Is our community and love to listening to the soundtracks are so niche?

[mxsch 115]

I wonder about it. I think that many people occasionally can listen to some soundtracks, but definitely are not diving deeper like us.

With me it all started pretty randomly. Listened to main title of the Star Wars because I'm a SW nerd since my 6, and later got my hands on the Batman OST and loved it to the death even in the childhood. 

Later I've rediscovered SW soundtracks through the RCA 2CD's and also listened to the Ultimate Digital Collection pretty much countless amount of the times. The rest is the history.

By the way, you are all so great, guys. I love this forum so much and I'm glad that I've found it, even though it wasn't that hard. 

[Jay 37,364]

Yes we're extremely niche 

[A24 4,333]

You can close the topic now.

[Jurassic Shark 12,076]

Probably more people prefer listening to sound effects.

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

There's one observation that always reminds me just how niche we are:

 

The great halls of a big concert house usually holds an audience of somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 people. E.g. the major houses in Vienna: The Musikverein holds 1,744; the Konzerthaus 1,865; and the State Opera 1,709. Musikverein and State Opera also offer standing tickets, which brings the total for those up to 2,000+. And remember those are only the main halls; both concert halls have additional smaller halls that often have concerts at the same time (the State Opera doesn't).

 

Now these halls usually have concerts every day, on many days more than once. And for many of those, they're pretty well filled - the State Opera is almost always at nearly full capacity. So that's 1,500 people who either live around here, or are here on holiday (or a business trip), or specifically travelled here for a concert, and who are interested enough in the concert to pay for it, some of them around €10 or slightly less (standing tickets), many of them around €50 or more, a significant number over €100 (or even over €200 at the State Opera). Every day, for any average concert. Highly popular events, like JW's Philharmoniker concerts, or the annual increasingly overpriced "Hollywood in Vienna" can easily sell out two days in a matter of weeks or even days.

 

Compare to that the limited releases by the soundtrack speciality labels: Some are limited to 1,000 copies, some to 2,000, the really popular ones to 3,000 - anything higher has become very rare these days I think. Depending on whether it's one, or two, or three CDs, and where you live, the cost per album including shipping costs will be somewhere between €25 and €60 - on par with a non-expensive concert ticket. The amount of music you get is more or less the same, on average.

 

Often, these releases are scores that a significant number of our community have been hoping for for years, or decades - i.e. some of the most highly sought after things that can exist for our niche. And they're more or less easily available to people in, more or less, the entire world, unlike the concerts, which require you to be in a specific place at a specific time.

 

But many (most?) of these take years to sell out - and a significant number never even sells the allowed limit, because interest is too low to warrant printing all copies before letting them go out of print. And that's the total throughput for our entire community in the entire world.

 

In other words: An average concert audience in Vienna is bigger than the number of people in the entire world who have Quartet's new Images release. The audience of the two Hans Zimmer "Hollywood in Vienna" concerts, which sold out within days, are bigger than the full group of all people in the whole world who own a copy of LLL's Hook.

 

[Nick1Ø66 4,714]

Yes, it's niche. At least they way we listen.

 

But in some ways it's not niche at all.  I know many people who don't care about film music one bit but will say something like "the music in that movie was really good". They don't care who the composer is and would never listen to the soundtrack, but the score stood out to them.

 

And something that's always fun that I'm sure many of us have experienced is knowing people who have no idea who John Williams is, but are stunned when they learn how many films he scored, and that the wrote the Olympic theme, etc. They had no idea those tunes they've been hearing and humming their entire life were written by the same guy.  I had a friend who recently went a concert of JW's music because she was invited and just couldn't believe how much she recognized. She'll still never buy an OST but has a JW playlist on Spotify now.

[GerateWohl 4,369]

I think, in almost any genre like soundtracks, classic jazz or death Metal you have basically three fan categories. Four if you count in musicians who mainly get the sheet music to play it. The other three are greatest hits fans, that love the highlights, OST fans the buy the regular albums when they come out, and from time to time a speciality release but no aim for completeness. I would count myself in that category, which I would not call very niche. Then there are the completists, that are reaching out for each and every last bit. That is indeed quite niche. But I am even not sure if these are the majority here.

[Jurassic Shark 12,076]

1 minute ago, GerateWohl said:

That is indeed quite niche OCD.

 

[GerateWohl 4,369]

I am not good with abbreviations.

[Jurassic Shark 12,076]

Original CD.

 

You're welcome.

[Thor 7,504]

Very niche in most things, but in some ways a popular niche too, if there is such a thing. As Marian alludes to, certain film-related concerts are big sellers for orchestras compared to their "regular" classical concerts.

[Richard Penna 3,689]

20 hours ago, Nick1066 said:

Yes, it's niche. At least they way we listen.

 

But in some ways it's not niche at all.  I know many people who don't care about film music one bit but will say something like "the music in that movie was really good". They don't care who the composer is and would never listen to the soundtrack, but the score stood out to them.

 

And something that's always fun that I'm sure many people here have experienced is knowing people who have no idea who John Williams is, but are stunned when they learn how many films he scored, and that the wrote the Olympic theme, etc. They had no idea those tunes they've been hearing and humming their entire life were written by the same guy.  I had a friend who recently went a concert of JW's music because she was invited and just couldn't believe how much she recognized. She'll still never buy an OST but she has a JW playlist on Spotify now.

 

Yes, I know quite a lot of people who know I'm into scores; would recognise scores from films that are far from mainstream, and would go to a concert at a whim.... yet wouldn't buy a score album.

 

Some of them I could imagine perhaps owning the odd album or having a 'best of' by the composer in a Spotify playlist. But the idea of obsessing over unreleased music would be completely foreign to them.

 

I was having a conversation last night with a friend about the Clarkson's Farm series we'd both finished, and the one topic I didn't talk about, but which I'd obsessed over, was the music. I'd figured out by halfway through the first episode that they'd used the Extreme Music library to score it, and went looking for a handful of cues that I rather liked. I occasionally mention this obsession to the odd friend, and either they give me my 10 mins to explain what the hell it is I'm doing (spending hours combing through a website for background music), or I can sense their signals that they don't particularly care, and shut up.

 

Even when it comes to my most mainstream tastes, my obsession with the nich comes in. I'm a big fan of Dua Lipa, but what most people won't care about are things like instrumental/rearranged versions played during live events, such as the Brit Awards.

 

I even discovered after Eurovision this year that the composer of the music had released some of it in one of those 'collection' releases, because I ran Shazam at one point. How many people would bother to do that?

[GerateWohl 4,369]

3 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Original CD.

WETM