by Rubellan » Mon Dec 23, 2019 8:46 am
Yes, I say everyone buy them all many times over and keep this train rolling!
But I do want to share some other news, and I'm still not sure how all of this is going to shake out. Universal informed me they are transitioning from finished good deals, where they do all the manufacturing with the price included in the cost to me, to license deals, which will see me doing the manufacturing myself. On one hand, I'm absolutely thrilled about this because I've been gritting my teeth with my production contact. She generally needs to be reminded about things and is terrible at relaying important details. Case in point, I had planned to have Visage and even Ric in hand early January. I sent her an email on Friday only to receive her out of office stating she will be out until January 6. I wanted to scream! She never informed me and she's been dragging her feet on the Visage re-press and the disc manufacturing. On January 6, she will have a message waiting for her telling her I will be checking in regularly until these projects are done. Once manufacturing transitions to me, you can be assured there will be no ass-dragging delays and things will get done quickly and correctly.
The gray area is cost. While I've found a manufacturer that will do my runs for a decent price, I still have yet to see what the re-calculated costs from Universal will be minus the manufacturing. My hope is it will still be worthwhile, or even more encouraging. But I also don't know if I'm going to have a new initial contact or keep the same, who hasn't replied to any emails in the past several weeks. I also don't know if there's going to be new restrictions on requests. For example, I had requested to license the Berlin albums 'Pleasure Victim' and 'Love Life', each with bonus tracks. I got word a month ago that Pleasure Victim cleared other than two tracks that have to be cleared via the International office. And then I heard in a non-standard way that Love Life cleared. I say non-standard because I received the final agreement to sign and I didn't even know it had cleared. That usually doesn't come until well into production, so it had actually cleared some time ago and no one told me. But in the meantime, I had found some potential unreleased material I wanted to include on the reissue and tried and tried to get a response if I could add it. After a month of trying to get some sort of feedback I was told by a high level exec in licensing they will only allow the album to be reissued straight without bonus tracks. But then I informed them the clearance included 3 bonus tracks. It appears they are letting me continue with those additional tracks but if they suddenly decide bonus tracks are not an option for new requests, there's no point in carrying on. We would really have no use for bare bones reissues when expanded editions are what's lacking. I have asked a few questions to the person who has provided some of the new info but haven't gotten any response. It's likely they are still working out the details of this new process but I'm hoping all will become clear soon into the new year. But I still have several requests with bonus tracks working their way through that will be transitioned to licenses, so hopefully there will still be pleasant surprises coming.
Thanks for the support in 2019 and beyond!