June 9 : Sonic Youth’s ‘The Eternal’ with BEGN option

If you can wait a year I'm sure you can recoup on the LP.

Remember, very little of that Pavement was unreleased. Recording costs were zero. They just had to master it. The Sonic Youth is brand new music rather than stuff you (or at least I) already owned. Matador HAD to offer a lot to get fans to REBUY what they already owned, and the band probably didn't demand as much money as SY.

Also, don't you think there are more goodies coming?

 

$35 for 3 LP's isn't too bad. Matador seems like they raised vinyl prices across the board, so I assume their costs went up somewhere along the line.

 

I see mention of FLACs being offered for the downloads. Is this correct? If so, I'll sign up. I have no interest in paying for mp3s, but I'll pay for FLACs as long as all of the bonus download material is going to be FLAC.

 

I don't know about all of the material, but the first download ("Silver Rocket" from 7/4) was available in FLAC and MP3.

 

They went back and added Flac for the New Pornographers BEGN of 2007, so I think it is a good be that they're all flac now.

 

Here's the reply a friend of mine got from Matador:

I have no problem with the math except it doesn't explain why the label wants to do the end around on stores. Note he doesn't say "if we sell it for $38 HERE. then our profit is $20.50"

 

Do you think they run their store for free? And they are offering the album, plus bonus disk, for $35! So where is the $20.50? It's $17.50, less overhead, less the cost of the bonus.

Anyway, if you think about it, physically they are offering a Music Matters level product--Stoughton sleeves, RTI double album, for 24% less. And when I think about other indie labels who do that quality, the records are usually $18-$22 for a single LP. So I don't think there is any deception going on. This is just what it costs to run an album through the distribution system.

 

The "Help and Info" section of the SY BEGN site only says they'll be MP3s: "bonus exclusive MP3 outtakes and live tracks"

In addition to the live "b-side" which is in both FLAC and MP3, there's a download on the SY BEGN site this is only offered as 160kbps MP3:

"Sacred Trickster"

It's all the way at the bottom of the page (first thing they posted to this page way back at the beginning of the promotion?).

Weirdly, they offer it in two formats of almost identical size, both resulting in the exact same 160kbps MP3 file:

• Download ZIP (2,540 KB)
• Download MP3 (2,567 KB)

It doesn't sound like an outtake to me, though. (It's 2:11 long, just like the first track in the streaming album, and sounds the same to me, albeit a bit brighter than the streaming audio.)

So I'm still waiting on the promised "bonus exclusive MP3 outtakes and live tracks" . . . Note the plural for each - it suggests multiple outtakes and multiple live tracks should be offered. Maybe they're waiting until the day before release date and on that day they'll quietly offer up a lot of outtakes and live tracks? (At what point does hopeful optimism turn into pathetic delusion?)

Craig.

 

Sacred Trickster is not a b-side, it's a preview album track.

Do you really think Matador is not going to deliver on what they promised? Seriously?

I'm sure there will be outtakes and more live tracks. I don't know when...with New Pornographers we got a live album months after the album was released, and some extras too.

 

Maybe I misinterpret the "Buy Early Get Now" concept, then. I thought it means if I pre-order, I get a bunch of extra stuff in advance (i.e., "early"). Obviously the physical parts (CD, LP, poster) will be sent on release day, but all the non-physical goodies should be provided in the weeks leading up to release, shouldn't they?

I would have thought they would have all the goodies pre-defined and queued up for pushing something new out every week or so, but it doesn't seem like they've done much of that (unless you count the several emails related to the pre-sale tickets).

I guess this BEGN has turned, so far, into primarily a vehicle for pre-sale ticket goodies. Which is wonderful if that was one of your main reasons for buying into the SY BEGN promotion. Those of us who mainly bought into it for the promised outtakes and live tracks are feeling kinda left out so far.

I do hope that they provide the outtakes and live tracks eventually, and it's not that I believe that they'll never deliver (I've never known Matador to screw over customers). I am criticizing how they've handled this SY BEGN promotion, though, compared to my experience with the last one (the Pavement BEGN). I just have high expectations of Matador, and I feel like they've slipped up on how they've rolled out this BEGN.

Craig.

 

Buy early...yes, we got that part.

Get now: stream, preview song, b-side, tickets...and we're still ten days from release. Did I say stream? They're not gonna float a whole bunch of outtakes BEFORE the album, I don't think.

Look, you buy early, you get to stream the album for six weeks before release. That's always the main early component of these offers. This IS the seventh time they've run this type promotion.

Patience!

 

The devil's always in the details, isn't it?

While I don't have a problem with a premium vinyl pressing, I do have a problem when it's the only option. The download of the entire album have been floating around in the usual places for several weeks now, which will certainly cannibalize sales to the "digital only" people...

For the life of CDs, everybody wanted you to believe that the "new format" was more expensive to produce than the vinyl, and thus worth a premium price/profit for the labels (which incidentally was never passed on to retail, who were expected to subsist on higher volume). Then everyone figured out, by virtue of 100 blank CD-Rs for $5.99 or whatever, that CDs weren't expensive to produce at all, and certainly not worth the $18.99/$19.99 being charged for "frontline" titles. CD sales plummeted; file sharing proliferated.

Now, with the "vinyl resurgence", labels have another golden goose to bludgeon.

There's no reason SY and Matador could not have done what many other current acts (Radiohead, Metallica reissues, new Mastodon) have done; a decent vinyl press at close to CD price, and a super-duper $30/$40 RTI 180G bells and whistles pressing.

Again my issue isn't really with the price per se, but the fact that setting the price so high without an alternative encourages the SY fanbase to NOT buy it, as if people need more encouragement to not buy records.

 

Does anyone know? For the CD plus live LP option, and then there are the downloads ... Will they offer the live lp as an entire download? I don't really care lp vs good quality MP3, but I kinda really want that live stuff. But I'd prefer to download it, than do a needle drop.

 

while I didn't get an email from matador or insound, I did see on facebook that the 2nd mp3/flac song is available for download on the BEGN site, an '87 demo of Catholic Block.

 

It is available. An interesting listen too.

Also, did anyone else get an email stating that their album had shipped? I got such an email today. It's good to know the album was actually shipped before the release date.

 

Yeah, I got that email two days ago, and the package was delivered to my house today. Haven't had a chance to open it yet...

 

got that email this morning, and tonite an email with a link to download Brave Men Run (in my family) live in Chicago '85

 

Hoping the lp arrives tomorrow, it shipped Tuesday. Be nice to have it for the weekend.

 

Mine is here and I forgot I ordered it from Insound early enough to get a signed cover--which was in addition to the regular sealed, jacketed cover. Pretty nice. Haven't played the live LP yet (sadly, I missed going to that show because of emergency electrical work in my apartment).

I continue to be less than impressed with the album. It continues in the vein of Rather Ripped, but though it has some nice moments, nothing's got me singing along, like Rats or a few others from the last (which was already my least favorite SY). Production continues in the thick/warm/dark/compressed vein (talking vinyl) that they have used since Sonic Nurse (except the clear, dynamic, bright Ghosts and Flowers). It has a nice bass and kick drum sounds but lacks a bit of clarity and air in the guitars, snares, and cymbals. It's a sound that I associate with SHF taste, actually, overly sweet. This is on a VPI Aries/Lyra Dorian/Linn Linto--which is on the bright side.

But maybe it will grow on me. It's not bad or anything, but right now it's my least favorite SY album. We'll see how they sound live. Last time I saw them, after Murray Street, they smoked, probably the best show I've seen them do (out of ten or so).

 

I didn't get an email from Matador, but a mysterious UPS shipping notice that took me a little digging to figure out that it's my SY BEGN shipment. I likely won't get it before the release date, but it won't be much later than getting it via Amazon Prime, so that's fine with me. It's the preorders where you get it a week or more later that leave me fuming. (The Dave Matthews Band preorder got it right this week, too - shipped out via US mail and arrived on Tuesday.)

The stream sounded pretty good to me, but I like the tuneful latter-day SY a lot.

 

Can someone who received it post the tracklist for the live LP? Thanks.

 

still no arrival here yet. i had really hoped to spin it tonight, too.

 

Certainly:

Sonic Youth
Battery Park, NYC
July 4th, 2008

Side 1:
She Is Not Alone
The Sprawl
World Looks Red
James Run Free
Hey Joni

Side 2:
The Wonder
Hyperstation
Bull in the Heather
100%
Making the Nature Scene

Haven't listened yet, but it's packaged not in a normal outer jacket, but in a thick piece of paper that's folded in half around the LP. Has a rice-paper sleeve.

 

Thanks for posting this! I'm looking forward to hearing the live LP (I haven't received my order yet). I was able to see this show when I lived in NY. The Feelies opened for them. It's the main reason I signed up for the BEGN option for this album. It's not the complete set, but it'll be a nice souvenir of the show. From reading your description though, I kind of wished they would have put some better packaging on it.

 

I really liked the clips I listened too from the stream of the album, though I stopped after the fourth song so that I would have some sense of surprise spinning it for the first time. I just ordered the cd and live lp as apposed to the vinyl release of the new album. I really hope the cd is not maximized and compressed to all hell.