Crowd sourced funding

[The Shift]

Just had this from The Second Disc:

http://theseconddisc.com/2014/06/16/when-two-tribes-go-to-pledge-ztt-crowdfunds-deluxe-frankie-goes-to-hollywood-box/

Crowd sourced funding paying for a deluxe Frankie Goes to Hollywood set.

Would this work for Beach Boys packages?

We're all banging on about deluxe sets, the Bedroom Tapes, The Big beat-type copyright recoveries, alternative Love You/15BOs mixes, the canned Brother reissue bonus tracks, Adult/Child… and what's happening with The Carnegie live releases?

Beachboyscentral.com seems to have run aground, there was talk pre-MiC that archival releases were drawing to a close… but could fans themselves stump up enough to fund exactly the kind of releases we want?

If Neil Young can raise more-than-enough to launch a high-fidelity Walkman, and ZTT can raise enough to inflict Frankie on the world again, surely a few well-meaning Hawaiian-shirts can crowd-fund some class Beach Boys sought-afters?

Maybe the Tower could turn over the rights to Linett & Boyd, as arbiters of good taste and business sense, and let us metaphorically run wild in the archive with low overheads and some income for the artists and publishing rights holders?

[Alan Smith]

I think it would work and us fans would stump - who here and on other sites  hasn't/wouldn't shell for unlicenced releases in lieu of legit releases - at some stage.

I guess the tricky bit is attracting industry professionals or niche record company to drive the projects and get BRI approval/trust.

[HeyJude]

While archival Beach Boys releases have limited appeal, I don't think there's a problem necessarily financially with doing something like a download-only "Beach Boys Central" website. My gut feeling has always been that there are issues with getting the group to approve and actively support such releases. This has been touted as especially true of "Brother Era" material from the 70's and 80's.

Presumably, at least on the download side of things, the BB's were going to do "Beach Boys Central" all in-house. Certainly they would hire someone to do the technical side of things. But this wasn't going to be a Capitol/EMI/Universal project distributed online. The BB's apparently own the rights to most of their post-1969 output (certainly all of the live shows they recorded themselves), so they could do this stuff themselves.

I would love for Universal or some label to actually invest money in deluxe multi-disc album sets, or various archival releases. I don't think we're going to get the former anytime soon, as we're going to be getting those SACD/Vinyl reissues on a hunk of the album catalog at some point here.

It's unfortunate nothing came of "Beach Boys Central." I'm sure demand would vary from project to project. Maybe not everyone will want to pay $15 to listen to a soundboard recording of their show at the Cleveland Rib Cook-Off in 1987. But even if they are too sensitive about Brother-era studio material, just some of the better live shows, maybe even starting with the shows excerpted on "Made in California", would be great. Meanwhile, let Universal release multitudes of hits compilations. Other than a short period of time in the early 2000's when Capitol was supposedly going to try to clean up the mess of all those compilations, there has been no slowing of those compilations. So put those out, and then SELL downloads of some live shows. I obviously would love to hear more studio stuff even more.

I'd be happy to jump on a crowdsourced funding sort of thing, if that would help drive home the point to the group that there's a market for it. Hopefully there won't be too many fans that were scared away by that canceled "Pledge Music" debacle.

[petsite]

The beach boys signed over their archives to Capitol to release, BUT they still have the thumbs up or down on WHAT tracks are released. That's why tracks like Stevie didn't make it onto MIC.

[Jim V.]

The beach boys signed over their archives to Capitol to release, BUT they still have the thumbs up or down on WHAT tracks are released. That's why tracks like Stevie didn't make it onto MIC.

Wait, are you saying "Stevie" wasn't included on Made In California because of Brian?

[Andrew G. Doe]

The beach boys signed over their archives to Capitol to release, BUT they still have the thumbs up or down on WHAT tracks are released. That's why tracks like Stevie didn't make it onto MIC.

Wait, are you saying "Stevie" wasn't included on Made In California because of Brian?

Possibly... or Mike, Alan or Carl's estate.

[smilethebeachboysloveyou]

The beach boys signed over their archives to Capitol to release, BUT they still have the thumbs up or down on WHAT tracks are released. That's why tracks like Stevie didn't make it onto MIC.

Wait, are you saying "Stevie" wasn't included on Made In California because of Brian?

Possibly... or Mike, Alan or Carl's estate.

Any guesses as to why one of those parties might not want it released?

[HeyJude]

The beach boys signed over their archives to Capitol to release, BUT they still have the thumbs up or down on WHAT tracks are released. That's why tracks like Stevie didn't make it onto MIC.

This may be partially semantics, but Brother has not “signed over” their material to Capitol. Capitol currently has the license/distribution rights to the 1970-1985 albums (though apparently one of those two-fers is out of print for some reason), and also of course has released other tracks Brother owns on various compilations (“Made in California”, etc.).

But Brother owns all of the material (apart from the odd track here and there that might be tied up with other companies, like soundtrack material, etc.). I’m not even sure Brother has a standing contract/license with Capitol for further archival releases. At best, Capitol would have first rights of refusal. That’s the *only* thing that would keep Brother from putting out post-1969 unreleased material on their own immediately, or shopping it to other labels. Even in that scenario, if Capitol doesn’t want to release it (which they likely wouldn’t want to if we’re talking about multiple discs/multiple releases or archival material), as soon as Capitol says no, Brother would then be able to release it themselves or shop it to another label.

As I understand it, while Capitol owns the band’s 1960’s output for the most part, both released and unreleased tracks, they do require the group’s approval for issuing previously unreleased material. This is why we see countless hits compilations, done without any involvement from the band, while releases of archival (as in previously unreleased) material from the 60’s requires their approval even though Capitol owns those tapes. This is the only type of material that Capitol owns to which the group has to give a thumbs up or thumbs down. 

Long story short, when it comes to post-1969 unreleased studio and live material, I don’t believe Capitol is a roadblock in any way, unless a larger record label not wanting to release your stuff is considered a roadblock. They may be a roadblock to such material being mass-marketed to retailers. But the Beach Boys could be putting this stuff out themselves or shopping it to other labels.

[The Shift]

Long story short, when it comes to post-1969 unreleased studio and live material, I don’t believe Capitol is a roadblock in any way, unless a larger record label not wanting to release your stuff is considered a roadblock. They may be a roadblock to such material being mass-marketed to retailers. But the Beach Boys could be putting this stuff out themselves or shopping it to other labels.

So much of it could come down to time and inclination/motivation…

… which brings us back to crowd-sourcing a release programme with sufficient funds to put someone at the helm with the taste and imagination to do it right. Would Boyd & Linett have the time and enthusiasm?  I would hope they might, given the amount of time they've already spent archiving the archive… but then by the same token I'm sure they, more than most, understand and dread the realities!

[SMiLE Brian]

I think we need a protest outside the tower with Phil on megaphone.

[Awesoman]

Take one look at the way Michael Jackson's catalog has been treated posthumously; we may have to wait for the surviving band members to pass on before we can get our hands on long-awaited unreleased albums such as Table Scraps and The Kitchen Sink. 

[Ron]

I think the crowd source thing is awesome.  Disclaimer: I'm a big time capitalist.  I think a lot of the time the reasons things don't happen and albums don't get packaged and released is because literally the record company is afraid it won't sell and won't risk the money involved.

Crowd Sourcing takes all that away, it's genius, they actually dupe the fans into paying for the whole thing ahead of time, or they don't do crap.  It's a win-win... the fans get what they really want (or they don't buy it) and the record company doesn't have to waste any money.

I looked at the Frankie Goes to Hollywood page and it doesn't say how much they wanted to raise, just that they're at 92% of the goal.  sh*t they might have said they wanted to sell 10 million worth of box sets and DID it, we don't know the numbers.

I think it's a great idea that the fans would really support... and stuff like this is for diehard fans, and would be promoted on message boards like this with no expense from capitol either.  I think they should work up tentative tracklists, and also several different packages so different fans can spend different amounts (I personally dont' buy the big time 200 buck packages, but would be fine with 30 or 40 bucks if it had less stuff in it).

I'm surprised really that they haven't done stuff like this before.  TONS of ways they could do this, they could literally do 30 or 40 different in depth releases on 1 album, or live stuff, or whatever. 

[Rocky Raccoon]

I don't know if the Beach Boys fan base can ever rival that of the legendary Frankie Goes to Hollywood. 

[lee]

In this day and age I  don't see why they wouldn't give this a shot. I'd fully support a Carnegie Hall release, '93 box set show, hawaii '67 shows, MIC 7th disc, etc.

I know most of these donations have different packages available so they could always have a download package, cd package and vinyl package. Thrown in an exclusive shirt, hat or poster too.

[Alan Smith]

I would imagine the Tower/EMI/UME would use standard gated CAPEX & Project methodology - Scoping, Initial Investigation, Feasibility and Design, DIV, Build - Scoping & II are usually covered under OPEX (ie, in-house employees) before the project applies for Capital funding approval to pay for contractors, SMEs, roll-out costs etc; which is when the bean counters start to tippity-tap their Excel business case templates and drill you about ROI versus NPV and things get survivalist.

Perhaps this kind of approach is even stiffling the download only ideas - you either pay in-house to do it, or seek Capital to pay a contractor (ie, Apple) to do it.

Crowd funding is the new way of getting your Capital, IMO; someone still has to slog out the pre-details (and get paid if in the employ of a large corp, or for free if a labour of lurve) with no guarantee the target will be hit and the project will move forward.

It's almost like we need to crowd fund someone to go forth and develop projects with a view to source crowd-funding  

I am all for the crowd funding thing, and niche record companies licensing product for limited release - heck, if I was in the money and the biz, I'd license Sunflower and rent Stephen Desper to sort out an Ultimate release at his leisure.

[Ron]

There would definately still be an investment to develop the concept of the release or album and of course the associated program to count the moneyz...   But you have to admit they'd be cutting down what would take hundreds of thousands of dollars, to what would take thousands of dollars.  With a band as huge as the Beach Boys surely they would make THAT small investment with the hopes of a huge return. 

They could have the same team, too, roll out new ideas every few months.  Once the crowd sourcing supports a project, it would pass on to the appropriate people like Mark Linett and co. to make it happen. 

Of course somebody like Mark would have to minimally involved from the beginning to help develop ideas of what would be possible, but all the nuts and bolts could be handled by grunts until the crowd sourcing fully funded...

Albums that cater to die hard fans like we're talking about could sell, at the same time, to the same fans.  The same people would buy EVERYTHING they put out.  Once one packaged proved itself, they could just release a similar one (maybe focusing on a different album, for instance) and likely get nearly as many preorders. 

[Ron]

Of course the other thing we're not mentioning is maybe there's a reason they're 'hoarding' all the unreleased stuff.

They could believe (and might be right, I don't know) that a slow trickle of releases is more profitable than a deluge of releases.

[The Shift]

Of course the other thing we're not mentioning is maybe there's a reason they're 'hoarding' all the unreleased stuff.

They could believe (and might be right, I don't know) that a slow trickle of releases is more profitable than a deluge of releases.

Trouble is a good proportion of the Beach Boys fan base is like the band - of an age at which a deluge will at least give them chance to buy it before they catch that one last wave. Now or never to my mind…

[feelsflow]

Good point, John.  And best to let us choose just what we want from that deluge, in the format we want.  Many of the tracks I want can only be found on youtube and boots.

The slow trickle has worked as long as it can, at least for some of us.  Years of buying hit packs, with stereo mixes and the like sprinkled in, then to have them turn around and put them on box sets like MIC ten years on should be over.  I bought all of those except 50 Big Ones (thank goodness, since they are all on MIC) and the Singles box (the rare stuff made it to MIC too didn't it?).  While I don't feel cheated (certainly not by the 2012's), I did so wondering just what you said.  If not now, when?  Can we get a set of the long-players with the same sonic balance?  What's bought is bought, what's been done is done.  Give us something fresh.  I will buy it if you can figure out a way to get it to the market.  I hope this idea works.