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New Woody Herman Mosaic


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5 hours ago, J.A.W. said:

I think this message is meant for those who are on the fence, not those who have already pre-ordered the set, even though everyone on their mailing list got the message.

Yes, but what about those of us who would prefer to buy it through Jazz Messengers to avoid a customs sting -- I wonder if Mosaic has considered those potential sales.

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I've been a big fan of Mosaic records for  long time.  I understand that they are in dire straits and that the market for giant reissue sets appealing to a pretty narrow audience may have dried up.  I also know that while their intentions have been good over the years, their business model has not kept pace with what's going on in recorded music which has contributed to their problem. 

So I got the email like everyone else who has responded on this thread and I immediately understood what they were doing and why.  Yes, the effort is somewhat clumsy, but in no way do I feel like I've got a gun to my head, like this is a scam or ransom note.  If you don't want the music - don't preorder.  Simple as that.

Maybe I'm just too easy to please and/or grateful for all of the great music Mosaic has exposed me to over the years to get my shorts in a knot over their effort to determine if the set is worth releasing.  I just don't think they deserve the over-reaction

I want it - so I preordered it.   Hope it gets released

 

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I missed the first email - I knew about it but was just going to wait for the regular release. Glad I checked in here - I've now pre-ordered!

I think this is a step in the right direction. Deluxe jazz box sets of CDs are becoming a super-niche market. A kickstarter-like approach makes the most sense moving forward. They could even have some kind of vote as to which set to do next to gauge demand. I also think they should take the money upfront and use it to fund the project. Much easier to spend X months making a set when you have the funding already secured.

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4 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

I suggested this a year ago but I can't see Mosaic ever getting their shit together to make this kind of thing happen. So what are they going to do, spend month after month suggesting potential sets that don't get off the ground until they go bankrupt?

They could do a limited options question. Suggesting lets say 5 sets and see wich one gets the most votes or preorders.

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11 hours ago, crisp said:

Yes, but what about those of us who would prefer to buy it through Jazz Messengers to avoid a customs sting -- I wonder if Mosaic has considered those potential sales.

 

11 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

I'd bet they factor in those sales.

I asked Jazz Messengers about this when the final run of the Bee Hive set was pre-order-only a while ago, and they told me they wouldn't pre-order Mosaic sets, so chances are they won't be getting any Mosaics anymore if those are indeed pre-order-only from now on.

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1 hour ago, J.A.W. said:

 

I asked Jazz Messengers about this when the final run of the Bee Hive set was pre-order-only a while ago, and they told me they wouldn't pre-order Mosaic sets, so chances are they won't be getting any Mosaics anymore if those are indeed pre-order-only from now on.

Is it really so that they will only press the pre-ordered quantity?

 

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18 hours ago, sonnyhill said:

Agreed.  If Mosaic is taking a "Kickstarter" approach, it should embrace all aspects.  Including how many "backers" a project attracted so far, the goal, and how much time left until the project needs to meet its goal. 

I am not that much into Woody Herman (and I have spent more than a few bucks at Mosaic this year), but if it is close, I would probably pre-order it just to get it in production. 

I agree with this sentiment. I am not a Herman fan either but I would not be opposed to ordering this if they were close and needed a few orders to push them over the top.

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7 hours ago, J.A.W. said:

 

I asked Jazz Messengers about this when the final run of the Bee Hive set was pre-order-only a while ago, and they told me they wouldn't pre-order Mosaic sets, so chances are they won't be getting any Mosaics anymore if those are indeed pre-order-only from now on.

Thanks for this. I didn't interpret Mosaic's emails as suggesting this would only be pressed for those who preorder, but maybe that's what it means.

I want this set, so maybe I should preorder it if that's the only way I'll get it..?

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8 minutes ago, Brad said:

I received an email from Scott saying they’re getting closer. However, he wouldn’t divulge the shortfall, which doesn’t make sense to me. 

No, that doesn't make sense to me, and further enforces my perception of this resembling a ransom note. Intentional or not, if you need a number, give a number. Otherwise it's like trying to have somebody else's cake while you're eating yours, or whatever that expression is, I'm a pie guy myself, so don't ask me.

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Agreed. Fundraising goal numbers aren’t something you hide. If nothing else they are motivation. 

I think the only scenario where you suppress it is when you’re so far from the finish line you’d simply rather hide it, then put some kind of bullshit PR spin on it later when you have to shitcan the entire thing. 

Edited by Scott Dolan
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The only thing I can liken it to is a reserve auction where you don’t know the seller’s figure for selling an item so you keep bidding it up until you hit the number.  Here, they seem to want to keep it secret so they get more people to “subscribe” to the release. Perhaps if people knew the number and whether Mosaic had reached it, they’d stop ordering. 

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1 hour ago, Brad said:

The only thing I can liken it to is a reserve auction where you don’t know the seller’s figure for selling an item so you keep bidding it up until you hit the number.  Here, they seem to want to keep it secret so they get more people to “subscribe” to the release. Perhaps if people knew the number and whether Mosaic had reached it, they’d stop ordering. 

Unfortunately, that doesn't put them in any better light...

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No it doesn't. Soliciting for a production run is not anything like an auction of a pre-existing item, even one with a reserve. If the reserve is not met, odds are good the item goes up for re-auction at some point. But past that, auctions are for items that already exist, period.

Maybe there's some parallel in the world of financial products, but not one I can think of, not really.

39 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

At any rate, it seems like they are about to lose a bit of goodwill here. Wonder if this is worth it ...

Yes, losing goodwill, but still, if this was something I really wanted, I'd go all Madame Defarge and stay silent while also taking notes....

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Speaking only for myself, no good will lost here. As Jim said, put something out there that I absolutely cannot live without, and hey, take my money, NOW! 

I think the way they are going about this current set/maybe not set, is rather sad. But it also isn’t grievous enough that I’d simply cut bait on them. They’re flailing in a marketplace that has seemingly passed them by, but that doesn’t diminish their mission statement. Nor my enthusiasm to support it, if the product is to my liking. 

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3 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

I wonder how Bear Family can succeed selling expensive boxed sets of esoteric music where Mosaic is failing. Is it better sales and marketing? A bigger market? I can't imagine there are too many people interested in buying the complete Mercury recordings of Buddy and Ella Johnson 1953-1964.

Yes, esoteric sometimes is the word. The Buddy Johnson box is a case in point. These Mercury recordings can get repetitive if listened to in larger batches. (A good chunk of them was reissued on LP on Official and they were around for a while so there was a chance for many to listen in or cover their needs). You really have to be a dedicated completist to grab this. For another example, the country music clientele may be a larger one than the jazz faction but people all falling over themselves wanting to grab a 5-CD box set of Tommy Collins' works? (and so on ...) But let's see how they continue in the longer run now that Richard Weize has bowed out.

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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3 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

No, Bear Family has always licensed everything legitimately. At least that's what I've always heard; I have no firsthand knowledge. ^_^

That's it. And that's why they have milked labels to the very last drop that on the face of it are not prime targets for cult reissue fetichists, e.g. Mercury. And apparently they did not license the EmArcy branch of it, or else they would have been able to add a lot to their jazz reissue roster.

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I always assumed that a major part of Bear Family’s fan base were the C&W/Wild West recreation fan base in Germany, where I have heard that it is a big thing.

I don’t think Mosaic has been helped over here by their product being effectively invisible in the shops, almost an underground, word of mouth movement amongst those in the know (exception - Mosaic Select in some of the major outlets). In fact I don’t recall ever seeing one if their sets until the mid 1990s and that was in an antique store.

They have got more and more expensive to import - a combination of high postal charges, high import taxes, handling fees and unfavourable exchange rates.

 

Edited by sidewinder
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1 hour ago, sidewinder said:

I always assumed that a major part of Bear Family’s fan base were the C&W/Wild West recreation fan base in Germany, where I have heard that it is a big thing.

 

50s and 60s country music will provide the background to only a small part of that Civil War "reenactment" fan scene (that has abated pretty much by now AFAIK). in the early days they did a fair bit of "contemporary" C&W artists playing in a more traditional style but this was more of a sideline to their R'n'R/rockabilly reissues that have alwawys made up the bulk of their stuff. Still they have never been cheap and their box sets above all rely on extremely high standards (to the extent that they often really are too much of a good thing - are there that many completists for some of these country artists?). The books that go with their box sets really are second to none (yes, even Mosaic pales in comparison) and the only others that I am aware of that come close in that respect come from a label that largely relies on Public Domain material for the music.

@Captain Howdy:

Their "jazz roster" isn't small but choice and VERY much "special interest" stuff even by jazz collectors' standards.

https://www.bear-family.de/bear-family/deutsche-serien/jazz-in-deutschland/

They cannot have been big sellers yet BF hangs on to these items (I bought that Jazz Festival box set some 25 years ago - before I even had a CD player - and several others in the 90s and they are still listed today, even though some are temporarily OOP it seems). 

Others of their items such as their Julia Lee and Louis Jordan sets (offsprings from their deals with the labels they licensed for reissue) straddle the fence of jazz too.

And then they have special items that are a "niche within the jazz niche" such as this one that I only became aware of now when I checked their site for this post:

https://www.bear-family.de/various-history-cotton-club-2-cd.html

Of course they can probably afford to cross-subsidize such items (which is a huge advantage compared to Mosaic) but it takes real dedication to put out something like that in the first place.

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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27 minutes ago, Captain Howdy said:

I'd consider those R&B in as much as I think they were intended for an R&B market, not a jazz market. That Louis Jordan box is a real exemplar: I wish every significant artist could get the same comprehensive treatment. 

I sympathize with your approach (In fact I have filed my Louis Jordan - and Buddy Johnson - records in my blues and R&B section, not in the jazz section)  but I am afraid that in part you are wrong. While his Mercury sides leaned towards R&B, the Decca output of his prime years definitely was part of the happenings in jazz. Lumping this in with an "R&B" market (before there was one as such) just because it was "popular" is one of those often-seen pigeonholing efforts that does not do the reality of jazz of the late 30s to early 50s justice. Same with a good deal of what Julia Lee did. You would not want to lump in Benny Goodman of the Carnegie Hall period with U.S "pop" music either just because was "popular", right? ^_^ 

Beyond that comparison, if you look closer it is rather difficult to establish accurate stylistic boundaries and a good deal of R&B WAS part of post-1945 jazz in the way it MATTERED to the African-American audience.

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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9 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

I wonder how Bear Family can succeed selling expensive boxed sets of esoteric music where Mosaic is failing. Is it better sales and marketing? A bigger market? I can't imagine there are too many people interested in buying the complete Mercury recordings of Buddy and Ella Johnson 1953-1964.

They're losing money on these sets. But the more popular stuff and their wide range mail order sale get them funds for them. Many sets issued long ago are still available, like the Louis Jordan box, so their licensing policy must be different.

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