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Posted: |
Jul 12, 2014 - 10:06 PM
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By: |
djintrepid
(Member)
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I finally got around to sending this to Varese Sarabande. It has been on my mind for more than a few years. I don't feel I'm out of place. I'm not demanding anything. I just want the long established label to realize how behind the times it has become.
Seriously? You offer no music samples, except for select titles. In this day and age, you are in the dark. I have admired Varese Sarabande since the 80's for the effort to keep soundtracks alive, relevant and enjoyable, but if you can't even take the time and effort to update your website, and offer those who would purchase your titles something to listen to, you are limiting your chances for selling titles. Don't assume we have all seen the film, heard of it, have access to it, or have had interest in watching it. The music may be a part of the film, but it is also a separate entity in which people listen to, apart from the film. I can hear selected samples on the internet of pretty much any album for sale, and have been for many, many years. Where have you been that you don't see such practice as a basic form of online salesmanship? Would you sell a movie without a trailer? How about a product without a picture for anyone to see, just your words to describe it? Would you try to sell a product by covering what you sell with a blanket, hoping your words are enough to seal the deal? I don't know about you, but it's pretty fucking difficult to know for sure what the music is like from looking at the cover art and the titles of the tracks you post. There are smaller entities than you, that are doing far more than you, that have been around a lot less time than you, and making great strides at it.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely appreciate the work you all put into titles you offer, but you have headlining titles on your website that are obscure, and on top of that, no potential buyer can listen to anything from it. They can only look at cover art and track titles, neither of which have anything to do with the music, no matter how pretty the pictures are or how eloquent the words of the liner notes. You sell music. So let the consumer hear it.
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Posted: |
Jul 13, 2014 - 12:11 AM
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By: |
Turbo
(Member)
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I finally got around to sending this to Varese Sarabande. It has been on my mind for more than a few years. I don't feel I'm out of place. I'm not demanding anything. I just want the long established label to realize how behind the times it has become.
I will admit, I don't post here much. However, I have not seen any company respond positively to a letter similar to the one that was posted. Often they discount it because it appears mostly as criticism. I rewrote your letter hoping to include the basic content, but changing the tone overall. This still does not mean that Varese will automatically read it and add music samples. They may pay a bit more attention, however.
I have admired Varese Sarabande since the 80's for the effort to keep soundtracks alive, relevant and enjoyable. However there is one difficulty I have encountered when looking at a new album on your website. When a title is released, I look forward to hearing the samples to see if it is a score I might enjoy. Unfortunately, many of the titles on your site have nothing more than cover art and a track list. I have rarely made purchases in this regard unless it is the score from a movie with which I am very familiar. If there were samples of the music, I would hear it and there would be a much better chance of me purchasing the album without having seen the film. In todays world, one can often go to youtube or do an internet search to hear certain tracks and in certain cases the entire album. For other sites it has become standard practice so have at least thirty or ninety second samples. I cannot speak for their sales, but it seems as a company you may be doing yourself a disservice by not posting samples because as a result you may be losing sales.
I absolutely appreciate the work you all put into titles you offer, but for new releases are often obscure and there is no frame of reference, or samples for one to hear, for one to decide whether or not they appreciate the music. I would hope that you would consider putting up samples in the future not only for myself but for any customer that may ultimately purchase an album solely based on the samples that are posted. After all, how can a person decide whether or not they like music without hearing it? Thank you for your quality work and I hope you take this under consideration.
To respond to the question in the subject, you are not wrong to feel this way. I have been in a similar position and would have liked samples. Fortunately, youtube has been a saving grace in those instances.
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Reality check:
VARESE isn't a large company, they only have so much manpower and time in the day to do so much.
The Original owner of VARESE didn't put a priority on these features and the current version was put together very quickly and has served them quite well for the last few years.
I'm told that VARESE is working on a new site that will make it easier to upload sound clips and allow them to do more things in terms of special offers and alike...
But everything takes more time then you wish it would on these sorts of projects.
Also, given how large their catalog is, it's going to take a lot of time to make clips for older titles, the priority will be clips for new projects.
So before take this into account before you start the bitching and moaning.
Ford A. Thaxton
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And as Ford has said in his always delightful tone, no doubt they're working on a new site, which probably cost them a couple of thousands of dollars.
My "Delight Tone' is just the truth of the matter, fanboys such as yourself have trouble with it, that's your problem.
The issue isn't $$$ but TIME and MANPOWER to get the thing done the way it needs to be done.
With a staff that is already overloaded, it's not gong to happen overnight, but I suspect it will sooner then later.
Ford A. Thaxton
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To Whom It May Concern,
May I gently suggest that there's no need for any of us to be uncivil or ungracious to anybody, whether its a faceless record company or an individual on this Board -- and it obviously puts people on the defensive, and hinders getting our potentially helpful messages across.
Can't we all just get along?
PNJ
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Posted: |
Jul 13, 2014 - 6:42 AM
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By: |
Juergen
(Member)
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Hi all,
first post as a member - hug or clubb 
Nothing wrong feeling like this. I would go even so far to bitch and moan about getting lossless samples on the web sites of our favorite soundtrack dealers, just making them shorter for a various set of reasons.
When in doubt, I just care for the music - available for the first time or again with significant improvements in sound. Fancy booklets and packaging are not really a part of my decision to buy something new. So, tired of purchasing re-releases with "improved" sound but in the end they were made just loud and louder, enough to kill your granny? Well, I would love to save my granny and protect my wallet.
Ford, IMHO, has a point too. To stuff a huge back catalogue like Varese's with samples (and in this very respect, they ARE a big company, out for decades now) requires people not working for food but rather people begging for food prior to start working on this
As for sound samples in general, a more philosophical question for the more elderly (40+...), including me : how did we survive so long without them?
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Complaining about faults in service and making suggestions is fine.
BUT, that opening post. Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Look, there's an art to writing criticism and suggestion in such a way it gets heard and taken on board—and that was just completely ignorant of it. You haven't got a clue how to complain. If you want to get screwed up and chucked in the bin, then that's the way to go.
Now, BEFORE YOU FLAME ME for being unpleasant, have a think about what I just did and why. Yep, I just mirrored your own style so you can experience what it feels like to receive criticism in that style and maybe that'll give you some insight as to whether that's likely to work or whether something else would work better.
Cheers
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Yes, Varese Sarabande is behind the times, though they have troubled themselves to put straight 44.1khz/16-bit transfers of some of their catalogue onto HDtracks.com, so cut them a little slack.
For those too young or addled to remember, shortly after the debut of the CD format in the USA, Varese was one of the first small labels to get their recent catalogue into the record bins. Remember who put LIFEFORCE, ENEMY MINE, and their newly recorded suites from Bill Conti's NORTH AND SOUTH/THE RIGHT STUFF into the bins when the major soundtrack release on CD from that time was BEVERLY HILLS COP.
So, yes, they need to up their game, but remember, Varese was at one time all we film score aficionados had.
And remember some of the great re-recordings they've done and the SPARTACUS box set.
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Greetings!
We really appreciate the feedback and like Ford said, yes we are working are darndest at getting more music up, especially on SPOTIFY, like Mr. Popular mentioned. As Ford said, this takes a lot of time and as many of you know, Varèse just moved so are getting settled into our new office. These aren't excuses of course, but facts. We are actively getting more and more music up on SPOTIFY as we can. Prior to working at Varèse I had no idea what SPOTIFY was, now after doing some research, it's a great place to check out a lot of music.
Varèse's catalogue is quite large so uploading to SPOTIFIY, filling in all the many metadata fields for each title, going through the approval process is quite time consuming.
ALL of these soundtrack labels are smaller than you might think. Most operate with 10 employees or a lot less. They have to to stay afloat.
I'm sure most of the other great labels besides Varèse wish they could hire teams of people to do some of this time consuming stuff, but it's just not feasible.
Hope this helps you a little bit. We are trying though and appreciate the feedback whether critical or not, it DOES help us!
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