Since we started selling downloads, a number of people have been asking us what the performers are getting paid. This is a critically important question and one that we are happy to answer. You see, at Wolfgang’s Vault we recognize how important the artist is and how important their music is to our lives.

Based upon all the information that is available to us, we believe that performers can earn between four and six times more from Wolfgang’s Vault per download than they currently receive from their record companies. In a well publicized dispute between performers and major record labels, the performers state that they typically earn only $.045 per downloaded song – less than 5% of the total per song download price.

The Wolfgang’s Vault agreement pays the performer significantly more, remits the money much faster and gives the performer the tools to review download sales activity in real-time. For example, assuming a price of $9.98 for each concert downloaded from the Wolfgang’s Vault website, our payment and reporting structure would be as follows;

1.	Thirty percent (30%) of the download price goes to Wolfgang’s Vault to cover manufacturing cost, distribution expenses and credit card fees. Our manufacturing costs include repairing and restoring the audio tapes – many of which are more than 35 years old, transferring the original concert tapes into a high-end digital format, mixing and mastering the music using some of the very best engineers available, tracking the concerts (naming songs and creating breaks between songs), setting up online real-time reports for the performer and researching and writing concert descriptions. Distribution expenses include website development, operations, maintenance, hosting and bandwidth.
2.	From the remaining 70% of the download price, the songwriter is typically entitled to receive a publishing royalty of $.091 per song for the use of the song itself.
3.	After paying the publishing royalty, the remaining proceeds from the download price are split 50/50 between the performer and King Biscuit Records. There are no marketing, free-goods or other deductions.
4.	For a typical 12 song concert, the performer would receive a payment of about $.25 per song. If the performer was also the songwriter, this payment would be $.341. At the low end, the performer would receive a payment that is nearly six times the payment they claim they are currently receiving from the major record companies for a similar download.
5.	In total, for each 12 song concert, the performer would receive almost $3.00 and more than $4.00 per concert if the performer was also the songwriter.
6.	The performer is paid monthly, within 10 days after the end of the month. A reconciliation statement accompanies each remittance. All payments to performers include interest at the 90 Day T-Bill rate, calculated from the moment the performer's share is received by Wolfgang's Vault until it is paid to the performer.
7.	The performer has access to secure online reports which detail up-to-the-minute download sales.

The only exceptions to this payment and reporting structure are concerts that were subject to agreements executed many years ago. All new concerts would be subject to the current Wolfgang’s Vault agreement.

In conclusion, WV offers performers the best place to present and sell their live performance music and consumers the best place to listen to and buy live performance music. We encourage any performer that has interest in talking to us to contact:

George Alexandrou 212-994-6760 (office) 212-994-6757 (fax) galexandrou@wolfgangsvault.com

Kevin Cain 212-994-6761 (office) 212-994-6757 (fax) kcain@wolfgangsvault.com

Cheers!

Wolfgang

so is anyone complaining now????

great job guys!!!

 

will you ever post a chart or download numbers for us consumers to see?? i would like to know how the response is to the downloads.

 

regards, "rpm"

I'd love to give you/them some of my money for downloads. But first, you gotta go lossless. No lossless, no cash. I'm less picky then some. For the right shows in high quality, I'll gladly accept shn, flac, ape or even wav (I've got a lot of bandwith!). BUT NO MP3, No WMA, NO ITUNES, etc.

moo:

I'd love to give you/them some of my money for downloads. But first, you gotta go lossless. No lossless, no cash. I'm less picky then some. ...

How so?

I'd love to pay for lossless. But as others are saying, it must be lossless. Thanks in advance! BTW, any ideas when lossless may be available?

I agree with you on the lossless, once I can downlowd it lossless I will purchase the shows.

Great job and very fair! Hopefully more performers will permit downloading through the Vault. These concerts need to be heard!

Since performers are paid more through WG Vault downloads than other sites, I would think they would want as much exposure and downloads as possible. Lossless downloads will do that. I say that if you truly care about the bands and want to stay true to Wolfgang, you'll offer lossless downloads ASAP. Thanks!

Could this be the greatest site ever? I think so.  Keeping real music, and real royalty payments alive for the artist, and preserving the integrity of the materials contained therein.   You're a model company.  Thank you.  Now, can you please start selling The Who @ Fillmore East from '68?  I really 'need' that one ;)

That's all well and good, but you seem to be "stuck" on 58 concerts, and quite frankly, I would not be interested in paying for them, anyway. Quite a number of posts have made mention of not paying for downloads until lossless is available. Lossless, or not, I am not interested in The Alarm, Gentle Giant, Mountain, etc., etc., etc. I will save my money and wait until (if ever), Van Morrison, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Fleetwood Mac, etc., etc. etc. When the senior circuit shows up, I will be downloading, regardless of MP3, or lossless.

Despite the criticism, I still think this is one of the top sites on the web. Keep up the good work.

Mentioned in part 1 are the "breaks between songs". Those gaps can be heard on the streaming versions. Are they part of the pressed CD releases? If so, then these releases are no better than a bad burn. Those gaps are the result of burning a CD "track at once". "Disc at once" will not put the gaps between the songs. I don't understand why any effort is needed for placing those gaps between songs. They should not be part of any pressed release. Only bad bootlegs have gaps between the tracks. Please tell me this is not the case here.

Hi,

First of all, we are not offering pressed CD releases, only downloads.

All of our original concert recordings are complete, untracked recordings.  When we prepare them for presentation on the Concert Vault, we edit them into individual track files.

We do this so that you can easily move from one track to the next, whether you're streaming or playing downloaded files locally.  When streamed on our site, our player introduces the gap that you hear because it's completing one file "stream" and then starting the next. 

When you purchase a download, and play the tracks of a concert in sequence, as long as your audio player is current you'll get gapless playback.   Versions of iTunes, Windows Media Player and others have supported gapless playback for about a year now.

If you download a concert from us, and then burn it to CD, with current CD burning software you can also get "gapless" playback results.  Consult your software's settings on how to do this.

For a thorough review of gapless playback on computers and CDs read this excellent wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapless_playback

Cheers - Mr. PC

I am also very glad that you are so diligent in paying the appropriate royalties to the performers.  You are doing a great job but I am also concerned with the first batch of downloads as they seem to be primarily from the 80's and beyond.  In fact only about 12 are from the 70's and none from the 60's.  I hope this trend does not continue.  I am willing and able to download shows from the early days, especially from the Filmores.  Give us boomers what we need!  and please tell me that you have and will release the first night of the Allmans at the closing of the Filmore.  BG said himself that it was one of the best shows he ever saw and he can't be wrong.  Please put that on top of the list of things to do!

Thanks

ziggi

Thanks for the explaination.  I listen here and appreciate WGV for sharing the music!

 

 

Al

Thanks for covering all of that. Remember, you will never satisfy everyone %100. Someone will always complain. I think you guys are doing great. As soon as one of my favorite bands comes up, I will be buying it.

Again, thanks for what you are doing and what you have done.