Ladies and Gentlemen...

Hundreds of new concerts and a re-designed Concert Vault

MrPaulCaruso — Mon, 05 May 2008 13:37:19 GMT

Dear Visitors,

Later this week we will be posting significant new updates and new concerts to the Concert Vault. We are very excited by these enhancements and hope you will be too.

Over 200 new concerts, all recorded since 2006
A new release schedule, featuring over 20 new concerts every week
An all-new look that lets you explore the Concert Vault like never before.

Read on for a preview!

More Music

We are adding over 200 new concerts for free download and streaming to Concert Vault. These compelling new performances were all recorded between 2006 and 2008 and come from two of the biggest names in new music today: Daytrotter and Noise Pop.

This will bring us to over 1,300 concerts in the Concert Vault. To help you explore all of the great music, we have introduced a new design highlighting our different Catalogs. Each of our Catalogs has a unique sound and style; we encourage you to explore them all.

More Often

We are now offering over 20 new concerts every week. Our New Releases section lets you easily browse through the our three weekly releases.

Classic Wednesdays will continue to be the heart and soul of Concert Vault featuring the best we have to offer from our classic Catalogs - the archives of Bill Graham, King Biscuit, Record Plant, Silver Eagle and Dawson Sound.
B-Side Fridays will put the spotlight on hidden gems, seconds sets, and rarities from the Vault.
Indie Mondays will revolve around new music from our Noise Pop and Daytrotter Catalogs featuring the most auspicious indie-rock bands from 2006 to today.

More Ways to Get It

We’ve added new features to the Concert Vault designed to make it even easier for you to find the concert or performer you are looking for.

Concert Finder. A great new way to browse and search the Vault. It keeps all of the most popular ways to browse the Vault on every page.
All Performers. Now view the entire list of performers in the Concert Vault on a single page. Get a sense of just how much music is at your fingertips with this great enhanced feature.
Recently Added. Been away for a while? Browse our full list of new concert releases from up to three weeks ago. You’ll never miss our updates again.
The Charts. The pulse of the Concert Vault; shows you what people are listening to and downloading the most. It’s never been easier to rate your favorite concerts.
RSS feed for latest additions. Get instant updates of our New Releases by subscribing to our feed.

Wait, There’s More!

Take It With You. Put the Vault on your own site with our new embed feature. We now allow you to choose any single track from the Vault to embed on your personal site. Just click on any track’s embed link and take it from there.
Comment on any Concert. You can now post comments on every concert and interview in the Concert Vault. Share your opinions and experiences with fellow listeners.
Daytrotter Radio. A new station has been added to Vault Radio offering hours of live in-studio recordings by today’s up and coming indie bands.
Improved Player. We’ve updated our player to get your music playing faster and have added some great new features.

Cheers!

Downloads Done Right

wolfgang — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 20:17:05 GMT

As we all know by now, DRM (digital rights management) is that disagreeable bit of code that restricts downloaded music from being played with the same flexibility offered by music purchased on CDs. Competing interests and historical incentives have created a world of music burdened by DRM, but with nothing approaching an industry standard. Technical barriers and functional incompatibility between MP3 players and music sites have confused and discouraged the listening public. Somehow, the prevailing music industry wisdom is that by attaching DRM to downloaded music, they will prevent piracy and illegal transfers while fostering a thriving market. Like many others (and like most statistics would show), we think the music industry has gotten this wrong.

The Internet has changed so many of the rules of how content is accessed and used. Consumers demand freedom of choice and, in most cases, they will pay for this flexibility. However, the music industry clings to an increasingly outdated notion that they can control the environment and that DRM is the silver bullet.

We think the equation should be very simple – let consumers buy the music in a format that is easy to use and easy to play. It should work on their iPod, their Zune, in their car or wherever else they are listening to music. The music has to be easy to download, the price must be reasonable, and the quality should be great. None of this seems like rocket science to us but it’s easy to get confused when you scan the digital music landscape.

We believe that it's a matter of when, not if, the unrestricted MP3 format becomes the standard. Consumers will favor reputable and reliable download stores over the e-mail-attached song-from-a-friend-of-a-friend approach. Consumers have learned painfully frustrating lessons by adding corrupted and virus-ridden music to their digital collections. We don't suspect that people want to steal the music, especially if the price is right and the download purchase and transfer process is easy and foolproof. Liberating digital music – so that it can be played on any device at any time, at any location - should lead to a dramatic increase in the legitimate download market.

The Concert Vault, as we have previously announced, will begin offering downloads in April. Expect us to follow our own advice.

Cheers!

Wolfgang

Welcome to Concert Vault

wolfgang — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 01:08:11 GMT

We hope you enjoy the Concert Vault’s incredible live performances and the listening environment we've built for you to enjoy the music. As we promised when we announced Vault Radio ten months ago, we will continue to expand our live performance concert inventory, add new features to make the listening experience better and keep it free to listeners.

Here's what's new in the Concert Vault. First, we have added the remarkable King Biscuit and Silver Eagle audio archives to Bill Graham's and hundreds of full concerts are now playable on demand; further, we will be adding at least 5 new concerts each week. Second, new Vault Radio playlists are three times as long - meaning that no song will be played more than twice a day and there will be a brand new radio playlist every day. Third, not only will the listener control the radio playlist but also can search for and play full concerts. Fourth, listeners can easily communicate with each other, unfiltered, about a particular concert, performer or venue in the Concert Vault Forums. Lastly, the Concert Vault now offers an alternative music stream that can be played by dial-up listeners. Our listeners wanted all this for free and without excessive ad clutter.

We know you want more and we are already planning for the next web-release of both Wolfgang’s Vault and the Concert Vault in March of 2007 Wolfgang’s Vault will undergo major changes as it makes itself into a complete live performance music destination website.

In the next 60 days we will add new functionality to the Concert Vault. For example, listeners will soon be able to create and share their own playlists from our live performances. In the next 90 to 120 days we intend to offer full-concert downloads and, in 180 days we will present never-before-seen live performance video from the thousands of concert videos we have in our archive.

We have done everything we can to protect this music from those who would copy it illegally. Our music files are not easily-copied MP3s and are delivered, solely, through a Secure Flash Audio Stream, only accessible by registered users. As security technology evolves, we will employ it to further protect this music. We believe that the Concert Vault and Vault Radio, playing the vast archives of Bill Graham, King Biscuit, Silver Eagle and, very soon, others, will be a preferred destination for all those who especially value live performance music with all its spontaneity and imperfection. Those who illegally copy this music may ruin it for the rest of us.

Before the great Bill Graham announced a band on the Fillmore stage, his first words were, “Ladies and Gentlemen” … and then he named the performer. We have named this weekly column after this introduction which he delivered tens of thousands of times all over the world. Without Bill Graham there would not be a Concert Vault.

Cheers! (Graham’s sign-off)

What Performers Are Paid

wolfgang — Tue, 22 May 2007 19:15:28 GMT

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

We’re Getting Closer…

wolfgang — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 23:34:05 GMT

Downloads are just around the corner and they will be live in a couple of weeks. At launch, we will have a little more than 50 shows available for purchase. This includes some huge names, some cult favorites, and some smaller acts. We understand there will be concerts you want to download that won’t be on the initial list – trust us – we are working on it. We think you will be happy with the service and are very excited to get it up and running.

Since we are spending an awful lot of our waking hours preparing for the launch, we have become a bit obsessed with the topic of downloads and the music industry. Grabbing a fair amount of press recently is Apple and EMI’s recent announcement. They plan to remove the Digital Rights Management copy protection from downloads and offer these “unprotected” songs at a premium price and higher bitrate (the same bitrate as you will find on Concert Vault). The CEO of EMI insists that this will “move the digital industry forward,” and he might be right. A number of experts view this as a significant step in the right direction; a step that signals the end for DRM and increased flexibility for the consumer. They think this might be enough to plug at least a few of the holes, buy some time, and figure out what to do next. There are a lot of others, however, that think this is another giant music industry misstep; going halfway, merely testing the waters. They argue that the model is so broken, you need to discard the remnants and jump in with something truly innovative.

There is no question that the big labels are increasingly in a tough position (feel free to grab your tiny violins). They built a cost structure supported by the extraordinary CD sales of the mid to late ‘90s. Business was humming and they chose to ignore both the threat and the opportunity of the Internet. The world wide web smacked them in the face by eating into full album sales through a mix of increased consumer choice and piracy. Their reaction has been an interesting trifecta of burying their collective heads in the sand, suing the children, and dabbling in technology. Not surprisingly, they have seen limited success with this to date, but now they may be moving in the right direction.

We’ve debated this issue at length internally and, to be honest, we don’t really know where the industry takes it from here. The times, they are a changing, and the world of music will definitely look a lot different in 10 years. One thing that will not change: people are looking for great music and are happy to pay a reasonable price for it when they find it. Our goals are simple and aligned with this – to provide you with great music, offer access to incredible memorabilia, and be a bit innovative along the way. We think we are providing a compelling new way for artists to make money from classic concert recordings in the digital age and hope you will support them.

We appreciate the patience on the downloads. In the meantime, enjoy the great music on Concert Vault and keep the comments coming.

Cheers

Wolfgang

Site Updates and Upgrades

wolfgang — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 22:01:13 GMT

We have just completed a fairly major overhaul of our site and would like to share with you the thinking behind these changes.

In the two years since we launched the last design of Wolfgang’s Vault, we have added several major components to the company (Concert Vault, Crawdaddy!, Mojam and now Country Music Vault). We forced a few links on different pages to connect these sites, but it got to the point that without some unifying navigation between them we were going to end up with a jumble of sites sitting by themselves. Secondly, we felt that our internal search needed some significant upgrading. You can now search across all of our sites and refine your searches much more easily than in the past.

In addition to the new look, there are two big collections of content that we added with this launch. The first, and most obvious, is the addition of Country Music Vault. We had some great country shows that were getting buried a bit within Concert Vault and we wanted to make sure this music was given its proper due. We have added almost 150 new country shows to the site to bring the number of live country concerts to 200, which will grow weekly. We have also added 100 classic interviews from the mid 70’s through 2001 with a who’s who list of rock legends.

Our hope is that the new design will feel familiar to our longtime visitors while being easy to navigate on your first trip to the Vault. We intend to build on top of this and add more new features in the coming months. Let me add a quick thank you to all the people at Wolfgang’s Vault who put in some long hours to get the design, the code and the content ready to go. Please let us know what you think.

Cheers!

Wolfgang

Downloads Coming in April

wolfgang — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:59:40 GMT

We are excited to announce that we are getting closer to launching Concert Vault downloads. The philosophy behind our design and development is straightforward – make the service easy to use, set fair prices and deliver great quality music.

At the outset, our concert download files will be encoded as unrestricted 256k mp3 files (twice the bitrate delivered by iTunes and most other major digital services). Our testing showed that this provides an excellent concert listening experience while still allowing for a reasonable download time and keeping it easy for users to play the concerts on their computers and mp3 players. There are a number of you out there that have asked for (some have actually demanded) lossless files. Please don’t worry – we hear you and we intend to offer lossless in the future. This is largely a timing and resource issue and lossless will be offered as soon as possible.

We will offer only the complete concerts for download, not individual tracks, as it is the best way to hear these shows. It also provides a measure of efficiency which will allow us to keep prices low. The abrupt stops you currently hear between songs will disappear on the downloaded version as those are a function of the streaming Flash player, not the files themselves. Pricing may vary a bit as we move forward, but initially we will offer all shows for $9.98.

At launch, there will be approximately 50 concerts available for purchase and download. This will include some headline acts, some hidden gems and a handful of fairly obscure artists. We are working diligently to add more concerts and provide you access to everything you might want. We will provide updates as soon as we add concerts to the download list.

There are a few other important updates to the Concert Vault that will go live concurrent with downloads:

•	10 new concerts each week – we will be doubling the number of new concerts from 5 to 10 that we post each week on Concert Vault;
•	Genre and era grouping - we have categorized the concerts by genre and by decade so you can quickly access your favorite music;
•	Home page redesign – The homepage for Concert Vault has been refreshed and redesigned to allow easier access to concerts directly from the home page.

Thank you for all the feedback – it is tremendously useful to us as we try to build the best service possible. Please keep it coming.

Cheers

Wolfgang

Downloads are Here

wolfgang — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:38:59 GMT

The Concert Vault download service has launched today (you may have noticed our not-so-subtle box at the top of the home page). We have been hard at work building out this functionality and getting these concerts ready for download. 52 shows are available for purchase at a standard price of $9.98. The download list includes some shows that are currently up for streaming as well as others from the Vault that had yet to see the light of day. We will post new shows as they become available and add the "Buy" button to indicate that you can then download a given concert.

A handful of details for you:

°	Performer royalties – performers and publishers are paid a royalty fee for every show you purchase.
°	Standard price of $9.98 – we felt this was an attractive and fair price and we like the simplicity of one standard rate. This may change over time but it made sense to us at launch.
°	File quality – initially, all shows will be downloaded as 256Kbps mp3 files. We intend to offer the option of lossless in the future.
°	DRM – as we’ve discussed before, we think that DRM is a mistake and puts restrictions on you, the consumer, that don’t make any sense. Obviously, we are adamantly opposed to illegal file sharing but feel that you have purchased the right to play your music where and when you wish.

We've been streaming concerts for over six months for free to the public but at a substantial cost to us. We hope you will support our efforts, and the artists, by purchasing a few concerts. By the way, we hope you like the new features and layout. Please let us know what you think.

Cheers!

Wolfgang

What's Goin' On

wolfgang — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 22:18:19 GMT

Thanks for all the feedback. The activity in the forums has been phenomenal, and your participation makes Concert Vault a richer experience for all of our visitors.

Some common questions have surfaced recently that we would like to answer:

First, and most importantly, when we broadcast these songs on Concert Vault, we pay the artists, through their respective Performing Rights Organizations (BMI, ASCAP and SESAC), in the same manner they would be paid if their songs were played on the radio. We pay on time and in full.

Second, we spent a significant amount of money to purchase the assets (and all of the intellectual property rights associated with these assets) that you find on our website, including, in particular, the recordings of all the concerts we make available.

Lastly, we invested millions more to transfer these very old tapes into a digital format and then repair, mix and master these recordings to prepare them for streaming. We will continue to invest in our website, streaming system and network architecture to deliver high quality music for free.

By the way, Concert Vault has some new enhancements that you must check out.

We have added a My Playlist feature – you can now choose your favorite songs from any live performance and easily add them to your personal playlist, which can then be accessed and played at will.
Refined Sorting – all column headings on any browse page (Performers and Top-Rated, for example) can be sorted by simply clicking the column heading.
The Concert Detail Page has been updated – rating concerts and adding them to your Favorites is now easier and can be done from the Detail Page.
More precise user ratings, login improvements and other measures all aimed at making your Concert Vault experience as good as it can be.

Please let us know if you think we are moving in the right direction.

Cheers!

Wolfgang

Site Redesign

wolfgang — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:15:10 GMT

As we announced last week, we have designed and are in the process of building out a new look for Wolfgang’s Vault.

The new design will integrate the five components of our site (Vault Store, Concert Vault, Country Music Vault, Crawdaddy! and Mojam) under a common interface and feature a new search engine that will return results for all sites on one easily viewed page.

We’ve posted a couple of screen shots below to give you a taste for what we are working on. The first screen shot presents the new home page for Wolfgang’s Vault and the second is the redesigned Vault Store:

Next week, we’ll post the new Concert Vault design and provide some additional information on the audio updates we have planned.

Cheers!

Wolfgang

Site updates and upgrades

wolfgang — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:21:27 GMT

We are hard at work updating the look and feel of the site and upgrading some of our services. We’ll keep you posted over the next several weeks but we wanted to provide a brief list of the highlights, most of which we expect to launch in early to mid November:

1.	Audio – We still have thousands of concerts in the archive that we have been working to make available for streaming. Over the last couple of years, we have become a bit more efficient at the process and we are close to adding a massive number of concerts. The exact number is still to be determined but we will let you know as soon as we nail that down.
2.	Country Music Vault – We have this great collection of live country music that doesn’t quite fit with most of what you find in the Concert Vault. Some of it is up today but we don’t think it is finding the right audience as it gets buried a bit behind all this great rock. We will be launching Country Music Vault with at least 200 of the greatest country concerts ever recorded.
3.	Broad site integration – We are developing a site wide search that will enable you to find concerts and audio interviews, memorabilia, articles on Crawdaddy!, upcoming live shows on Mojam, etc., all through a simple interface. This new site integration will also feature an extensive related artist database allowing you to easily search by band member or find associated bands.
4.	New look and feel – We are updating the look and feel beginning with a wider screen format that allows us to fit all of this content on the page. We will also include a simplified navigation and better links to various sections of the site. Next week, we will post a couple of screen shots to give you a feel for how the site will change.
5.	Video – Some amazing concert footage is coming soon to Wolfgang’s Vault. Preserving, transferring and digitizing these tapes has been a long and expensive process but we are getting closer. It looks like this is going to be a 2008 event as the process is incredibly time-consuming. We know a lot of people are eager to see these gems and we appreciate your patience. A full update will be coming sometime towards the end of the year.

This is all being done in an effort to make Wolfgang’s Vault your home for live music. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know.

Cheers!

Wolfgang