Not enough consumer demand for hi-res (Cookie Marenco)

[徐中銳]

Chris, this interview remains salient, insightful :

[video=youtube;lslw-HSoETI]

 

I think if the difference between CD quality and high resolution music was as obvious as the difference between standard definition and high definition video, there would be much greater demand for high resolution music.

 

A monkey can tell which video is HD versus SD. A golden ear may not be able to tell which version of audio is CD versus high resolution.

 

Also, there is a limitation when recording and working with audio that can keep sample rates down to 44.1. The number of tracks needed by some music is huge and this causes the engineers to use 44.1.

[Axiom05]

I think if the difference between CD quality and high resolution music was as obvious as the difference between standard definition and high definition video, there would be much greater demand for high resolution music.

 

A monkey can tell which video is HD versus SD. A golden ear may not be able to tell which version of audio is CD versus high resolution.

 

Also, there is a limitation when recording and working with audio that can keep sample rates down to 44.1. The number of tracks needed by some music is huge and this causes the engineers to use 44.1.

 

I completely agree, however there is still no excuse for the use of high levels of volume compression. If we could better utilize the dynamic capability of CD, then we will have made significant progress in producing better sounding "pop" music.

[The Computer Audiophile]

I completely agree, however there is still no excuse for the use of high levels of volume compression. If we could better utilize the dynamic capability of CD, then we will have made significant progress in producing better sounding "pop" music.

The sound of an album is an artistic decision. We can certainly ask for different art, but we shouldn't expect artists to create something different just for us.

[mansr]

Yes, this is where the companies have their head up their behinds. When you record high rez there is more effort to make the CD quality available. If they do that at a profit at $15, then they would have even more profit for the hires version. I do get not everyone wants or needs the larger file size. So a slight premium as you suggest would work fine.

 

Getting more picayune, I don't know the slope of demand in this market. I wonder if they do. Perhaps their pricing is the maximum profit point for them, and perhaps they are throwing away sizable amounts of possible income. It does depend upon the slope of demand.

 

Storage and bandwidth for larger files costs more, though I suspect it's marginal compared to the total cost of producing an album.

[mav52]

I haven't looked at the top 200 selling albums, but my guess is that none of them would likely benefit from being recorded in high resolution. Highly volume compressed pop recordings don't even need the resolution of CD quality, thus the lack of interest in higher resolution product.

 

I agree in looking at the top 200 albums, I can see where the direction of music and its not hi-rez its smartphones and ear buds, . Top Billboard 200 Albums : Sep 24, 2016 | Billboard Chart Archive

[cookiemarenco]

Yes, this is where the companies have their head up their behinds. When you record high rez there is more effort to make the CD quality available. If they do that at a profit at $15, then they would have even more profit for the hires version. I do get not everyone wants or needs the larger file size. So a slight premium as you suggest would work fine.

 

Getting more picayune, I don't know the slope of demand in this market. I wonder if they do. Perhaps their pricing is the maximum profit point for them, and perhaps they are throwing away sizable amounts of possible income. It does depend upon the slope of demand.

 

We understand the market demand of our products and the limitations we have as a company which may not be true for other companies. I'm guessing you're not a regular customer (if at all, which is fine) for our music and are not looking at all the rebates/discounts we offer every week.

 

We have tested lower pricing and the customers did not buy more products in amounts that covered the monthly overhead to store, manage files and upgrade download sites. To accommodate those people who may have a financial hardship or don't want to pay more for downloads, we've taken a stance to price what we believe to be correct over time and offer rebates every week.

 

You can always find a rebate coupon or way to get free downloads here....

Newsletter | Blue Coast Music

 

Every week you'll find a rebate for $10 or $15 on a purchase. Our new album releases always have a 6 week period of intro pricing where there are substantial discounts of 40% off new albums. At least 3 months of the year we have Buy One Get One Free programs.

 

What we find is that most people don't ask for the rebate and choose to pay the higher price. So, while we offer 25-50% rebates the average monthly revenue is only discounted 7% on the whole. Meaning most people choose not to take a discount. Those that do, can. This formula works for us and our labels.

 

We specialize in acoustic music, not mainstream or classic rock from majors labels as others do. I can also say the albums that we sell in common with our competitors are returning 2.5 times more revenue to the labels and in many cases we are the main source of their high resolution download revenue. This is the case with the San Francisco Symphony who also sell on other well known sites for less money.

 

We compete with customer service. We help our customers with questions and playback issues on their devices. We will send out multiple format copies when requested. We help our financially strapped customers who may have health problems and in turn they help us with promotion.

 

I hope that helps your understanding of our pricing.

 

Cookie Marenco

Blue Coast Records

[cookiemarenco]

Cookie, I would be thrilled if, for example, you recorded & produced Cecile McLorin Salvant rather than merely provided a download, or Regina Carter, although Is it hard to compete with Sony?

There are also a host of amazing quartets etc whom I've heard live but they sell CDs at their concerts (?self produced) eg Bluebird, Ariel etc.

I understand, with limited resources you make decisions on where to focus.

 

I would love to record and produce Regina Carter or Cecile McLorin Salvant and hope it happens one day. Many artists have deals for several albums that restricts who they work with. I hoping soon to have an announcement that may open up many possibilities for us to record albums for many artists previously unavailable. Still, I can only do 10-15 albums a year at the quality I want... if that.

 

Thank you for asking!

 

Cookie Marenco

Blue Coast Records

[cookiemarenco]

I think if the difference between CD quality and high resolution music was as obvious as the difference between standard definition and high definition video, there would be much greater demand for high resolution music.

 

A monkey can tell which video is HD versus SD. A golden ear may not be able to tell which version of audio is CD versus high resolution.

 

Also, there is a limitation when recording and working with audio that can keep sample rates down to 44.1. The number of tracks needed by some music is huge and this causes the engineers to use 44.1.

 

Chris, thank you for chiming in! I totally agree. My friends who mix the big pop records tell me horror stories of hundreds of tracks that arrive in 44.1/16 bit because young producers are working on the music and aren't aware or care about high resolution. Many are looping samples to create the backing tracks.. samples of resampled samples. Not much one can do to improve those sounds.

 

Cookie

Blue Coast Records

[cookiemarenco]

Hello Cookie,

That's so cool you're posting time to time to that forum and let us know honestly what is going on in the record industry. Regarding high resolution records that was and still is such hype and lot of web portals offers "so called" high resolution files to download. I named them "so called" because many of these are just poor upsampled content or much more compressed that the original ones - which I don't really understand why?! All of these has some impact on the customers which if tried ones and happened to purchase a fake file are reluctant to buy it again - been there. Pricing and to top it off lack of the PDF booklet are another story - especially lack of the booklet when the pricing is higher usually is something that bugs me a lot.

 

All of those issues when mitigated and done adequately of course make the cost of the production more expensive I guess and to justify that cost there certainly needs to be demand from us to purchase the final product. Hope that it will change in the future and industry forget about excessive compression, fake files and lack of the booklets and come back again to the old times when the music and sonics meant a lot for both producer and an artist.

 

Thank you!

Booklets are the hardest part of releasing an album. You can't believe how hard it is to get good photos or graphics ... or credits spelled correctly.

 

Cookie

Blue Coast Records

[cookiemarenco]

Storage and bandwidth for larger files costs more, though I suspect it's marginal compared to the total cost of producing an album.

 

Very good question and often misunderstood.

 

As a distributor of high end music handling hundreds through Downloads NOW! we understand this issue well. Storage and bandwidth are increasing for a number of reasons. We offer up to 9 different file formats... DSD256 is quite large with album sizes upwards of 8 gigabytes for one file.

 

There is also a cost of labor since we build our own sites. We have 2 inhouse web people and several consultants who help with required upgrades that are needed to keep sites operational. Meaning, whenever a new operating system comes out or internet vampires set viruses loose, we have to do labor intensive work on the sites. This is daily.

 

An average album might breakeven at the 5 year point, then after 10 years, it's possible that storage and upkeep (both for physical and digital) may eclipse the cost of production except for classic albums. Fortunately, our Blue Coast Collection continues to be a top seller for us, even after 10 years and helps propel the risk of new recordings. As with most labels 5% of the albums made generate 95% of the revenue.

 

Thank you for asking.

 

Cookie Marenco

Blue Coast Records

[Jay-dub]

 

 

Spotify is great for trying out new music, but far too much is simply unlistenable due to lossy compression.

 

For much of the worst stuff, it's due to audible watermarking.

[witchdoctor]

Once they start streaming hi rez and the SQ is clearly better through headphones interest in hi rez will take off. traditional software and download sales of all formats is down, not just hirez.

[witchdoctor]

Very good question and often misunderstood.

 

As a distributor of high end music handling hundreds through Downloads NOW! we understand this issue well. Storage and bandwidth are increasing for a number of reasons. We offer up to 9 different file formats... DSD256 is quite large with album sizes upwards of 8 gigabytes for one file.

 

There is also a cost of labor since we build our own sites. We have 2 inhouse web people and several consultants who help with required upgrades that are needed to keep sites operational. Meaning, whenever a new operating system comes out or internet vampires set viruses loose, we have to do labor intensive work on the sites. This is daily.

 

An average album might breakeven at the 5 year point, then after 10 years, it's possible that storage and upkeep (both for physical and digital) may eclipse the cost of production except for classic albums. Fortunately, our Blue Coast Collection continues to be a top seller for us, even after 10 years and helps propel the risk of new recordings. As with most labels 5% of the albums made generate 95% of the revenue.

 

Thank you for asking.

 

Cookie Marenco

Blue Coast Records

 

Cookie thanks for posting. I want to sample your wares, please post a few links to your favorites that are available for purchase. I use a Marantz 7702 processor and I think it is pretty format friendly.

[Jud]

Chiming in with what Cookie said, for CDs the production and distribution side has long since become cost efficient through decades of competition by high volume participants. This hasn't occurred yet with hi res downloads.

[witchdoctor]

Chris' date=' this interview remains salient, insightful :[/font']

[video=youtube;lslw-HSoETI]

 

Very eloquent, makes sense and I never knew that Phips pushed the small CD packaging. Now i want to get the new Marantz dac that upsamples everything to DSD.

[cookiemarenco]

Cookie thanks for posting. I want to sample your wares, please post a few links to your favorites that are available for purchase. I use a Marantz 7702 processor and I think it is pretty format friendly.

 

Thank you for asking... so many of these albums I love. You can see the whole list and what customers are liking at

Downloads NOW! |

 

My own favorites of late are:

Jenna Mammina, Close Your Eyes

Jenna Mammina | Close Your Eyes | Blue Coast Records

 

Fiona Joy.. Into the Mist (also coming in SACD)

Fiona Joy | Into The Mist | Blue Coast Records

 

Newport Blue Coast Collection -- Sampler of our artists who attended THE Show

Newport Blue Coast Sampler 1 | Blue Coast Records

 

If the format you buy doesn't work, send us an email and we'll figure out what to send you.

 

Enjoy!

Cookie Marenco

Blue Coast Records

[firedog]

The sound of an album is an artistic decision. We can certainly ask for different art, but we shouldn't expect artists to create something different just for us.

 

In theory true, in practice extremely heavy VC is used: "because everyone else does"; b/c of a fear of not sounding totally up to date and in fashion in the recording industry; and because some people in the industry don't know any other way to record.

 

I'd bet in many cases no "artistic" consideration is given to the amount of VC at all- the intent is just to make it as loud as possible, whether the "art" of the music demands it or not. If that wasn't true, 30-50 year old albums wouldn't be remastered with extra heavy VC. The "artist" isn't deciding that, probably some type of recording industry desk jockey is.

 

There's a reason it's called "the volume wars".

[firedog]

I agree in looking at the top 200 albums, I can see where the direction of music and its not hi-rez its smartphones and ear buds, . Top Billboard 200 Albums : Sep 24, 2016 | Billboard Chart Archive

 

I just looked at the list, and I think the vast majority of those albums would sound better if not heavily volume compressed. Most music and formats would.

Even some of the styles that we think "must" be heavily volume compressed would sound better if the VC was moderate and not so heavy.

 

Unless music is pretty much monotonic, it should have dynamic contrasts and sounds better with them. Albums produced with a DR of 3-4 have had all the contrasts squeezed out of them.

Just because people have gotten used to music sounding super heavily compressed, doesn't mean it wouldn't sound better somewhat less compressed.

[Axiom05]

I just looked at the list, and I think the vast majority of those albums would sound better if not heavily volume compressed. Most music and formats would.

Even some of the styles that we think "must" be heavily volume compressed would sound better if the VC was moderate and not so heavy.

 

Unless music is pretty much monotonic, it should have dynamic contrasts and sounds better with them. Albums produced with a DR of 3-4 have had all the contrasts squeezed out of them.

Just because people have gotten used to music sounding super heavily compressed, doesn't mean it wouldn't sound better somewhat less compressed.

 

I agree 100%, however I believe the original post (#24) referring to the top 200 albums was about the benefit, or lack of, of recording in hi-res for these albums. Until the industry stops using high levels of VC, there isn't a lot of point to recording in hi-res.

[esldude]

We understand the market demand of our products and the limitations we have as a company which may not be true for other companies. I'm guessing you're not a regular customer (if at all, which is fine) for our music and are not looking at all the rebates/discounts we offer every week.

 

We have tested lower pricing and the customers did not buy more products in amounts that covered the monthly overhead to store, manage files and upgrade download sites. To accommodate those people who may have a financial hardship or don't want to pay more for downloads, we've taken a stance to price what we believe to be correct over time and offer rebates every week.

 

You can always find a rebate coupon or way to get free downloads here....

Newsletter | Blue Coast Music

 

Every week you'll find a rebate for $10 or $15 on a purchase. Our new album releases always have a 6 week period of intro pricing where there are substantial discounts of 40% off new albums. At least 3 months of the year we have Buy One Get One Free programs.

 

What we find is that most people don't ask for the rebate and choose to pay the higher price. So, while we offer 25-50% rebates the average monthly revenue is only discounted 7% on the whole. Meaning most people choose not to take a discount. Those that do, can. This formula works for us and our labels.

 

We specialize in acoustic music, not mainstream or classic rock from majors labels as others do. I can also say the albums that we sell in common with our competitors are returning 2.5 times more revenue to the labels and in many cases we are the main source of their high resolution download revenue. This is the case with the San Francisco Symphony who also sell on other well known sites for less money.

 

We compete with customer service. We help our customers with questions and playback issues on their devices. We will send out multiple format copies when requested. We help our financially strapped customers who may have health problems and in turn they help us with promotion.

 

I hope that helps your understanding of our pricing.

 

Cookie Marenco

Blue Coast Records

 

Actually I do get your newsletter and was aware of the various rebates and intro pricing. I have suggested your site to people before and they simply look at the regular price and say too much. They never get far enough to realize the difference.

 

Also, I hate, loath, despise rebates. Yes, everyone uses them. They are a hassle. If you want to sell something at a reduced price just sell at a reduced price. I have doubts that rebate pricing is giving you a clear picture about how many albums you might sell at reduced prices. And I don't know if reduced pricing would help or not. I do know the elevated pricing is something that pops up early in every discussion about hirez audio.

 

It is of course your business and you are the one with skin in the game. So not for me to say you are doing it wrong. I do know I would buy more music if the regular price were lower and I didn't have to look for specials.

[esldude]

I agree 100%, however I believe the original post (#24) referring to the top 200 albums was about the benefit, or lack of, of recording in hi-res for these albums. Until the industry stops using high levels of VC, there isn't a lot of point to recording in hi-res.

 

Yes one of those weird things. MQA, solution to hirez downloads at small file sizes. The truth is, a tremendous amount of modern compressed music would not be negatively impacted at all were it distributed in 44.1 khz sample rates and well dithered 8 bit. How is that for cutting down on file sizes?

[witchdoctor]

Thank you for asking... so many of these albums I love. You can see the whole list and what customers are liking at

Downloads NOW! |

 

My own favorites of late are:

Jenna Mammina, Close Your Eyes

Jenna Mammina | Close Your Eyes | Blue Coast Records

 

Fiona Joy.. Into the Mist (also coming in SACD)

Fiona Joy | Into The Mist | Blue Coast Records

 

Newport Blue Coast Collection -- Sampler of our artists who attended THE Show

Newport Blue Coast Sampler 1 | Blue Coast Records

 

If the format you buy doesn't work, send us an email and we'll figure out what to send you.

 

Enjoy!

Cookie Marenco

Blue Coast Records

 

OK, I am a hirez newbie. I am using a PC as a front end. To play these files should I connect to the processor via:

 

1) HDMI

2) Toslink

3) Via my Xonar U7 sound card

 

or just put them on a thumb drive and plug it into a usb port on the processor?

 

Thanks

[mansr]

OK, I am a hirez newbie. I am using a PC as a front end. To play these files should I connect to the processor via:

 

1) HDMI

2) Toslink

3) Via my Xonar U7 sound card

 

or just put them on a thumb drive and plug it into a usb port on the processor?

 

Thanks

How is your PC currently connected? Chances are it'll work as is.

[witchdoctor]

How is your PC currently connected? Chances are it'll work as is.

 

USB>xonar u7 soundcard>upsampled to PCM 192/24>marantz 7702 processor

[jabbr]

I would love to record and produce Regina Carter or Cecile McLorin Salvant and hope it happens one day. Many artists have deals for several albums that restricts who they work with. I hoping soon to have an announcement that may open up many possibilities for us to record albums for many artists previously unavailable. Still, I can only do 10-15 albums a year at the quality I want... if that.

 

Cookie, that's great ... and to clarify I'm a big fan of your work and have several of your downloads. In this world of streaming to iPhones with earbuds perhaps the artists focus more on live performances where they make more revenue?? Perhaps the major labels are more willing to let AP have access to their older work for SACD remastering e.g. Sarah Mclaughlin/Carly Simon. It would be great if the younger artists could be incentivized to have technically better recordings ...