain mistake of asking for 3 dollars and 50 cents a week). The 40$ figure as a 'all in' was arrived at because I wanted to insure that those that were interested were going to take the whole ride for the all 12 weeks. I had expressed that this was not a profit driven business model, but many questioned the truth in that and went on to turn into personal attacks seeing it as yet another example of me taking advantage of them. Judging by this kind of feedback I would say this idea is dead on arrival. Which leaves me with 2 choices; cancel or revise.
My heart says to cancel, because the whole thing isn't worth the hassle for the few thousand that would show up and faithfully engage in something new and exciting and trust me on the expenses involved to deliver such a project to them. The willful part of me says I know this is a really cool idea because it will force a new kind of dialogue between artist and listener at a much earlier stage in the process.
In my last extensive post, I promised love and light moving forward. But I also promised reality as we struggle to find what is going to work business-wise in the years ahead. The Smashing Pumpkins 'business' is alive and well (thank you), or I wouldn't have just completed 165 date tour a few months back. Its laughable for people to think that this is some kind of way to stuff my pockets. One 90 minute concert alone and the profits from that completely blow such stupidity out of the water.
I have found thru the years that when I must become a salesman that this in turn reflects poorly on me as an artist. If I was a good salesman, there would be more than 6,000 people reading this newsletter, and I would be doing everything in my power to tell you why this a good idea and not a bad one.
Right now it's a bad idea because this proposal has some (not all) accusing me of all sorts of lame things that have little to do with the spirit of the music or the business that surrounds it. I don't need your money, for I am going to film these sessions anyway. The difference here was if we had an audience and a budget to work with, well then we could make it a whole lot of fun for everyone who wants to 'be there' and wants to see-here how the magic gets made. Great attempts would also be made to provide additional content to justify your participation. It would come with the responsibility on us to get the technical end right on a daily basis, hence the extra budget necessities to be able to turn footage around quickly.
Pandering to people for $ has never been my trip. I just don't care that much. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna lay it all out there to you as a community. You decide what you want to do, because I already know what I'm going to do. Its your call. I figure to do this right its about 2,000$ a day, or 10,000$ a week which adds up to 120,000$. Boring isn't it?
3000 subscribers at 40$=120,000$
6000 subscribers at 20$=120,000$
12,000 subscriber at 10$=120,000$
So you see, it is not a profit driven model. It is a content creation model.
If you as a community can self organize and 6000 people want to do this, then its 20$ (for the whole 12 weeks). I'd much rather stuff 20$ in my pockets from 6000 people than 3000! (That's a joke by the way for those of you who lack the irony gene)
It ain't gonna happen for 40$ obviously because the negative vibe in the air just makes it all so icky. And I don't do icky anymore. If 20$ is TOO much for 12 weeks of unique, daily content and the trust isn't there for me to deliver it, then I might as well just focus on the mainstream fan who I know already doesn't give care for 'the art' and get back to the *yawn* grunge...
So that's it. We need 6,000 people who are adventurous enough to take this journey at 20$ or I'll just put it all in a can somewhere and move on. Your feedback is helpful and I thank you.
BC
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29/04/2009:
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THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
ARCHIVE NEWSLETTER #7
Hello SP World!
It's almost summertime here in Chicago! I want to give you your weekly update from the archives. I'm very glad to see that there is a lot of excitement in the air since I announced that we are going to a fan club model instead of a $300 subscription service. We're looking at all the different aspects at what the 'fan club' will entail. We don't just want it to be like every other band's fan clubs. This is going to be very special and unique. We also want the fan club and archive releases to be a great value too. Value is important these days. I just saw that Prince announced a new box set. The box set contains a purple iPod Touch loaded with a 40-minute movie and 15 audio tracks from his 21 Nights concerts. The price is $2,100. They're offering a limited edition iPod as the main draw of the package. We're going to focus on content. We are looking to try to give you the best value possible, versus what else is out there. This is a journey that we are going on with all of you. This isn't about the music business; this is about the band having a relationship with the hardcore fans.
I've been getting a lot of comments from fans that are interested in digital releases for the archives. We are going to put out releases in limited edition physical forms, but we are also exploring digital options too. If we release a show in MP3 form, we may only put up the best tracks from that show. In that scenario, if you want the complete show, you can buy the physical release. The sales trends on digital MP3 releases show that people pick and choose the tracks they want to listen to. There are a lot more people who buy individual tracks of an album or a show, than the people who buy the complete MP3 version of a release. Another reason why we might do this is that it would give the fans who buy the physical releases a bonus by having the complete show. We are also exploring the option to have a compilation of these tracks available to other music stores like iTunes. This would also give you the ultimate choice on what you want to buy. Let's say we put out a show from '89, and you were only interested in hearing an early version of Rhinoceros. That track could be available in MP3 format, and you can purchase that track instead of buying the whole show. This would also save the shipping costs for international fans who only want certain tracks. What are your thoughts on this?
We are in the process of compiling band photos for these archival releases. When we put up an announcement last year asking for photos and materials from the Gish era, we didn't get too many responses. We are still interested in what you have from the Gish era, 1988-1992. If you have photos of the band, please contact me. We are interested in any negatives that you may have. We will even pay you $500 if we use it! My e-mail is at the bottom of the page. There is a lot of work going into the fan club and the archival releases. You're going to see unreleased pictures and footage from the very beginning of the band.
I want to touch on the eBay idea that I mentioned in the blog last week. We are in the process of clearing out some of the old materials from the band. There is going to be a wide variety of material available for sale. The idea is to provide fans a chance to get authentic SP memorabilia. Taking a quick glance on eBay, there are quite a few fake autographs, passes, and other merchandise. There will be very unique items too, like furniture from the old Pumpkinland. I'll keep you all updated in our progress on that. Keep your comments rolling in, and I'm especially interested in working out a nice balance regarding the topic of digital releases.
Frank
[email protected]
The information provided in this email newsletter is not to be re-published on any other website and is meant for your personal enjoyment. Please do not copy and paste this onto the web in any form.
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