doberman dishing
To my soliciting of comments on the experience of buying and consuming my experiment in online music, some audiophile discontent was registered. More than one person suggested offering higher-quality audio files (WAV, AAC, or higher-than-256-kbps-resolution MP3's) at a higher price as a second buying option. An interesting idea, though it could possibly create more burdens than I can handle on my own. With this record, because of the slightly homely recording tools used and the massive size of the album, a not-too-big file size was the way to go. This thing was recorded at home on ProTools, folks, not at Capitol's B room in greater Los Angeles! Whatever is missing from the files would probably injure the listening experience, not enhance it. Regardless of that, meeting or slightly beating the industrywide audio file quality standard set by itunes seems to me quite good enough. But if I'm releasing something lusher and smaller in the future (my reproductive organ?), I will definitely return to these reactions for consideration.
Someone mentioned liking a palpable, artistic component like a sleeve or booklet to go with purchased music. I think this is true for a lot of us. I noticed an itunes purchase I made the other day came with a downloadable booklet. Maybe I can devise one of these if I do another online release.
To the idea of offering this on CD -- the point of doing this was to offer files online and force business through the portal of the site. Too, I disagree that CD's sound very terrific to begin with. But the more I have thought over the problem of selling the "Doberman" at promotional shows (the problem being that I haven't been), the more I'm concluding that selling CDs from the stage, as I do with all the other titles in my catalog, may be the best solution. Selling and setting up discount codes, bringing USB drives, having Macbook stations at the shows...I don't know, my basic reaction is that it's too much for a low-income DIY troubadour to take on, and a significant fraction of my audience is wedded to 1980 technology anyway. I think when I get back to Chicago I'll have a company run off some discs representing a good sampling of the Doberman and sell that at shows.
Vinyl -- love it -- see "low-income" section above.
One person mentioned stuttering defects on some files. This has got to be something that happened in the disc encoding or playing because it's not in the original files that we sell. If anyone has a persistent problem with anything like this please let me know and John or I will take care of it as best we can.
I have to confess bafflement at the comment, repeated a few times, that folks are not buying my files because they don't like listening to music over headphones. Do they not know that you can listen to ipods aloud, or that you can burn a disc after buying and listen wherever and however you like, or am I not getting something?
To someone's opinion that Doberman has 30 good songs, 8-10 OK songs, and the rest abortions or travesties, I agree completely. I think that after you account for differences in taste, and account for some songs that just didn't spring to life for whatever reason, you're left with a little over two ordinary CDs' worth of valuable music. That was my hopeful opinion listening to the music shortly after finishing the package, and the main rationale for the $35 price.
Thank you so much for all the substantial, thoughtful, and diplomatically expressed comments!
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11 comments
Any chance of full _Doberman_ lyrics appearing on the site?
I came here because Wade told me there was a dick joke. Not exactly, but genitals were mentioned at least, so thanks.
Today I slept til 2 pm and I also dreamed of Mike Fredrickson.
No matter what screen name you use, your posts are always moronic, Tara. No wonder Robbie hates you.
"I have to confess bafflement at the comment, repeated a few times, that folks are not buying my files because they don't like listening to music over headphones. Do they not know that you can listen to ipods aloud, or that you can burn a disc after buying and listen wherever and however you like, or am I not getting something?"
Thank God! I thought I was the only one not getting this.
I think mostly there's a learning curve. Changing over to a new format of music can seem hard. I remember before recordable cds, I thought tapes were still the best as you could still record mix tapes.
Why do you care so much, Anselmo? What kind of (fore)skin do you have in this game called Loving Robbie Fulks? He can hate me all he wants (I personally don't think he has the time to bother) but there's still good output from the guy. So I'm still here.
And yeah, there's a crapload of things you can stick your ipod into if you want to hear the music come out instead of go right in your ear.
Anselmo, while I'm at it... stick it in your ear.
Robbie says that it was recorded in protools, not at the high quality capitol records studio. He also says that anything higher fidelity could add to the sound would be painful.
#1, protools is used in most major studios these days. The idea that this makes the quality sub-par is ignorant.
#2, the "adding" isn't being done by higher fidelity formats. The "adding" is the high frequency noise (often called metalic sparklies) that the lossy compression of MP3 adds to everything that is converted to that format.
I personally wouldn't mind something in an even LOWER fidelity, but the high end distortion of MP3s is painful to those of us who still have all our hearing intact.
If Robbie feels it's time to stop releasing CDs and force all business through the web, then I guess it's time to stop buying Robbie's music. If I've got to inflict pain on my ears to hear it, then it's not worth hearing it. Plain and simple.
Hate the music industry all you want, but when you start to hate your fans so much that you attack them for wanting higher quality, maybe it's time to seek out another line of work.
GeeZ!
Good to hear Robbie's thoughts on Doberman and its perceived advantages and flaws. I, for one, bought the entire package and listened to it, and the experience seems hardly any different from purchasing material on iTunes, which is to say, the seeking, finding, buying and listening experience remains mostly unchanged, but for two major things: none of my money went to a middleman and I got to buy a supersized package of material of music from an artist I enjoy. I won't lie and say I liked everything on Doberman, but that hardly matters - one of the things I love about Robbie's is that he's a complete musician, willing to take risks.
As for liner notes, artwork and other tangibles - it's a modern world, people, and I also miss the album accoutrements, but (Apple's much-ballyhooed Cocktail notwithstanding) these things have been forced into retirement. We still have the music. I applaud Robbie's efforts.
Then again, I might be all sunshine and lollipops because I'm on the west coast, where we never see him.
After reading Robbie's effort to explain the reasoning behind the format he chose for the release of Doberman, it's astonishing to me that one would feel like Robbie was "attacking" his fans. I'm surprised that I'm even writing a response on a Msg Board, as I'm not much for this sort of thing. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Though, don't dare say that Robbie "hates his fans". How ludicrous of a statement is this? If he didn't care about his fans, he wouldn't have gone into detail regarding the choice of format for this release. While he is defending the choice made, he also takes fans' comments and suggestions into consideration. Robbie is experimenting. Don't be so uptight.
While Robbie can speak for himself, I believe the point that he is making for his format choice is that the Doberman recordings are (purposely) not overproduced; and months weren't spent on engineering and mastering the tracks. Instead, ProTools -- while utilized in a number of professional recording studios -- was used to produce a bulk of songs that Robbie meant to keep simple throughout the entire process, from the first note played to the end product. This is Robbie Fulks, not Roger Waters.
I too examined all the above considerations [briefly] during my download/listening experience.
Bottom Line: Given the choice of having the opportunity to purchase the complete package - in any form at any price vs. not having that option makes the other considerations trivial.
The whole was exponentially greater than the sum of its parts and reaffirmed my belief in art and technology - and most of all in Robbie Fulks !
Thank You !!
Yes, please sell the cd at gigs and while your at, please throw a little cover art and package together, give us a little photoshopping and some copy, won't you?
Oh and no I'm not giving you $35 for the disc(s) but I will happily throw you a twenty (plus five even) for the double-ish cd.
Dave:
Only *terrible* quality mp3s have that weird sound you're describing. You apparently judged the format in 1998 when people were still distributing files encoded at 128, and never looked back. And this mess about adding to the high end is just nonsense, one of the ways mp3s are reduced in size is by ELIMINATING extremely low and high end frequencies that are beyond the range of human hearing.
It hurts you to hear an mp3? Hurts? Good grief. Not only is it not painful, I'd confidently bet good money that you could not consistently distinguish high-bitrate MP3s from CDs played through the same stereo system (CD quality is far from perfect, by the way. Why not insist on SACD?) It's in your head. Let me say that again: it isn't real, it's in your head. Maybe you're just angry at change in general, I dunno, but you should probably get over it.
Also, do you really think professional musician Robbie Fulks isn't aware that studios use ProTools? Do you suppose maybe there's some other difference between recording in a full-featured studio vs plugging some mics into your laptop?
It's not just that you don't know what you're talking about. I would have probably let that go. It was the tone of your comment that made me respond. Someone here's ignorant and it ain't Robbie. GeeZ!