Record producers share thoughts on bootlegs, technology, and the changing market. | During the summer of 1988, Randall Larson sent out questionnaires to more than twenty film music specialty labels, asking each company their specific views toward the production of film soundtrack albums. Their replies were published in Soundtrack! issues #31 and #32. Since then, things have changed. Some labels have disappeared (Bay Cities) or have become temporarily inactive (IMI, Big Screen). Others were launched more recently (Play it Again, Fenn, Play-Time, Mask). Currently approx. 30 film music labels are busy heaping goodies onto the market: eight in Italy, two in France, two in Germany, one in Japan, three in the UK., one in Belgium and four in the U.S.A., in addition to the regular labels that do a lot of soundtracks (Epic, Columbia, Sony, et al.) and a number of "entrepreneurs" who produce albums of questionable origin and questionable legality. The time seemed ripe to do another survey and find out what record producers are thinking about the latest developments. The following companies or their representatives took the time to reply to our questions: Legend: We think that the general audience has increased, at least according to our sales figures. The funny thing is that many collectors buy a score because of the subject matter rather than because of the music. If we issue a horrible horror score (pardon the pun) on CD we are certain that it will sell more than a masterpiece by a promising newcomer. Any score by Morricone sells better than an album by Petrassi, even though the Morricone CD may be from an obscure film that no-one has ever seen. Beat: The costs are always the main concern. Although some good acoustic productions are made and/or programmed, the use of electronics is always predominant. GNP Crescendo Records: They seem to have re-vamped the re-use schedule from 50% to 25%. Additionally, in some cases at least, you can pay for 15 minutes of music and pay in 5 minute increments from then on. DRG: Same as in previous years. Only sometimes not as costly in new use; i.e., synthesized scores. Fifth Continent: The situation has not improved. Production costs have increased, but CD prices have remained steady. More problems today. Fox: Despite certain concessions from the Musicians’ Union that mainly affect new scores, many of the old pressures still remain and will take time to solve. Play it Again: When we released our first orchestral film score, “Beat Girl”, in 1990, EMI, the company who owned the recording, wanted a guaranteed unit sales of 4,000 copies and an advance on royalties of about that amount (£4,000). Eventually we only sold 2500 copies and lost money on the venture. Since then we’ve done a couple of old John Barry scores via TKO (Ember), who didn’t need a guarantee and only required a small advance. We made a profit on both of these and I’m convinced this is the only way we will be able to afford to reissue anything of this kind in the future. I doubt whether we will ever be in a position to issue a previously unreleased recording because of re-use fees, particularly as regards those recorded in America, though the position here might be different. Screen Archives: Since we are such an ‘odd bird’ film music label, I can’t say we have or will have any problems releasing an orchestral score as long as it can be authorized and supplied by the composer, the family or a repository asking us to record their archival music. Intrada: This always seems cyclical – currently more major labels are involved in score album releases, partly due to the fact that a few have been quite successful, and partly because the current cycle involves major labels forming exclusive deals again with film studios, and other studios actually reviving labels of their own – Fox, and the recent MGM/Turner Entertainment deal with Rhino. More score albums are coming out as a result, and anything not claimed by the exclusive deals are made available usually, leading smaller specialty labels to take up the slack. In short, more score albums come out now and probably will until the major labels again lose interest. Silva Screen: Generally sales of orchestral film scores have declined. This is mainly due to the plethora of both new and especially rereleases (legitimate or otherwise), which means that the ‘collector’s market’ has been swamped. However, most of our releases are showing healthy worldwide sales – with our mixture of overtly commercial releases, e.g. "Music from Harrison Ford Films", and our more specialised releases like “The Bride of Frankenstein”. This is mainly because of the time and effort spent by ourselves and our distributors in marketing and promoting our product. Because many shops resist stocking too much specialist soundtrack product, we have to allocate more and more funds to advertising to support the shops in stocking Silva Screen releases. Sony: Despite appearances, I don’t think the situation has much improved. The basic problem is that on reissues we only expect to sell an average of 5000 units in the U.S., not enough to justify going into a regular reissue schedule. Because of the familiarity with some of the titles included in the series I produced for Legacy (“The Lion in Winter”, “The Alamo”, “The Bridge on the River Kwai”), I was also able to sneak in some titles that were less ‘commercial’ (“The Blue Max” and “King Rat”, for instance). But the prospects for another series later this year or sometime next year would depend entirely on my finding other well-known titles to carry with them the more obscure ones. Fifth Continent: I see no real niche today. Far too many labels, most of which release absolute rubbish. This includes the ‘majors’. The market share for me has decreased as opposed to, say, 6 years ago. Screen Archives: I think if anyone has ‘carved’ a niche, it’s Screen Archives. I can’t say our market has grown any, since we usually only press 500 to 1000 copies and the party or parties that have authorized the project may get up to half the pressings. Fox: The amount of people interested in film scores has not increased, but the number of releases has. This glut has in fact rendered the market smaller, not larger. It is now more difficult than ever to justify film scores as economically viable. There are simply more soundtracks than people to buy them. Intrada: While the market size has increased somewhat with soundtracks, the negative factor is that so many albums are coming out, including private and ‘bootleg’ product, the average buyer of the music is being increasingly forced to select by priority and financial means. As a result many worthwhile projects by new or relatively unknown composers fall below the scene because prospective buyers are struggling just to keep up with the releases by well-known favorites. The selection used to be just whatever few new scores were released, coupled with an occasional reissue of merit. Now every earlier score is getting reissued, scores previously available on CD are being remastered with additional material, private releases are springing up of material never before released, old classics are seeing brand-new performances and almost all new films are seeing albums released. That’s a lot to choose from, unless one’s wallet is virtually unlimited! Beat: Yes, the size of the market has increased, but so has the actual danger of piracy. It’s almost impossible to seek and obtain protection and have damages paid. Silva Screen: We no longer consider ourselves a ‘specialized soundtrack label’ but rather a record company who now issue many different types of music (jazz, fusion, classical, etc.) but who also retain a keen interest in recordings of film and show music. We feel that Silva Screen has carved out a niche in the market, especially with our series of re-recordings of classic film music. Most markets have increased for us, whilst a few have decreased. GNP Crescendo Records: For us, it has grown a bit. We specialize more in television than in film, because we find less competition and the viewer interest remains constant as long as a series airs, as opposed to dying once a film is gone from the theatres. Legend: Yes, the size of the market has increased for us, partly due to a better export policy. The number of new labels has increased at an incredible rate and the main problem is to get some exposure. Anyway, we believe that labels that were established in the past have a better chance to survive now than many of the newer labels, launched one month and abandoned the next. Play it Again: I welcome the increase in specialty film music labels, as it draws more attention to the subject of film music itself. I think it is possible to ‘carve a niche’ but you need some luck in obtaining a ‘hit’. It’s encouraging that sales of our product are now reaching further around the world, but small and specialty labels will always experience distribution problems. I felt our Ron Grainer album was the best we have done to date, but sales so far have been negligible. Sony: The proliferation of film music labels has not significantly altered the situation. The magic word in this business is ‘overhead’. A small independent label can release some titles and expect to thrive on selling only a few thousand units because its overhead is relatively low. A major label has to take into consideration other factors that substantially increase its overhead (field staff, production expenses, etc.). I don’t think however that the increase in labels has any effect on what is being sold. If a soundtrack title is deemed desirable, it will sell regardless of the number of other titles that are available. In fact, I consider this situation rather healthy, because the more releases one can find in a record store, the higher the visibility quotient of the soundtrack market. Instrumental soundtracks are low sellers, compared with the ‘pop’ soundtracks which can achieve much greater numbers, a fallacy that sometimes convinces the major labels that any soundtrack can sell big. When such is not the case, the attitude adopted is that soundtracks don’t sell, period. Prometheus: Collectors know by now that we tend to release orchestral film scores, in that sense I suppose we may have carved a tiny ‘niche’, but the size of the niche has by no means increased – we may drop off the ledge any minute now. Intrada: While technology is speeding forward, this is largely a plus for all of us. It is allowing for the overall improvement in the audio quality of most projects, including the restoration of sorts to older discs and tapes that have been damaged through the ages. The access to CD recorders for many people will certainly give rise to a greater number of private discs going around – where collectors used to pass around private cassettes of various unreleased scores, there will now be a circulation of scores in the more convenient CD format. Silva Screen: Our future development is geared to interactive media with CD-ROM and video technology to the fore. GNP Crescendo: The market could conceivably be hurt with the development of commercial recordable disc machines, in the same way that commercial DATs once constituted a threat. DRG: Not too fast. Noise reduction is only helpful, of course, for older tapes and/or discs. Fox: The new technologies can be very helpful. Particularly with regard to the restoration of vintage film music. As to CD "replicators" – this is harmful if they are misused in the sense of flooding the market, with substandard product. The goal should always be to raise the standards, not lower them. Screen Archives: I think things are going too fast and I’m worried that the quality of finished products, offered the consumer, has for the most part taken a plunge. Sony: I don’t think so. If we have at our disposal tools that enable us to clean older recordings and make them sound better, I believe this is a very positive thing. Case in point, “The Bridge on the River Kwai”, for which we went back to the session tapes and were able to bring out the sound quality tremendously, restoring in the process the actual speed at which two tracks had bene recorded, and removing some of the glitches that had affected that soundtrack for many years. Personally, I welcome anything that will make the old soundtracks sound better. I was particularly gratified to see the work done by Nick Redman at 20th Century Fox, and the care he lavished on some of these titles. In two instances (“A Star is Born” and “Love Me or Leave Me”), I was able to go back to the film tracks, and reissue these in stereo for the first time, and I know how exhilarating it feels to be able to do so. In another instance, by cleaning up the tracks on the session tapes from “West Side Story” and “My Fair Lady”, adjusting the levels and re-equalizing them, I was also able to reissue what I feel are much better versions of those soundtracks than anything that had been available before. These last 2 titles bring up something else that collectors may not always be aware of: the fact that some soundtracks were initially very poorly recorded. On both “West Side Story” and “My Fair Lady”, we encountered a tremendous amount of distortions, over loading, and other technical problems which were only partly able to correct. The fact that we did, however, was in itself a small victory over limitations imposed by the crude techniques used at the time of the recording sessions. Fifth Continent: I have no idea what the future will bring as far as technology is concerned. My major concern is that it will only make it easier for ‘pirates’ and other individuals who don't give a fuck about copyright to copy product and sell or give it to others. Legend: We are worried enough about the present, why do we have to have nightmares about the future? Jokes apart, I cannot imagine what's going to happen with all this new technology. I'm sure that author's rights are going to change soon; if they do not, they'll be bypassed by new events. Having access to master tapes is not so important any more, providing you have LPs you can use. Beat: To reduce noise and clicks might be interesting, but it shouldn't be done to such an extent that the original colors of the music or the character of the performance are almost lost, as very often is the case. Play it Again: There's no doubt that new technology is making things easier for producers, though it obviously increases costs. The problem is that having experienced the ‘delights’ of click-free, hiss-free recordings, buyers will come to expect this in all cases. This is understandable – as a buyer I would expect the same myself – but I doubt whether they would expect or accept an appropriate hike in the cost of a CD! Fox: Copyright laws in other countries have recently led to a flood of dubious imports. The downside is that better-quality legitimate releases have been delayed or cancelled as a result. I understand why collectors wish to purchase them, but they should understand that ultimately, it does more harm than good. Screen Archives: With more access by the public to recording devices, we will see more of the ‘private’ home-made recordings offered to the frenzied collectors at higher and higher prices. The good thing is that we will see and hear a lot of great older scores come ‘out of the closet’. And, hopefully, this will send a message that film music does have a very dedicated following and if the music owners, studios and legit recording labels don't get on the ‘band wagon’, then more and more un-released and out of print music will continue to be made available ‘underground’. Beat: It hasn't affected us, as long as a soundtrack is worth releasing. Play it Again: The apparent legal issue of CDs by companies such as Tsunami could have a significant effect on the rest of us. It could be possible for a company such as ours to reach agreement with, say, MGM to reissue a classic score from the ’60s, only to find it being released in Germany whilst ours is still in production. This would be something neither MGM nor Play it Again could foresee, and the potential losses – not to mention buyer's confusion – are obvious. If we issue a film soundtrack, ideally we would like to have the rights of sale worldwide, and without an identical release in competition. As a film score lover myself, I think companies such as Tsunami provide a service under certain circumstances, but only when there is reasonable grounds for assuming a score would otherwise never be released by the owner. Legend: Yes, of course, German bootlegs (whether they are legal in Germany or not is a moot point) do affect our situation. We can only hope that their tape archives are going to run out soon, otherwise customers will not have any more money to spend on legal releases. By the way, why do these gentlemen charge so much money for a copy of their masterpieces? I just can't see any good reason, apart from earning big money. Fifth Continent: I do not know the German copyright law, except to say that the recent flood of ‘pirate’ recordings exported from Germany is, no doubt, of great concern to all labels. My company will press for a revision in the German copyright law through our association with A.R.I.A. in Australia and R.I.A.A. in North America. A warning to German Scheisskopfs: Just try pirating one of my CDs, and I'll have you in a court of law so fast it will make your head spin. I have never lost a law suit. Silva Screen: We have not been affected by any change in international law. GNP Crescendo Records: Copyright laws really don't cause problems. It's the unions which get in our way the most. Intrada: Yes. Certainly projects under negotiation with major composers and studios for release legitimately here in the United States has been affected, a lot of competition with the legitimate projects prepared and aimed at the same buyer with limited funds. So certainly legitimate labels will be reluctant to spend money on worthwhile projects that will sell less due to all of the competition – causing a loss to the marketplace of a number of rewarding projects. Prometheus: As a rule we do six to nine titles per year. Now that there are so many albums being released, we plan to do less titles… until the flood abates. Sony: New laws are currently being considered to prolong the rights of the original owners, something which would, in effect, guarantee that some recordings remain the possession of the legitimate labels and hopefully curb the activities of the bootleggers. On the subject of bootlegging, I particularly resent the idea that labels like Tsunami can steal without impunity soundtracks that were initially released on legitimate labels, and sometimes do so by bastardizing the product itself. When Tsunami releases, for example, “Lilies of the Field” as a straight transfer from the actual LP, with sound quality way below the standards that we have come to accept in the digital format, it is a disservice to the collectors, not counting the fact that they rob the composer and the original label. (A footnote: I don’t think that the composers are being robbed, as GEMA / ASCAP / BMI or whatever is paid on all the CDs that are pressed in Germany or Austria. In that sense, composers are duly protected. America bootleggers responsible for albums such as “Octopussy” / “For Your Eyes Only” / “Excalibur” / “Blade Runner” / “Ladyhawke” / “Wolfen” / “Deadly Blessing”, etc. have the compact discs pressed in the United States and they do not seem to have to pay a single dime to anyone. – LVDV) Conversely, when a soundtrack has never been issued on LP, and when the digital release seems to come from a ‘legitimate’ source (i.e, “The High and the Mighty” or “Land of the Pharaohs” on two CDs), while I regret the fact that the product is a boot, I take a more lenient attitude, because at least the collectors are not ripped off. It doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree with the process itself, but at least there seems to be a genuine care and concern about the end result, and that, at least, is a redeeming value in my eyes. Play it Again: When film companies decide not to release the music from a particular film, I would like to see the rights handed to the composer. He or she could then (if they wish) follow in the footsteps of John Scott by issuing the music themselves or, alternatively, least it to the small but dedicated labels such as ours. I admire the direction Silva Screen has taken with the digital film score series recorded in Prague – some of the criticism has been totally unjustified in my opinion. Maybe we will go that way ourselves, eventually, but we need to generate more revenue first. DRG: People seem to want ‘music to remember’ from films that are positive or romantic. Not chainsaw or horror film! Fox: A trend I would like to see is a reliance more on quality than quantity. And a general raising of standards across the board. GNP Crescendo Records: More composers will do things on computers when more sophisticated sound patches are created, leaving live orchestras to more big-budgeted productions. Beat: we think that the cost (composer’s fee, copyset, the musicians, studios, promotion, etc.) for producing good recordings will affect the results more and more. Prometheus: There is an interesting new trend now, created by a handful of young and talented composers (John Debney, J.A.C. Redford, Bruce Babcock, Lee Holdridge, and others) who produce a promotional CD of their own music in cases where a commercial release is not possible. I think more and more composers will see this as a legitimate way to promote their career and at the same time preserve their music for posterity – rightly so, as we cannot do it for them. |