With all due respect it is not the same. You are comparing apples and oranges. The Grateful Dead show was an official release. They own the right to release any show they want. EV is selling bootlegs. They do not have the rights to legally sell their product in official outlets like the GD do. EV titles are only available from limited sources while the GD can sell there concerts legally on line. This limits EV's ability to sell their product so downloading has a bigger impact on their ability to recoup their investment
Well, these days you can VERY easily find and buy any circulating bootleg edition online, so it's not the same as 10 years ago when you had to know the places or wait for months to spot one on eBay, usually at an exorbitant price. Of course, Grateful Dead have an obvious advantage of being legal and thus more widely exposed, but it's no longer like 'oranges and apples' when compared to the greyzone/bootleg business. Now it's more like 'regular oranges and blood oranges'.
...and the big difference with the Good ol' Grateful Dead (and other bands) is, as I touched on earlier, they've ALWAYS had a roaring trade in the free distribution of their live tapes, so there's rarely been any value attached to unreleased, unheard music in collectors' hands**. (** I appreciate that there were tape stashes - i.e. collections of multiple shows - recently bought back by the Dead in recent years, for onwards release by them, but this was an explicit exception, rather than the rule)
Agreed. They could have released the entire tape in 3-4 different packages. I would have paid $75 for a 3cd set in a nicely packaged jewel case of the complete tape. And I can just about guarantee a ton of Zeppelin collectors would have snapped them up at that price too. They could have sold some limited editions with special packaging for a much higher price...people would have bought them. But they decided to sell a chopped up incomplete tape in 2 packages, one for around $180 and another "super limited edition" for $220. No thanks, I'll just download it.
EV is one of the few companies still releasing not commonly circulated tapes for which I am speculating they pay a pretty penny for the privilege. Their bottom line they need to recoup their investment. I prefer physical media my self so do not download music but from what I gather EV's new releases are immediately posted on DIME soon after release which dramatically impacts their sales and ability to recoup their investment. Would lower prices lead to more sales an fewer free downloads? Hard to say, as I am just a collector and do not work for EV, but they must have found that your proposed business model of lower prices does not work for them to recoup the cost of buying the tapes for these releases.
I respectfully disagree as I still think it is apples and oranges we are comparing here. It certainly easier to find boot sellers on the internet now than 10 years ago but not sure I agree it is very easy for the average consumer based on the requests I get all the time from people looking for boot sources. I have collected my list of sources over the years by word of mouth not by doing Google searches which are not that productive IMHO. Also EV titles are not sold by every boot vendor as only a select few I deal with sell EV/ Mid Valley titles. One of my most reliable bootleg sources cannot get new EV titles and will from time to time offer old EV stock when it does not sell out initially and he gets offered the leftovers. As far as the grey zone business you will not find any Led Zeppelin grey area live releases on Amazon UK at least. There must be a reason? I am guessing the record label or Jimmy may have something to do with this. So it takes some effort to track down EV boots for the average collector to buy. Bootleg silver disc collecting is a niche market these days.
All of the Japan '71 shows with the exception of the gig in Hiroshima were professionally recorded. It's my understanding that *every* show at The Budokan in Tokyo is recorded by an in-house team there - not the band's crew. Love, Billy
I haven't looked into every grey market release but I noticed a lot of them are typically radio broadcasts. Some are no better than the available bootlegs! Some are even available as MP3 downloads. Anyway back to radio broadcasts, IIRC, there is some sort of UK (or is it European) copyright loop hole that makes those possible. In the case of Zeppelin they didn't really have many radio broadcasts so those grey market companies have little to mine in that regard. I do remember one DVD appearing in HMV stores in Canada awhile back but that was eventually pulled.
Ah yes, Mr Toad aka Bob Langley, used to know him fairly well and bought quite a few boots from him back in the day - in those pre-internet times he was the only dealer I knew who had access to the almost-imposssible-to-get-in-the-UK Japanese Zeppelin titles. He was a really big Zep fan - ironic that Page appeared in court to testify against him and he ended up being sentenced to 20 months in prison. Always found him a pretty agreeable guy but I wouldn't have wanted to have got on the wrong side of him, he was a bear of a man. He died earlier his year btw.
It's sounds like a nice idea and I know similar comments have been made in the past but I remain skeptical that it would actually make them more money. Theoretically, sure I can lay out numbers and it all makes sense but there's no data to really back it up. I know I've seen some people comment that they would've bought it if it was cheaper and indeed another company has already done that. The Ultra Promo edition is selling for $300 and limited to 100 copies. That will likely sell out. If they priced at $75 they would need to sell 400 copies to gross the same revenue. The Geisha Box is $200 for 200 copies, that's $40K in revenue at $75 they would need to sell 534 units Would you rather sell 300 copies and get $70K in revenue or try and sell 934 copies @ $75 to make the same amount of money? The Regular Box is $185 not limited. No idea how many of those will sell but if they plan to sell 100 and 300 of the others, they must be projecting that they'll sell more than 400 units at $185. Let's say it's another 300 units so that's another $55K which would require 740 units to be sold at $75. Now you did say that they could do 3-4 different packages and one would be at the $75 mark but it seems to me, they still might be better off trying to sell 300 units at $185 than 740 at $75, especially, IIRC, they have a sister label that knocks out cheaper versions of their releases eventually. Especially since the attraction of EV is partly due to their packaging which is generally top notch. They have an higher end product and it has a higher end price. I really can't say anything definite one way or another without seeing some real date, so I'm just throwing this out there. Those knock off labels might be selling thousands but even so, if EV lowered their price, those knock off labels could offer a version at an even lower price. I think some Moonchild boots are selling for $10 or something crazy like that. In any case, there are cheaper versions out there already or about to come out. Someone posted a copy of the artwork on another forum. I think the real shame here is that they didn't include the whole tape and although it is possible they do not have the whole tape I think it's far more likely they do, or will have it, and have decided to cut up the release to extract more cash. I would also love to know how much they paid for the tape
I think he was the guy I used to see at the Brighton record fair every year back in the late 90's. I don't recall him at the Olympia show but by the time I moved back to London and started attending that one regularly I wasn't really paying attention to boot sellers. I'm sure he was the guy my friend introduced me too (he knew him through another friend) because I remember him saying he was a nice guy but don't get on his bad side, which seems to jive with what I have read about him over the years. It might be even more ironic that Page might have actually been looking over his stall at the Olympia fair as Page is a boot collector; although I think he gets his in Japan rather than in London. lol. But IIRC Mr Toad wasn't just selling other company's boots, he was actively bootlegging himself. I could be wrong about that though. I'm surprised he managed to avoid a conviction so many times over the years.
He ran two labels, Wanted Man for his Dyaln releases and Silver Rarities for the rest. It was amazing how open boot selling was at UK record fairs in the late 80s/early 90s, thousands of them at all the bigger events and it took the authorities a long time to clamp down on it. I was at the Birmingham NEC fair which I think was the first to get busted and they came in mob-handed with loads of helpers who obviously hadn't a clue what a bootleg was and started siezing anything they thought was illegal, including stocks of promos, white label test pressings etc from legit dealers. As I remember it they made such a balls up of it that, although a lot of stalls were closed down, nobody ended up getting prosecuted and the BPI (The body who represents the UK music industry and organized the bust) ended up looking really stupid. But it was still the beginning of the end, after messing it up once they weren't going to stop there.
You know, you're probably right. I'm sure EV have "run the numbers" and what they're doing is the most efficient way to recoup their investment and make money.
I suppose we can at least agree that both official and greyzone/bootleg labels face exactly the same threat/challenge from the Internet's free file sharing. We only differ about how they should tackle it. In my opinion, the potential solutions are largely the same. YMMV. If you are good at Google search you can easily compose a nice list of bootleg vendors from all over the world (and some of them will have EV titles in stock). If you buy stuff on the second market platforms you'll be able to quickly add a few more (as the sellers like to market themselves). And if you pay a visit to band-dedicated sites/blogs/forums you will be able to make your list even longer. Or one may simply PM any knowledgeable participant (on any forum) and get the hints without any hassle. Now I can only talk about myself. I am a CD guy and buy quite a lot of live stuff on this medium: legal, private, grey and bootleg. However, I no longer buy EV titles, because they seem too expensive to me in this day and age. A decade ago I would fight on eBay auctions to win a desired title for a $90 or more. This way I acquired their Blueberry Hill '70 4CD release back in the day, as it was the only way I could find it on silver disc at that time. But these days are gone. Today if I wanted to get the very same recording I would not even think about any EV version, because I would easily find a decent sounding copy of the Blueberry Hill gig for a fraction of that price, either made by Eat A Peach, Top Gear or Moonchild. Even my local B&M store stocks at least one of these versions! And today this particular recording has to compete with a helluvalot of other live releases, official and not, easily available online and on-ground. Now I have a choice and I do not choose the Empress Valley. Simply because their releases are way too expensive. I mean I can fork out an extra dough for a very special edition of a very special recording. I paid some $80 for the complete limited edition of Santana's Lotus, but hey, it was a full multitrack source released on 3 SACDs in an überlavish Japanese packaging. But there's no way I'll pay $185 for a chopped soundboard. And I am not going to download it or even get the "more complete" Eelgrass release. I'll just wait for the real deal at an affordable price. Simply because I have no shortage of other excellent picks to listen to.
You can get grey market GD box sets for less than $30 US on Amazon UK and they are readily available to me and incredibly cheap as the people who put them out most likely did not pay a penny for the content. How much can the packaging and silver CD's cost to make. I am not saying EV titles are not overpriced but considering they have to pay for the content I am a little more sympathetic to their challenges as I appreciate them releasing rare music. That being said I have no intention on buying the 929 show as it is too expensive for me and I will wait until the complete version comes out which I believe will eventually happen. Until then I am happy with my Wendy's release.
I can hardly follow and digest the official stream of Grateful Dead live releases, so I do not even look at the greyzone titles. The $20-50 price range for most of their Dick's, RTs, Dave's and auxiliary budget shows/collections is perfectly acceptable for me and I even occasionally splurge on a big box (usually $120-180, depending on the size). A genuine embarrassment of riches!
Where did Winston get the stuff from in the first place ?...........bootlegs and I believe some were on the Empress Valley label.
I am sure hardcore GD fans already have all the shows but go check out some of the, I assume, grey market box sets on Amazon UK. They have a 21CD 1971 radio show box set for 27.99 BP. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_s...fix=Grateful+Dead+,aps,216&crid=1DC7NIZGJV6SS I always envied Dead fans access to so much live material. Sadly Jimmy Page is such a perfectionist we most likely will never see some of the stuff he has in the vaults so have to rely on bootlegs for our live show fix.
Nearly all of them from low generation (or even master) copies of the actual tapes, not from bootlegs.
If memory serves Winston got his 1st gen tapes from the guy who sold Mike Millard his blank tapes- in return, Millard would give the guy copies of his shows. Not a bad trade And for what it's worth the Winston Remasters versions of those shows circulated freely online for almost ten years before Moonchild decided to start bootlegging them.
So Winston had the masters for all of his releases ? ..............I think you will find that that is probably not the case.
Not masters- 1st gen copies. Legend has it Mike Millard destroyed all his master tapes before he topped himself.
