 DAconomics |
TrashMan 
Normal Noggin
Registration Date: 05-17-2003
Posts: 6
Location: Reno, NV USA
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Very interesting thread here and many interesting ideas being put forth. Has anyone ever discussed setting up some things for the website to donate money by PayPal or any other "micropayment" methods? I think if someone did that and it was available, people could use that to donate even small amounts to the cause directly. Just an idea.
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05-17-2003 21:06 |
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wes berlin
Official Impasto
Registration Date: 03-18-2002
Posts: 3,397
Location: "but today i feel that too much of the church is merely a thermometer, which measures rather than molds popular opinion" mlk 1965
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good idea.
my big thing with what has been discussed is two fold:
1. it goes back to a discussion i had with theo. i mentioned something similar, to what has been expressed here, and he replied with something like "there is quite a bit of product out there....". at first my (self serving) thought was.."huh, but i want MORE!". then i thought about it and agreed with him.
terry is a artist. if we should do anything...we should support the artist to do what they do. i mean, if you want to help the band, just send the cash to them.
2. i don't know how terry would feel about us putting the cart before the horse. i am sure he'd be gracious but, he is the artist...we are the consumers. i could be wrong here but i just want a way to support the band in a way inwhich they are comfortable. if we were to give a billion dollars to the band and they decided to call it a day...i would be disapointed, but i would also be grateful for the years that i have been enriched and blessed by their work. i love this band, but i don't want them compromised in their art just so i have a new release. my little comments are not directed twords anyone or any statement....i just want us to think about the big picture (for the bands sake).
blessings to all,
-john
__________________
"Exorcising Ghosts"
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05-17-2003 22:55 |
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wes berlin
Official Impasto
Registration Date: 03-18-2002
Posts: 3,397
Location: "but today i feel that too much of the church is merely a thermometer, which measures rather than molds popular opinion" mlk 1965
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promote a concert!
i know, i am trying to do that. and soon!
-john
__________________
"Exorcising Ghosts"
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05-17-2003 23:06 |
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audiori
Administrator
Registration Date: 03-12-2002
Posts: 11,145
Location: Missouri
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Originally posted by Mark
There was one thing posted by audiori in the past three weeks where they said that they had not mailed off orders to people because they had to sell more product before they could have enough money to ship existing orders.
Please forgive me if I did misunderstand that particular post. If I could find it in a search, I'd pull it up.
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No, this hasn't happened. We ran out of money to ship fan club discs - not regular orders. All regular orders charge shipping, so we have the shipping money immediately. Fan Club charges happen once.. then the release is shipped months later - long after the money is gone. Under normal circumstances, it doesn't make a difference because theres always enough in the store account to cover it. Early this year, it wasn't the case - primarily because DA hasn't had a new release since Cstone 02. (other than the Christmas ep which we only had a handful of to sell).
__________________
"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything" -St. Francis of Assisi
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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05-18-2003 00:18 |
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audiori
Administrator
Registration Date: 03-12-2002
Posts: 11,145
Location: Missouri
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__________________
"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything" -St. Francis of Assisi
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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05-18-2003 00:20 |
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dorfsmith
Grand Encephalon
Registration Date: 03-24-2002
Posts: 28,142
Location: Everybody needs a persicom
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The Sound and Spirit music club sells Mr. Buchner's Dream. Does Terry make any money on that or when his stuff is sold in Christian Bookstores? Just curious. Also, is the webstore shipping any faster these days. I'm thinking about placing an order.
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05-18-2003 00:29 |
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audiori
Administrator
Registration Date: 03-12-2002
Posts: 11,145
Location: Missouri
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Just to clarify a few more things....
re: Our poor customer service...
As everyone knows... we've been behind on emails since early this year. Its been posted on the store page since January. We were pretty much always caught up with emails before that, and always answered them very quickly. No one should have ordered anything in the last five months without seeing the note about being behind on things - with a note explaining why we were behind. Notes explaining the problem had also been included with the CDs we were shipping out while we were behind on orders. Everyone should understand what has been going on - at least a little bit.
To put it simply, it is not "normal" for us to be slow at answering email, and no one should be surprised by a slow response at this time.
I answered a ton of email in the days leading up to us going out of town - but there was simply no way I could answer it all. For example, the night before we left - I stayed up until 4am answering email. I then got a couple of hours of sleep before getting up at 6 to hit the road. This is nearly a 24 hour a day job and once you get a little behind, its very difficult to get caught up again. Now that we're home (just got here a few minutes ago), we're going to start answering email again and will hopefully be caught up 100% very soon.
re: slow shipping & slow and/or delayed releases.
We have always been fast about shipping product - up until December. Of course we have gotten behind now and then, like when we go out of town for festivals or something, but the rest of the year we ship within 24 hours. Again, you all know the problems we've had since December... I won't bore you with the details again. But, please don't act like it is "normal".
The international shipping problems are the only exception. That has been a mess for at least a year. Its been awful and we had no way out until recently.. many packages have been taking a month or more to arrive and it seemed like 20% of them were getting lost. I'm happy to say that those problems should be a thing of the past within days . We almost have everything we need to start printing international postage ourselves. We'll make an announcement once its ready to go.
The delays with Prickly Heat had absolutely nothing to do with us. We'll ship it when we have it in our hands. We can't do anything else. That's what we do with all of the releases... including fan club discs - we ship them as soon as we have them (assuming we have the money to ship.) According to JT, we should have had Prickly Heat already... we're ready for it once it arrives.
I'd also like to remind everyone that 8 out of 10 releases since Cstone 02 have been on time - and one of the 2 delayed discs was only a couple of months late. I don't think thats too bad in the music business.
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Can we help? Can one of us help run the web page updates? Can one of us be a moderator of the board so you don't have to read every post? Is there someone locally who can help pack the goods for you? Can one of us reply to emails for you?
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I wish we could turn over the email answering part of the job to someone else, but I really don't know how it would work. We have the shipping/order info here - so whoever was answering the store email would have to write us to ask about the order they needed info on.
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Does that mean I should sit back and not comment?
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Nothing wrong with commenting, but don't act like our recent problems are typical for us. We've never had problems like this before.. if we did have problems like this when we started, we probably would have quit ages ago. The time between late December and early April was a living hell in many, many ways. We've only shared half of it with you.
Also, these stores cannot be compared to Christiandiscs or other stores. For one thing, we were in debt before we started. The early releases were paying off debt that already existed.. the releases that followed paid for other debts that already existed.. and so on and so on. Christiandiscs doesn't have to deal with that. I would also assume that Christiandiscs has a paid staff. We cannot afford a staff - we have two workers that are unpaid most of the year. Its hard to find others willing to work 24 hours a day, invest lots of money, charge up their credit cards - for almost no money. We've tried, but there just aren't a lot of people around looking for that kind of a job. Thats just the tip of the iceberg on how these businesses are different.
A lot of this has been said before, but looking at some of the posts in this thread it appears that some people must have missed it.
Let me end by saying that the future looks very bright - both for the guys and for the store. As we mentioned before, we are also ironing out the details of a new set-up which should pay for new releases in advance. A lot of times in the past, we'd be paying off the last few releases with the sales of the newest release. So then if a problem came up, it would throw everything off and cause delays. That shouldn't happen anymore. That along with the new international shipping set-up, and some other plans that are still in the works, we should be in good shape this year and back on track.
__________________
"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything" -St. Francis of Assisi
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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05-18-2003 00:58 |
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audiori
Administrator
Registration Date: 03-12-2002
Posts: 11,145
Location: Missouri
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| quote: |
Originally posted by dorfsmith
The Sound and Spirit music club sells Mr. Buchner's Dream. Does Terry make any money on that or when his stuff is sold in Christian Bookstores? Just curious. Also, is the webstore shipping any faster these days. I'm thinking about placing an order.
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Yeah, he should get something from S&S and other stores.. probably a very small amount per disc, but it helps.
I haven't checked orders yet since we got home, but sales were picking up through April and early May.. we weren't quite back to normal yet - but close. The main problem we're having is just not having any new titles in stock (other than K&I) since July 02. I think that's the longest we've went without having something new. We should have a remedy for that problem pretty soon though.
__________________
"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything" -St. Francis of Assisi
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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05-18-2003 01:03 |
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dorfsmith
Grand Encephalon
Registration Date: 03-24-2002
Posts: 28,142
Location: Everybody needs a persicom
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Very cool. To be honest the service is better now than it was when everything was mail order. I remember buying something out of Virtigo magazine and waiting at least four months for it. I thought it was gone for sure. Keep up the good work and hopefully all the problems will go away.
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http://www.google.com
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05-18-2003 11:30 |
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Captain Pedantic
Official Impasto
Registration Date: 12-18-2002
Posts: 2,686
Location: "This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence." - Vyvian - The Young Ones
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| quote: |
Originally posted by wes berlin
good idea.
my big thing with what has been discussed is two fold:
1. it goes back to a discussion i had with theo. i mentioned something similar, to what has been expressed here, and he replied with something like "there is quite a bit of product out there....". at first my (self serving) thought was.."huh, but i want MORE!". then i thought about it and agreed with him.
terry is a artist. if we should do anything...we should support the artist to do what they do. i mean, if you want to help the band, just send the cash to them.
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This is different to a cash gift as it will provide more motivation to "give" and also it will give more chance for Terry to have income from people buying more product.
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2. i don't know how terry would feel about us putting the cart before the horse. i am sure he'd be gracious but, he is the artist...we are the consumers. i could be wrong here but i just want a way to support the band in a way inwhich they are comfortable. if we were to give a billion dollars to the band and they decided to call it a day...i would be disapointed, but i would also be grateful for the years that i have been enriched and blessed by their work. i love this band, but i don't want them compromised in their art just so i have a new release. my little comments are not directed twords anyone or any statement....i just want us to think about the big picture (for the bands sake).
blessings to all,
-john
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JT said he liked the idea and Terry will be floored when he hears what we are thinking. I did make the comment to JT that my first question, rather than "How mauch $?" should have been "Is this OK?" JT has not yet responded.
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05-18-2003 21:51 |
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Captain Pedantic
Official Impasto
Registration Date: 12-18-2002
Posts: 2,686
Location: "This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence." - Vyvian - The Young Ones
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| quote: |
Originally posted by jeffrey k.
I had really planned to stay out of this whole discussion, but since I was asked (and my label discussed a bit) I will give my thoughts...to a degree anyway. Take them as you will.
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Jeffrey - sorry that you got dragged into it and your label used as an example. Thank you for your comments about life on your side of the CD cover 
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Anyway...with this DA project you are all talking about. I truly don't feel like it's appropriate for me to hold money for a record I don't intend to put out. In fact it makes little sense to me to have someone outside of JT, the bands lawyer, holding onto the money for this kind of project. He loves the guys, fights for their interests, and undoubtedly would set up an account to hold this money for the record. Enough said about that.
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Thanks for your comments. in- fact the more I think about it then being totally independant would not be as good as being a joint project as more money could be raised. In that case JT can hold all the $'s he wants
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Some things to think about in terms of this project. If you really want to do it, you need to ask some questions. First off, what does $5000 get the investors? 5 songs? 10 songs? What exactly? Are the songs going to come mastered and ready for CD replication? Does $5000 get you "ready for press" CD art? Does $5000 include the costs for replication of the cd's? How many cd's will be initially pressed? What percentage of the profits (per 1000 units pressed) will DA command for the project once it goes on sale? Will you advertise the cd anywhere, and if so, how much of an advertising budget are you going to need to save for? Are you going to wholesale it to outside sellers, or only sell it off the DA site?
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All questions we will need to look at - I am glad we have someone who knows what he is talking about.
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With the costs involved, if mastering, cd art, cd replication, etc, are not included the in the "bare bones" estimate JT gave then you would probably need to figure that you would need to raise more like $7000-$8000 (or more if you intend to advertise the cd) to bring in a complete project for the band....if that is indeed what you all want to do.
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JT's $5000 was for recording, mixing, mastering and manufacturing. It did not seem to include advertising.
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Once you get all these figures together in an estimate, then you have to have to divide the grand total by a per unit selling price...so $15....and then see how many cd's that will need to sell at full price for the band to make their money and all the investors to recoup their costs. Then decide if you think doing this will actually be possible based on the investors finances, how many investors you actually have, the possibility that you might not recoup...the fact that as an investor, given the small fan base of the band, you will probably have to buy the cd you just helped have made in order to help the group recoup...and then with all the facts in front of you, make an educated decision from there.
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I had thought of this already and was waiting for the right time to tell investors that they will likely have to buy their own CD. e.g. if we get 100 investors then that is $1500 lost right there! I would love to put in a small bonus for the investors - but it depend on funds etc
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I think it's totally admirable that people would want to do this. I imagine Terry does too. Just be as educated on the costs and risks involved before committing it. It can be great to do stuff like this, and also really hard.
Just my thoughts,
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And great thoughts they are.... With you and JT and all the other brains on this board we could make this work. And yes it will be hard. Being totally independant is looking less of a good idea.
Now would be a good time to get a feel of people thoughts on this.
Can you email me off list if you would like to go into this project and how many $ you would be willing to invest.
For Example: I am willing to initially start with $100 - but will have to save that up and as time goes by and I can save more I'll put more in.
my email is:
captinpedantic@hotmail.com
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05-18-2003 22:07 |
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Captain Pedantic
Official Impasto
Registration Date: 12-18-2002
Posts: 2,686
Location: "This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence." - Vyvian - The Young Ones
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| quote: |
Originally posted by audiori
Let me end by saying that the future looks very bright - both for the guys and for the store. As we mentioned before, we are also ironing out the details of a new set-up which should pay for new releases in advance.
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Cool! - Should I shut up now then?
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05-18-2003 22:11 |
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Captain Pedantic
Official Impasto
Registration Date: 12-18-2002
Posts: 2,686
Location: "This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence." - Vyvian - The Young Ones
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| quote: |
Originally posted by audiori
The international shipping problems are the only exception. That has been a mess for at least a year. Its been awful and we had no way out until recently.. many packages have been taking a month or more to arrive and it seemed like 20% of them were getting lost. I'm happy to say that those problems should be a thing of the past within days . We almost have everything we need to start printing international postage ourselves. We'll make an announcement once its ready to go.
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WOO HOO
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05-18-2003 22:16 |
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BD
Ceremonial Kernel
Registration Date: 07-16-2002
Posts: 2,294
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| quote: |
Originally posted by Captain Pedantic
Now would be a good time to get a feel of people thoughts on this.
Can you email me off list if you would like to go into this project and how many $ you would be willing to invest.
For Example: I am willing to initially start with $100 - but will have to save that up and as time goes by and I can save more I'll put more in.
my email is:
captinpedantic@hotmail.com
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This has been a good discussion.
I will most likely be in for the $100 (or more) but will have to save as well. I don't think we should try and rush anything. If we all can plan for it, I think it can be done, rather than having to come up with the money next week or something. Maybe a payment schedule could be put in place? Like $20 a month, and then in 6 months everyone would have there share paid. If you can pay more, then you will be done early. Or you can pay more if you want to. Just some late evening thoughts...
I would think we could find 50 people that could do $20 for six months.
Again this all depends on, Terry and the boys. Do they even want to do another album?
(I'm thinking yes, but you never know)
We are talking about a DA album aren't we? (A new SE album would be sweet!
)
BD
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05-18-2003 23:24 |
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Captain Pedantic
Official Impasto
Registration Date: 12-18-2002
Posts: 2,686
Location: "This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence." - Vyvian - The Young Ones
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| quote: |
Originally posted by BD
This has been a good discussion.
I will most likely be in for the $100 (or more) but will have to save as well. I don't think we should try and rush anything. If we all can plan for it, I think it can be done, rather than having to come up with the money next week or something. Maybe a payment schedule could be put in place? Like $20 a month, and then in 6 months everyone would have there share paid. If you can pay more, then you will be done early. Or you can pay more if you want to. Just some late evening thoughts...
I would think we could find 50 people that could do $20 for six months.
Again this all depends on, Terry and the boys. Do they even want to do another album?
(I'm thinking yes, but you never know)
We are talking about a DA album aren't we? (A new SE album would be sweet!
)
BD
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This is what I like about the board and all the brains with ideas we have around here.
Lets all slow down and wait for what Terry and the boys say. And then start saving money
And as for if it's a new DA or SE - well that would be up to the conversation between Terry and Camarillo. - Which hopefully would be better than Tim and Bergers go...
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05-18-2003 23:44 |
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wes berlin
Official Impasto
Registration Date: 03-18-2002
Posts: 3,397
Location: "but today i feel that too much of the church is merely a thermometer, which measures rather than molds popular opinion" mlk 1965
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05-18-2003 23:50 |
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BD
Ceremonial Kernel
Registration Date: 07-16-2002
Posts: 2,294
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| quote: |
Originally posted by Captain Pedantic
And as for if it's a new DA or SE - well that would be up to the conversation between Terry and Camarillo. - Which hopefully would be better than Tim and Bergers go...
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05-18-2003 23:59 |
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audiori
Administrator
Registration Date: 03-12-2002
Posts: 11,145
Location: Missouri
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| quote: |
Originally posted by Captain Pedantic
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Originally posted by audiori
Let me end by saying that the future looks very bright - both for the guys and for the store. As we mentioned before, we are also ironing out the details of a new set-up which should pay for new releases in advance.
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Cool! - Should I shut up now then?
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Not necessarily.. what we're trying to get set up will help us pay for manufacturing of already recorded material in advance... newly recorded material will still cost a bundle (I still have some Buechners-related credit card bills to prove it!).
__________________
"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything" -St. Francis of Assisi
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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05-19-2003 00:09 |
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Joey T.
Tallowy Tamale
Registration Date: 03-13-2002
Posts: 7,777
Location: you can't fire me, 'cuz i quit! - Kurt Cobain....
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| quote: |
Originally posted by BD
I will most likely be in for the $100 (or more) but will have to save as well.
......
We are talking about a DA album aren't we? (A new SE album would be sweet!
)
BD
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too rich for my blood.... but i would be willing to pay 35 again for a signed pre-order like i did with buechner....
)
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05-19-2003 00:12 |
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jeffrey k.
Luteous Llama
Registration Date: 06-28-2002
Posts: 386
Location: downers grove illinois
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"Life handed us a paycheck, we said 'we worked harder than this!'" - Modest Mouse
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05-19-2003 00:41 |
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