Label Threads The Official Film Score Monthly (FSM) Thread

[Demondm810 399]

I don't know...this post has me mildly unsettled.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

It is very interesting to have the labels directly talk about the exclusivity of these releases we adore. If people honestly care that the number on the back on their CDs is incorrect, I don't know what to say. I've always figured that they were limited due to contractual obligations and restrictions from the studios. If they were actually able to press more, then good for them.

I will say though, I'm confused about what Lukas is asking from us. It seems like on the blog post that he's going to have to start producing and manufacturing less CDs. But in the comments he says that there's a demand for 8-10 thousand of certain CDs even though they only press 3 thousand.

[Andy 4,138]

I guess the only thing I don't get.. Can't FSM get in trouble with the studios for going over 3000? Isn't that a breach of contract or something? Or is it that they are negotiating more copies as they go?

[Koray Savas 2,251]

The studios assumedly only care about profit, so if a product is selling, I don't see why they wouldn't approve more pressings. I think the case here is Lukas not telling the consumers that they're "inflating" the market because he think there will be a backlash over the exclusivity and worth of certain items on the secondary market.

[Trent B 337]

If some scores do warrant the demand for a greater 5,000 unit pressing and if FSM can afford it then I say go for it. However if they think it'll be a less popular score then they should do the less than 3,000 unit. They should set the standards similar to how Intrada has it.

[scallenger 483]

All that matters to me is IF they do go solely on itunes that they offer lossless versions of the scores they upload. I don't want to settle for just 192kbps tracks or whatever the usual quality is...

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

192kbps?? That'll be the day I stop buying them.

[Charlie Brigden 7]

I love CDs, but I think lossless downloads should also be made available, or in place. It'd sure make international shipping easier.

[Joe Brausam 214]

I will say though, I'm confused about what Lukas is asking from us. It seems like on the blog post that he's going to have to start producing and manufacturing less CDs. But in the comments he says that there's a demand for 8-10 thousand of certain CDs even though they only press 3 thousand.

I think both is the case. Certain very popular titles, like Logan's Run as he mentioned, were produced in greater quantities than advertised. I think the Superman box is an example of this, however Lukas chose to handle that repressing publicly rather than privately. However the majority of releases don't sell well enough and warrant smaller pressings, hence being cut off.

[Thor 7,508]

What I said over there:

There is no such thing as too many CD's. Only lack of restraint and self-control. But that's from the consumer's point of view. It's a luxury problem.

I can understand how the saturated market can be frustrating for the sellers and the production companies. So I personally wouldn't mind a "cut" in the output. Perhaps that would even result in people actually TALKING about and ENJOYING the music instead of speculating on upcoming releases and whatnot. Could be healthy for the entire discourse.

So yeah....cut the output.

As long as you keep releasing unreleased Williams, Elfman and Goldenthal, of course! :spiny:

[Wojo 2,453]

Maybe it's time to turn each soundtrack label into a subscription service. You pay a flat rate each year to see the release schedule in advance, select the ones that you declare you will buy, and they press only those plus 500-1000 extra for everyone else, and that's it.

That would never work, because an entire year's worth of releases is not necessarily known in December when it's time to compile the list.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

I don't know, a lot of these big releases take about a year or more to come to fruition.

[Ollie 1,059]

Lukas gives some hints at the upcoming release schedule.

There are two FSMs due this week. One of them is a reissue of two 1970s WB LPs together on one CD: One of them might be the music-and-dialogue album to KUNG FU, and the other might be Man in the Wilderness.

The other FSM is a 3CD set that might be The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T., lovingly and obsessively restored from acetates unearthed over a billion-year period from all over the world.

There is a third FSM due in 2-3 weeks. It is a great John Scott Paramount score that might be North Dallas Forty (1979). I LOVE this score but I am afraid nobody will know what it is!

Lukas

http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=73334&forumID=1&archive=0&pageID=8&r=123#bottom

[Jay 37,369]

Those aren't hints, he told us exactly what the titles are

What does Kung Fu have to do with Man In the Wilderness?

The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T appears to be a 92 minute movie. Why does it require a 3CD set?

Never heard of North Dallas Forty before

I wonder where Poltergeist is?

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Nothing I'm interested in.

[Ollie 1,059]

Those aren't hints, he told us exactly what the titles are

What does Kung Fu have to do with Man In the Wilderness?

Both are Warner Brothers titles so it makes sense to combine them on to one CD.

The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T appears to be a 92 minute movie. Why does it require a 3CD set?

Well if the film is scored wall to wall, plus 11 songs not used in the film, and there was a LP, perhaps 1 disc is the album and the rest is the actual film score with alternates & other unused cues.

Never heard of North Dallas Forty before

As far as sports movies go I would recommend it as a must see, however I don't remember much about the music. I didn't realize John Scott scored the film.

I wonder where Poltergeist is?

I would imagine it's probably in one of those situations Lukas and others talk about. A small snafu might be delaying its release.

[Delorean90 42]

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T was drastically cut. It would be great to see a restored edition, but I don't know what condition the elements are in for such a thing. This FSM release will presumably shed some light on this subject. I enjoyed the music in film, so I'm definitely interested in this.

[Jay 37,369]

WOW.

These are the CDs (post-2001) that we have grossly overproduced:

Logan's Run (6500 pressed)
Man From U.N.C.L.E. Vol 1 (6000 pressed)
Ice Station Zebra (3500 pressed)
Knights of the Round Table (3500 pressed)
Man From U.N.C.L.E. Vol 2 (5000 pressed)
Where Eagles Dare (6500 pressed)
Big Wednesday (I think 4000 pressed...we need to do an inventory count to be sure)
Man From U.N.C.L.E. Vol 3 (4000 pressed)
Mutiny on the Bounty (4500 pressed)
Kelly's Heroes (7500 pressed! who'da thunk?)
The Thing From Another World (4000 pressed)
CHiPs Vol 1 (3500)
Twilight Zone The Movie (5000)
Bullitt (4000)

we made a ton of these too but I don't think we called them limited in the first place (no AFM issues):
Born Free (5000)
King Kong (5000)
Goodbye Mr. Chips (4000)

I have to explain what was going on and why things got out of hand.

At the beginning, the AFM would only grant the limited archival rates for pressings of 3000 or fewer.

But when we did The Omega Man and it sold out (actually we went to 4000 first, then I finally said I can't keep living this lie -- we settled up with the studio and the AFM after the fact), it was a hassle beyond belief. They sold on ebay for $200 and people would call every day if not week begging for copies.

Not to mention, we needed the money! Seriously, we were living hand-to-mouth. It was madness to cut off the cash flow that came from the popular titles!

But what happens when you overpress one title is that you can't let anything else sell out or it looks fishy. Why would the obvious sort of popular title sell out, but not the obvious super-popular? And people have slowly if tacitly figured out something strange was going on, what with Logan's Run remaining in print for ages while Intrada sold out of some of their limited edition CDs of comparable scores in weeks.

So it was easiest just to shut up and hope no one noticed, and quietly press everything as long as they would sell.

Ah, the life of crime. Sorry.

So in recent years, we asked the union to allow the limited rate to extend to 10,000 copies, and they kindly agreed. So at least everything is being paid for.

The only other shoe to drop has been what collectors would think if titles that they were led to believe were limited to 3,000 were in fact being pressed and pressed and pressed. And I'm hoping you guys forgive us.

As we get inventory straightened out we'll announce where sales are for other titles too.

Lukas

What we will do going forward is press up to 10,000 of the sexy titles—but the North Dallas Fortys of this world are going to be limited to 2,000, 1,500 or even 1,000, and when they are gone, they are gone. We can't change things up on people a second time. Looks like I am using my one get out of jail free card.

Lukas

And this is why I was paranoid to keep this secret for so long. It's not so much that we were pursuing profits as much as simply keeping the lights on...which wasn't easy. I'm still in personal debt from years of doing CDs.

Lukas

[Charlie Brigden 7]

Weird, I could have sworn TZTM sold out. Oh well, will grab that soon along with Logan's Run.

[TownerFan 4,983]

I remember once reading an interview with Luc Van de Ven (head of Prometheus) back in 2000 or so: he was sure that FSM was overproducing their titles in much more quantities than publicly declared ("I sold out all my CDs, they didn't sold out anything!"). Guess he was right.

That being said, I completely understand Lukas' motivations. He runs his company and he must take decisions to avoid going bankrupt. At least he's honest enough to tell publicly what he did. He doesn't produce CDs to make vile money, he's a film score lover as much as we are.

[Ollie 1,059]

Out of 220 titles, he's listed 14 that originally were listed at 3000 that went overboard.

A non issue for me.

[Jay 37,369]

Does this mean Lukas is going to have to owe the AFM a crap-ton of money now?

[Demondm810 399]

Holy cow.

[fommes 153]

While I actually applaud him for doing this (I'm not only a big supporter of keeping music available for everyone to buy, including in the future, but without this practice I fear FSM would have been out of business already, considering all the 'obscure' titles (for a contemporary audience) they release), I wish he would have kept quiet. There are always annoying fans with the collector's mentality who are going to be pissed. And hopefully he won't have any actual real-world trouble over this.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

I always wondered why Kelly's Heroes never sold out. I've had that on my wish list for over a year.

[Jay 37,369]

Its amazing to me that Kelly's Heroes has sold 7500 copies and is the biggest seller on that list! I've never even heard of it

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Listen to Tiger Tank and you'll know.

[Jay 37,369]

And Where Eagles Dare is the second biggest seller at 6500 units, and I've never even heard of that one either. Never even heard of its composer (Ron Goodwin)

Why did these 2 titles sell more copies than their Jerry Goldsmith releases?

[Ollie 1,059]

Well if you are a late collector of film music I can understand not being familiar with some of those older titles. But they are two well known WW2 films that have a sizable following. Both star Clint Eastwood, Kelly's Heroes also boasts a large, well known cast. Ron Goodwin is a well know British composer with a nice resume of films. Lalo Schifrin scored Kelly's Heroes.

[Trent B 337]

As I said before I do think if FSM sets their standards to Intrada's it might be better for them in the long run. The less obscure not really popular titles should be any where from 1,000 to 2,000 copies. The more popular ones 3,000 to 5,000 copies depending on it's popularity.

I also think they went overboard on producing the number of sets for the Ron Jones Star Trek The Next Generation project. The Star Trek TV scores don't have much of a fan base as the movies do. I know Lukas poured his heart and soul into that project but he should have at least limited it to 2,500 copies. Plus he said it hasn't really made the money back for it yet.

[Ollie 1,059]

Yeah, I agree.

I've always felt that FSM needed to lower the level on quite a few of their "lesser" releases. There needs to be an option though, in case one of the titles sells unexpectedly well, that they have the option to extend the release at a reasonable rate.

[Trent B 337]

I agree with you Mark that if one title does sell out unexpectedly that there should be an option to press more copies.

[Jay 37,369]

Another confession from Lukas:

Do you want the true story of the "warehouse" finds we did with The Omega Man and The Towering Inferno?

Oh boy, more confessions.

In both cases, once the titles sold out, we had extra discs (we had run out of booklets). I had a spindle of loose discs and from time to time people would call BEGGING for copies. So I would just say, dude, if I sent you a loose disc, would that make you happy? And more often than not, it would. That's how nice I was (am).

A time came when we were in a dreadful cash crunch. It was like, "can't pay the rent" time. Awful. A 27-year-old business genius, I was not.

I said to hell with this...how much would it cost to make another 1000 booklets of The Omega Man? And the answer was $2000 or something. Then I figured, if we did a "warehouse find" of another 90 copies (which was what I had left of loose discs on the spindle)—numbers are approximate, I honestly don't remember—I figured we could run a promotion where if people bought $200 worth of stuff, I'd just give them a "warehouse find" Omega Man for free. And that 90 * $200 = $18,000 and would more than cover the $2000 to make the booklets and buy some jewel boxes—and we could pay the rent and other bills. And I figured nobody would really know or care.

So we did it.

And then later did it with The Towering Inferno (or vice versa, I don't remember the order).

Those were the warehouse finds. Now you know!

Of course, we ended up with something like 800 extra booklets of each title...and we still have them today at SAE. There's no reason we couldn't just throw them in outgoing shipments. Would you like that?

This is truly a dopey, dumb business and I am sorry we have deceived people from time to time. I honestly only cared that the music was getting preserved and finding its way to people who loved it. I decided that if those two things could happen, I could live with all the other compromises. I hope everybody else does too.

Lukas

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

Why is he admitting all of these things? What'd I miss?

[Jay 37,369]

Just something he decided to do I guess?

You can read his short blog post here: http://filmscoremonthly.com/daily/article.cfm/articleID/6575/

And then the forum thread where he's been continuing to confess stuff here: http://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=73334

[fommes 153]

Yeah I wish he would shut up

He's only giving the complainers a reason to whine.

[Ollie 1,059]

He keeps this up he's going to confess to taking the Lindburgh baby next.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

Nothing he says has bothered me. I don't feel cheated if a CD wasn't as limited as advertised. I bought it for the music, not the edition number.

[Ollie 1,059]

I have no problem either. Man's got to pay the bills.

[Demondm810 399]

I suspect something triggered his desire to come clean...

[Ollie 1,059]

The economy and need to move inventory.

[Trent B 337]

It's also possible things have been building up to this and the recent issue with the Ron Jones TNG set is probably what broke the last straw for him.

I too have no problems with what he says. Those who do, well they need to change their out look on this hobby.

[Andy 4,138]

Interesting that this comes the week after the FF Shrine debacle. I'm not saying the two are related, but maybe after getting beaten up over that, he just said, "F - it. I'm telling all."

I admire Lukas and his willingness to share the honesty with his customers.

EDIT: looks like Trent and I were thinking alike!

[John Crichton 4]

I have no problem with any of Lukas' confessions either. Much shadier things have been done in the business world. The man puts the customers first and was able to make the extra money he needed at the same time. Win/win.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

I'm sure Lukas is trying to completely redesign his business right now. The FFShrine ordeal set it off, and then there were threads like people complaining about too many CDs, and there's obviously the economic crunch and the need for him to make some major business decisions. He's just thinking out loud, and considering how we feel about it all. True customer service.

[Jay 37,369]

He's been re-designing his business model slightly in recent months.... for a long time every "big" score was 3,000 units, but this year he released Black Sunday as 10,000, and Outland and Islands In The Stream at 5,000

[Andy 4,138]

It's sad to hear him say he's in personal debt over his business of selling film score CDs.

[Jacob 0]

So it was easiest just to shut up and hope no one noticed, and quietly press everything as long as they would sell.

Ah, the life of crime. Sorry.

Lukas

Why, you slimy, double-crossing, no-good swindler.

[Richard Penna 3,694]

It's sad to hear him say he's in personal debt over his business of selling film score CDs.

I'd be surprised if he wasn't. Just like I can imagine Doug Fake has some form of dept from Intrada.

I've wondered for a while how healthy these businesses really are. Intrada does the equivalent of a release-a-week and many titles seem to have copies floating around for a long time... yet they keep coming. Either their profit point doesn't rely on selling everything immediately, or they're in debt. Same goes for LLL - the only recent LE I've seen them sell out of was Poseidon. Just how long can these guys survive with inventory that doesn't move?

And like others, I don't care what Lukas does as long as it's legal and it helps keep the business afloat. Regarding the AFM thing, I got the impression he had paid up for all the extra copies he pressed, and the coming clean part is revealing to all of us that the limited weren't so limited. I hope the crutch isn't that he didn't tell the AFM... that couldn't be good.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

It's the end of the world, I tells ya!