John L

Thanks. That is very interesting. I guess that I assumed wrong about the nature of the contracts that emusic signs with labels and artists. So labels and artists can actually monitor the number of downloads purchased through emusic? Interesting. You know, if the message from emusic had been that they can no longer make ends meet without raising their prices, I would have had a very different reaction, and wouldn't have canceled my membership. But the message was different: we are going to expand, pay out big money to the corporate giants like Sony and pass the costs on to you. No thanks to the latter.

Thanks, but I am still not clear on this. Why hasn't the label hasn't seen a dime from emusic if a licensing fee was paid? My question about the licensing fee refers to the nature of the contract. If the contract reads that emusic is paying a fixed fee to a label for the right to sell downloads for XX amount of time, then the business model that you refer to is not clear. Since emusic would not incur any cost per download in this case, it would not make sense to rationalize licensing frees in per download terms. emusic sells memberships (downloads) on the basis of what it makes available. But the optimal (profit-maximizing) price that it should charge for downloads is independent of licensing fees that it pays. One possibility is that some major companies like Sony try to protect their CD markets by stipulating a minimum price for downloads in licensing contracts. In that case, emusic may have had to choose either to decline major labels or raise its prices.

Could you please explain this a bit further? Do companies offering dowloads actually incur costs per download? I assumed that they simply pay a fee for the right to sell particular MP3s for a certain amount of time. Under that model, the marginal cost to emusic of downloads would be zero. I would also not expect that emusic would pay the artists directly unless the artist owned the copyright to the music. The artists should receive compensation from the company that sells the rights to emusic. But maybe they don't. That is an interesting question indeed. Do companies have an incentive to sell MP3s as opposed to CDs because of some loophole that allows them not to compensate the artists?

Yea, time to move on for me as well. emusic was nice in avoiding costly major pop artists on major labels and passing some of the savings on to us. Now, it seems that they have made a decision to go the Amazon-iTunes route and pass the bill to us. No thanks. When you factor in the sometimes low and unpredictable byt rate of their MP3s and the plan that forces you to buy music every month under a use-it-or-lose-it clause, Amazon and iTunes now seem much more attractive to me.

I received the ember Birdland 4-disc box that you have the other day (wonderful!) and did notice that it's subtitled "Vol. 1." Rest assured it contains all of the material on the two separate 2-disc Birdlands that are titled "Vol. 1" and "Vol. 2." Don't know about the additional ember release you refer to with more Birdland material and Cafe Society. There was also a 4-disc Birdland set on Charly that was not identical to the Ember releases.

This probably means that there will be no new reissue of KOB to buy in 2009. The will break my streak of 6 straight years of buying a new KOB.

Picked up the above mentioned title, and this: "Jay McShann -- Blues from Kansas City" That's the one. Bird only solos on a few tracks, but the solos are amazing, and I've always liked Walter Brown's blues singing. greg mo The is much more great Bird with McShann on the live recordings, most of which are in quite good sound. I recommend them VERY highly. They were avaliable on an LP and then CD entitled "Early Bird." They have since been released on many discs in Europe.

Picked up the above mentioned title, and this: "Jay McShann -- Blues from Kansas City" That's the one. Bird only solos on a few tracks, but the solos are amazing, and I've always liked Walter Brown's blues singing. greg mo The is much more great Bird with McShann on the live recordings, most of which are in quite good sound. I recommend them VERY highly. They were avaliable on an LP and then CD entitled "Early Bird." They have since been released on many discs in Europe.

Thanks for the update. Let's hope that the situation changes for the better.

OK, so I stand corrected. I'll have to try that the next time that I go to Safeway.

I've never heard the Coltrane-Henderson tape, but Bird with the Dizzy Big band in '48 has got to be one of the worst sounding CDs in my collection. It is an interesting historical artifact, as (I believe) no other tapes exist of Bird playing in Dizzy's big band, but it cannot really be listened to for pleasure.

Given what you have listed, I would try first to track down the Complete Charlie Parker on Verve. That has no duplication with your listed collection, and contains tons of tremendous Bird in a variety of contexts in the best sound quality that he was ever recorded in. And don't think that you just need the master takes of the Dial and Savoy recordings. The alternatives are numerous and every bit as brilliant. Bird plays each take so differently that they are the equivalent of additional compositions. There are a number of cheap alternatives these days. Believe me, if you like Bird, you NEED the alternates.

There is more than one "Eight Men, Four Women" album. The cheap one released in the States on cassette and then CD is sort of a compiliation that is not the same as the original LP, which I believe has only been released on CD in Japan.

As I understand, Memphis Unlimited has now also been released as a single CD.

Dan: I don't know that particular album. For middle period Johnny Adams, you might check out the 2-disc release of his complete recordings on the Hep' Me label: Chasing Rainbows. It's far from consistently stellar, but there are still some real gems that a Johnny Adams fan like yourself would not want to miss.

Dude, the "jazz business" these days is "weirder" than it's ever been. Gigs are few and competition is fierce. Power, real power, business power, the kind that can make your life "comfortable" is highly, highly concentrated. "Hurt feelings" of the wrong person can indeed have an adverse effect on bookings & other opportunities, since the power brokers are more aware than ever that they hold all the power. The beauty of the internet is that it greatly democratizes the "ground floor", the getting in the game (and god, I've heard "get back in the game" so much lately on so many different commercials that it's making me ill...), but the reality is that once you want to break out of that "indie" scene, you gotta deal with reality - and that means "political correctness", or at least the jazz version of it. It's a game that most of us here either aren't aware of or have chosen not to play. But if Jim has decided that he needs to work that area in order to best provide for his family, I'll be the first to encourage him to go for it, even if it means changing/losing/whatever the board. A man's family always comes first, and as much as I've enjoyed the "keeping it real" vibe around here, it's a luxury I can easily live without (some perceptions to the contrary, I have a very satisfying life away from the computer ) if it means that the Alfredson, Gloss, & Marsh peoples get to take it to the next level career-wise. Or at least get to try to take it to the next level. Lots of hoops, but... Thanks, Jim. That makes a lot of sense. it just goes to show that, no matter how ugly those of us outside of the jazz business imagine that it might be, those on the inside know that it is uglier still.

I just read through this thread for the first time. It is quite an upsetting read. To be honest, I never thought before about the possibility that what is posted on this forum could affect opportunities for Organissimo. Or, if anything, I thought that the effect would be unambiguously positive. I count myself among those who might not have started buying Organissimo records if this forum didn't exist. The problem is that there are serious tradeoffs here. The fact that this forum has provided a generally liberal environment for free interaction is one of the factors that has made it so great - the best jazz forum on the web. But that kind of a liberal environment always leads to conflicts of this sort, and a few posters always end up offending a good number of others. That goes with the territory. Sure, good moderation can keep it under control. But there are always tradeoffs. The question of what to do deserves some thought (IMO). As some have suggested, renaming the board and disassociating it with the band is one option. But I am not yet convinced that this board, on balance, has a negative influence on publicity and opportunities for the band.

Yes, indeed! I think that there was some sort of LP-only recordings that got released after that, but still.... Henry T. is too valuable for jazz not to be making records. Does anybody know the story here? Is it just that he has no label?

Yea, that is a truly great song and performance. The way that Mavis just purrs the chorus melts me down every time.

I believe that this first appeared on two volumes of Birds Eyes on Philology. I picked it up right away, and was blown away. Anybody who argues that Bird already didn't have it in 1953 should listen to this recording first.

I imagine that this record (duets with Hemphill and Lyle) could be at least a distant relative of this project.

Wow! Thanks. I guess that I haven't been to the Store in a while. They had discontinued offering downloads of DPs for a while. That is good news.

The Grateful Dead Store used to sell downloads of the whole Dick's Picks series at a high bitrate and very reasonable price. I bought a number of mine that way. But they stopped doing this after the sale to Rhino. I guess that Rhino might have decided that the live Dead catalog is so vast that keeping too much available at any one point in time could seriously hurt profits. I am not sure if that is true, however, as most of the market for their new live releases probably consists of people who already have vast collections of live Dead, i.e. deadheads.

As can be seen fro the discography, there were plans to release some of this material after Marsh's death under the title "A Giant Passes." I hope that the reason why this didn't materialize was not due to serious legal problems of the sort that Chuck is worried about. Another problem is that Mosaic might feel sceptical about their ability to sell obscure Warne Marsh recordings. But there is certainly a solid hard core of fans who would buy a set like that without any questions asked.

Lift Every Voice is quite a nice record, in my estimation, - not my favorite Andrew Hill, but not my least favorite either. Maybe not everything works, but enough does for me.