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| This is a comments thread about Blog Post: Ben-Hur Lives! by Lukas Kendall |
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Posted: |
Mar 9, 2012 - 5:59 AM
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By: |
JSWalsh
(Member)
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If you were buying it off the shelf without an advisor, then the product is it's own description and then you might have a claim. (In the UK.) Cheers
There's no "might" about it. Last time I looked, the HMV in Birmingham (where I buy many of my soundtracks) doesn't have any leaflets appended to its CDs. The law acknowledges that customers making purchases in brick & mortar stores cannot be expected to apprise themselves of online disclaimers every time they pick something off a shelf.
So what's your end-game here? As I see it these are your choices:
1. Return your CDs to Lukas demanding a refund.
2. DON'T return your CDs but demand payment of what you might have gotten on the 'secondary market', though I'm not suggesting you are ticked off because you wanted to re-sell.
3. Sue Lukas for false advertising or something--but you'd have to prove damages, I think, if you want any kind of compensation.
You could, of course, use #3 to make an example of Lukas, have the courts take all his money and bankrupt FSM and Lukas, and thus warn all the other soundtrack companies to watch their steps, because one screwup and they could lose all those billions they've aquired on things like Jerry Goldsmith The Early Years (a great disc, btw).
Where are you going with this?
What do you want for your hardship?
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Who is damaged here?
The people who bought the package to enjoy the music. No
The people who haven't bought but will have another opportunity to do from the second batch. No
The people who buy to make money from selling OOP limited edition items on Ebay, Amazon etc. YES
The speculators take their chances and don't deserve any sympathy.
We can argue about technical points of UK trading standards law but is it relevant to a US online retailer?.
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Yep, I see the releasing of the last 500 copies of the Miklos Rosza Treasury in the near future. Most of the paper work is done and did he not say he had the inserts already made? Now, we all know that if BEN-HUR was slated at 4000 copies, it would not have sold the first 2000, until a year past, but since Lukas stated "We will not be repressing this", the release flew out the door. Now, we will hear how the last 1500 are not selling.
I am not a speculator and I do have 1 copy of the first pressing, but this is a sad day in the film score world, LIMITED EDITIONS truly no longer exist! Do not state "We will not be repressing this" unless you are absolutely 100% positive that it will not happen by your label. DO NOT put anything on the CD packaging about a limited number, because now we know for a fact (it has happened too many time already) that that means nothing other than a marketing tool to sell the releases faster! Issues started with the FSM over pressings confession and everyone says, "ah it's okay, don't worry about it."
Don't get me wrong, I am glad that more people are going to have access to BEN-HUR now, just don't say "I changed my mind." How can any one really except that? A lie is a lie! It's no longer about the music, it really is about the money!
I can no longer support a company that is run this way.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me!"
Enjoy the last 4 releases by FSM, because my last FSM purchase was the first pressing of BEN-HUR, which really means NOTHING!
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I am sickened and appalled by the suggestion that Lukas has wronged anyone.
You got a fantastic package for your money and you should be happy.
We've seen insanity around here, but this legalistic crap is insanity on stilts.
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I am sickened and appalled by the suggestion that Lukas has wronged anyone.
You got a fantastic package for your money and you should be happy.
We've seen insanity around here, but this legalistic crap is insanity on stilts.
I agree, I am just freaking disgusted by some of the comments here. What in the world is wrong with some people? I mean really...either you got the CD's you bought and you should be happy, or you now have the chance to buy it if you missed the first pressing.
What the hell is there to gripe about unless you're now pissed you can't re-sell it on Ebay for a ton of money? No fucking wonder Lukas wants out of this business on a daily basis, reading crap like we've seen here.
Just grow up. Grow the fuck up. My apologies for the language but some of you should just be ashamed of the way you're reacting over this. Usually internet idiocy here doesn't get to me but this just takes the cake.
I do not approve of swearing on the internet, and have never, ever done it.
Until now that is. Fucking brilliant.
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If you were buying it off the shelf without an advisor, then the product is it's own description and then you might have a claim. (In the UK.) Cheers
There's no "might" about it. Last time I looked, the HMV in Birmingham (where I buy many of my soundtracks) doesn't have any leaflets appended to its CDs. The law acknowledges that customers making purchases in brick & mortar stores cannot be expected to apprise themselves of online disclaimers every time they pick something off a shelf.
That's why CDs on shelves often have stickers on the outside, correcting errors in the packaging. True, the wholesaler ought to add such a sticker. But is LK selling in that channel? Not as far as I can tell. Therefore it's moot.
But anyway:
We have established that if ...if ...the UK SOGA applied (it probably doesn't) you could insist on returning your Ben-Hur for a refund on the basis of an incorrect description at the time you bought it. And Lukas would have to ensure the description at point of sale is corrected.
But if you didn't want to return it, there wouldn't be anything more SOGA would have to say about it. No one would come along and 'punish' Lukas, it's just about what you as consumer have a right to ask for. As far as I can tell.
I tend to agree with posts above. Where do you want to go with this? What do you want to happen? Do you want to return your discs? Did your purchase only have value to you because you thought it was limited?
Cheers
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Posted: |
Mar 9, 2012 - 7:27 AM
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By: |
John Smith
(Member)
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So what's your end-game here? As I see it these are your choices:
1. Return your CDs to Lukas demanding a refund.
2. DON'T return your CDs but demand payment of what you might have gotten on the 'secondary market', though I'm not suggesting you are ticked off because you wanted to re-sell.
3. Sue Lukas for false advertising or something--but you'd have to prove damages, I think, if you want any kind of compensation.
You could, of course, use #3 to make an example of Lukas, have the courts take all his money and bankrupt FSM and Lukas, and thus warn all the other soundtrack companies to watch their steps, because one screwup and they could lose all those billions they've aquired on things like Jerry Goldsmith The Early Years (a great disc, btw).
Where are you going with this?
What do you want for your hardship?
Actually, I don't want anything. I just feel uneasy that Doug Fake - a man of consummate integrity - was flayed on his own website for daring to toy with the idea of pressing a second edition of Inchon, whereas Lukas is idolized for undermining the very notion of limited soundtrack editions. Exactly how many thousands of copies of Logan's Run were ultimately sold - all bearing exactly the same wording: "This pressing is limited to 3,000 copies"?? Fessing up later didn't make the vast overpressing any less professionally dubious.
Neither did the chorus of approval from FSM posters.
Many of you seem to be glorifying Lukas's instrumentality. Unfortunately, the ends do not always justify the means. At least, not in my book.
I have absolutey nothing against people like Bruce re-issuing repackaged soundtrack releases - even if the content of the new edition is - to all intents and purposes - identical to the first. Let Varese re-issue ALL of the Karate Kid CDs from the box set that I bought from them a while ago. If it makes them loads of money, good for them.
No sensible soundtrack collector believes for a moment that a given FSM or Kritzerland release will never be repressed again. That would be the height of naivete. When Lukas claimed in his publicity for the infamous Black Box that the CDs contained therein would never see the light of day again, I openly laughed, knowing full well that Lukas didn't believe a word of what he'd written. Yet some posters were outraged when re-issues begain trickling out.
The fact is that the uniqueness of any original release is not compromised in any way if the repressing (or reissue) is marked as such. Hence the large amounts of money certain original soundtrack releases still command, despite being reissued - sometimes many times.
However, the idea of churning out as many copies of a limited edition CD as a producer feels like (for whatever possible reason), is in the long term, untenable, and may indeed cause seismic ripples in the soundtrack industry as we know it. Intrada, which pioneered the limited soundtrack release over 25 years ago, has had to alter its business paradigm, following its abandonment of its previous limited edition principles. The regular OOP anouncements are proof of this change.
I don't buy soundtracks because they are limited. But many collectors do. It's a vital part of the cottage industry we support. I understand the financial imperative in limiting releases to 1000 or so. Bruce has written persuasively about this on numerous occasions. Press more and, in most cases you're left with hundreds or thousands of unsold - and potentially unsellable - CDs.
There have to be a set of principles that all soundtrack producers abide by. And the guiding principle should be that limited pressings MUST be limited to the number printed on the CD.
By all means press more, but the additional CDs MUST NOT be passed off as part of the original pressing. This undermines our faith in the producer - and it scares away the speculators - who, whether producers admit it or not, guarantee sufficient sales of many soundtrack releases. I have nothing against speculators. It's part of the fabric of the American way of life. They take the risk of acquiring dozens of copies of CDs that they may not be able to shift. As I said in an earlier post, I am not a speculator, so I have no vested interest in writing this.
It must truly piss off producers when OOP CDs sell for ten times the original price on the so-called secondary market. Ironically, this may be sufficient motivation for producers to repress such CDs. In fact, Lukas admitted that he re-issued Omega Man because ebay prices of the original release enraged him. I for one, am grateful because I was finally able to acquire a reasonably priced reissue for a friend of mine who was unable to afford the original.
Let me end here before I digress even further from the main topic. I sincerely hope that this post clarifies my position.
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Actually, I don't want anything. I just feel uneasy that Doug Fake - a man of consummate integrity - was flayed on his own website for daring to toy with the idea of pressing a second edition of Inchon,
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This was a shameful episode with speculators coming out of their holes shouting loudly to protect their 'investment'. Doug should have ignored them and printed more to meet the demand.
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Posted: |
Mar 9, 2012 - 8:12 AM
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By: |
TJ
(Member)
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Of course, the fun game is: What if BSX or another label had done this exact same thing? And no matter what people answer now, I think everyone knows exactly what would happen 
I think everyone knows that by "another label", you really mean yours, and I imagine that has more to do with the reputations of representatives from the referenced labels as participants on these forums than any business decisions those labels choose to make.
You know exactly what I mean and instead in typical FSM board fashion choose to make a personal dig. A little odd and more than a little tiresome, rather than just addressing the point and the POINT is that if another label other than FSM had done this it might not have gone down so well. You know it, I know it, and the man in the moon knows it.
The fact that nobody really cares that Intrada got rid of advertised limitations starting with Explorers contradicts your POINT, and in fact is not a point at all. You can say what they are doing is the same thing - but it's really not, because by omitting the number gives them the freedom to press more of a hot seller if they are so inclined.
My opinion is that it has everything to do with the popularity of titles that certain labels release (whatever reason that may be - financial backing, personal preference) and nothing to do with anything else. That's my opinion.
I call bologna when folks said they weren't going to buy any more titles from Intrada because they wanted to repress a title to fill the demand. People are still going to buy the titles they want regardless of who produced them.
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The only way you can be offended by this is if it is the limitedness of it which is important to you.
Well, if that's you, go ahead and be mad.
Me, I'm supporting Lukas' decision, even though I got my Ben-Hur. For me, soundtrack releasing is about reasonable availability, not unreasonable unavailability.
Cheers
That says it all for me! Well spoken. The true film music lover's credo: May all of our favorites be available for all who seek them.
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...this is a sad day in the film score world, LIMITED EDITIONS truly no longer exist!
And that matters why, exactly?
To put this into context, limited edition numbering was not originally intended to display a unique product as a selling point. FSM began indicating that their discs were limited to 3000 because that was the maximum number of copies which could be pressed, at reduced fees, under Union rules. It was only later, when labels found 3000 copies were not selling out, that they began reducing the number of pressings (initiated by Intrada and Varese) and thereby creating more of a marketing tool out of the numbers.
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I am not a speculator and I do have 1 copy of the first pressing, but this is a sad day in the film score world, LIMITED EDITIONS truly no longer exist!
GOOD!
Finally, it can be about the music and not collectormania.
Cheers
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Posted: |
Mar 9, 2012 - 9:55 AM
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By: |
Chris Avis
(Member)
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I am not a speculator and I do have 1 copy of the first pressing, but this is a sad day in the film score world, LIMITED EDITIONS truly no longer exist!
Cheers
It'll still be a limited edition. Whether it's capped at 2,000 or 4,000 or 6,000, FSM will probably still print a finite number of these and the score will eventually at some point fully sell out. This is in a way like Intrada deciding to not print fixed numbers of titles that were formerly "limited editions" - they make them available for a long enough time for collectors to reasonably get their funds together and make a purchase.
Even if this is the end of the "old" way of doing limited editions, I for one, would be happy. It should be all about the music in the end, not all the bitching and moaning and speculating and whatnot about obtaining the music. Or has the collector's bug truly gotten the best of us?
Chris.
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How would you react when a concert is advertised as "One night only! Only area appearance!", sells out in 2 hours, then the promoter adds another night and says "By popular demand - second show added!"?
It's funny, Bruce has been mentioning for a while now that the current limited edition models are going to be become problematic. By these latest episodes, you can see he is mostly correct. For myself, I'm glad that the music is available to everyone who wants it and I hope that the studios change their licensing restrictions to a time-based model instead of a copy-limited model.
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