What Is Happening With MoFi?

Good stuff = healthy sales.
Ironically maybe that doesn't even apply now with all these Anniversary box sets. That seems to be the way to go.

 

I agree. Those box sets are too expensive and much of it is filler.

 

Very funny post

 

They never miss a chance

 

No offense, but I have no use at all for such releases. It's exactly what I don't want. If I have no use for a pedestrian $5 CD version of a greatest hits comp, why would I want an expensive SACD or LP version of those?

I think Intervention has the right idea - putting out music that's going to appeal more to people under 40. There are loads of albums from the 80s and 90s that could make great MOFI releases. And yeah, I realize they tried this a few years ago with some titles, but I guess they didn't market them properly (or the timing was off) or whatever so now they are back to the safe zone of rehashed stuff from the 60s and 70s.

 

There was an interview where Chad from AP said the same thing and said he's not doing any more Greatest Hits titles for the same reason. Personally I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze in 99% of cases for a specialty label. Let the majors do a cut rate job on those and sell them for $20...they already do.

 

People want the fancy box it seems that's how record company's make money these days and their will be more anniversaries next year.

 

Ha. That brings us full circle to the beginning of the thread. I agree w you however I seem to be in the minority.

Everybody apparently wants to rebuy The Stranger

 

Ha ...it's a good album, but c'mon.

 

The most recent mastering of The Stranger (the Mofi SACD) is the best sounding one I have heard. Just one more reason I hope that Mofi continues to put out SACDs at the rate that they have in the past. They have put out some stellar work over the last number of years.

 

If it was better cost effective for the company I wouldn't mind them doing their back catalogue old gold MFSL titles no doubt the licensing ran out, but if not ..there's a lot of tasty titles I don't have( not bothered with the catapulting lift locks).

 

That's hilarious!

 

Not the demand. Intervention have had poor sales on some. Others like Joe Jackson have been very popular. I think the reissues have to be a lot better than originals now, not because you can get them cheap (but try getting true mint!). Most people who buy these expensive reissues generally already own originals or at least some later pressing. You really have to like an artist and know their music to justify spending £60 to £120.

 

Remember that our host has done a fantastic job with compilations in the past (Ray Charles, Dylan, Guess Who, Doors, Elvis, Jim Croce, etc, etc)

So why MFSL can't?

 

As mentioned before they have done greatest hits, Aretha, Dylan, Orbison, Joel, Withers come to mind immediately. Some of the ones you mention are pipe dreams, good luck getting them licensed.

 

The Silver Label was a short lived attempt to offer something of a budget Mofi alternative for titles where they couldn’t source the master tape mostly and offer them on a standard weight pressing. Some of them weren’t great, but the Dead Can Dance and Ryan Adams were absolutely first rate.

I say ‘short-lived’ as I believe that they are phasing out the silver label option. They will repress the currentlu still available titles whilst they still have the licensing agreement and then when they’re gone, I don’t think we will see any more of them.

 

Licensing issues, expense, and difficulty are why the audiophile labels tend to shy away from greatest hits comps. They aren't stupid, MFSL knows greatest hits sell better than random albums. But the margins are usually smaller on a compilation for a label like Audio Fidelity or AP.

Remember, audiophile labels have strict limits on how many copies they can sell for licensed product. So their upside is limited most of the time. That is why they rarely go for homeruns.

It was much easier licensing this stuff back in the 1980s and 1990s, which is how we got major acts and their best albums back in the day on MFSL and DCC.

 

Lol too true. If you sort by “most popular” on their webpage, you’ll see the top hit is The Cars S/T, another dollar bin record that sounds pretty good in standard form. No clue how these metrics are collected of course, but I think sadly that’s the “safe” audience for MoFi. Rebuyers of classic rock staples are really the core audiophile demographic.

I would assume the Weezer issues which were only “radical” by the MoFi dadrock standards were popular since they’ve gone on to press a colored version of the debut. To be honest the driver for those sales had to be the lack of availability of other versions. Now that the new DMM pressings are out for ~$18 and the MoFi lists over $40, that’s not going to rope as many prospective buyers in.

I would love to see MoFi, even under the silver label venture into some neglected 90s or even (gasp!) 00s indie/alt stuff, but that doesn’t seem to be as safe a bet for them. I think core audiophiles are reluctant to try this music out and most fans of it are audiophilia agnostic.

 

I guess the strategy is to upmarket each subsequent version, making it better but also appealing to the anxiety that you no longer own “the best”. I would say the one-step plating has to be the logical end-point of this philosophy though. How can you possibly convince anyone the $125 boxed set version isn’t definitive?

 

One -step ?
Definitive till the 2 -Step arrives.

 

Some pressing plants actually have an option to use a 2 step plating process. I don't remember what it entails, though.

 

Sheesh so Bridge will come out in a couple of years with a step up.

 

More like a step down. Each step you add to the plating process, the worse it supposedly sounds (however, nobody has made a one-step and a standard three-step with the same mastering for an actual comparison). That's the whole point of the One-Step process. To eliminate the extra steps to hopefully get you closer to the master.

 

Baby step ..then. Gotta start somewhere.

 

Hmmm....not sure MFSL is limited by how many copies they can sell. They do it occasionally but it is usually a time limited licensing agreement.

They usually sign an agreement for 4 years and they can then press as many copies as they like during that time...usually dictated by demand during that period. An example of this is the Weezer titles, which have a high demand. If you pick up the blue album, you can expect numbers to be in the tens of thousands at the moment.