Newsgroup: it.arti.musica.rock.progressive
Titolo: [Lungo, interessante ed in inglese] Chiude anche la DGM di Fripp...

...e Moroni e' sempre li! :-)
E' un documento importante, cosi' mi pare.
Buona lettura.
----------------------------------------------
The Future Of The Past (from Robert Fripp's Journal).
Saturday 6th. April, 2002; 08.52
Bredonborough, Worcestershire.
The sun is shining, the sky is blue & the temperature brisk.
The world is mad, if television news is any guide to the world. The
news according to English tabloids suggests, the world is madder than
that. Any reasonable person would despair. But hope is unreasonable
and love is greater than that. And love is greater than that.
I
My reflections of this sunny English morning are directed towards
DGM's larger present moment: its beginning, development, present
condition & how it may best address its future.
The beginning and development: DGM began as an ethical company &
mysteriously became a not-for-profit corporation.
The present condition: David Singleton & myself are no longer prepared
to fill the gap between the two, to continue as sponsors of the NFP.
This filling-of-the-gap consists of:
1. David is overworked & underpaid, at less than the manager of our
Los Angeles office & at 20% of the salary he was offered to run a
comparable firm.
2. Robert is overworked and unpaid, while maintaining a large company
debt.
So, if David is overworked & underpaid, and I am not paid at all, DGM
is much as it always was. What has changed is that David & Robert are
no longer prepared to hold together what is possible & what is actual
by underwriting & subsidising the operations of DGM with our time,
energies & borrowed money.
No blame: DGM is a conviction company, not a career move (and
occasionally staff found the gap too wide). But negotiating the
critical space between the possible & the actual requires that we
recognise degrees of necessity.
DGM became unmanageable. Unless David & I are to put most of our
creative energies into maintaining the company and its structure, it
will collapse sometime during 2002. We are not prepared to create
musical product to support the structure. Any structure, inevitably,
seeks to define itself as the raison d'etre and act accordingly.
Rather, we have chosen to honour the company's founding spirit, unfix
the structure, re-introduce the Mobility into DGm, and move on.
In making this choice, in taking this decision, we acknowledge that
DGM has already moved on. Sufficient notices of this intent have been
posted & available for some time.
II
DGM is not in bankruptcy, not about to collapse, not in financial
trouble. We continue to have the same problems with cash-flow that we
have always had. In that respect, nothing has changed.
We have problems with cash-flow because the records we release don't
sell in large quantities, certainly not enough to support the artists
as professional players. To put this slightly differently, our artists
don't sell enough of their records to support the company. But, why
should the artists sell their records? Shouldn't DGM sell their
records?
DGM makes records available that might not otherwise enter the world,
or under conditions that would prejudice the music and/or its
creators; and where possible we connect the audience to that music. It
was never the remit of DGM to become a promotional structure dedicated
to marketing & promoting artists and their work.
So, here is a key point: DGM was created as an artist-friendly &
music-driven new-model record company which inherited the baggage,
expectations & assumptions of an old-model, conventional record
company: finance, marketing & promotion. DGM carried the negative
weight of this expectation without the corresponding total ownership &
exploitation of the artist and all their works. The conventional
presumption in favour of the record company was reversed: the main
risks were carried by DGM but without the corresponding property
ownership & recoupment strategies. Much of this is attributable to:
the presence of an artist within the flat hierarchy of the company
during its early days;
that the company was founded in response to injustice.
DGM staff are well aware of old-model exploitation & the
almost-impossibility of earning a living from music. Accordingly, they
have sometimes made artist-supportive judgement calls that were easily
explicable but, from a financial viewpoint, indefensible.
We can do whatever we want, providing we pick up the bill.
Historically, the bill has passed primarily to David & Robert. No
blame: artist-friendly is part of the company's culture. But DGM came
too close to being what The Vicar somewhat dismissively calls «The
Charity».
III
DGM began in a music-industry world very different to the industry of
today. What appeared mad & unsustainable to us in 1992 is increasingly
acknowledged in the mainstream media of 2002 as being mad &
unsustainable.
Building a new-model record company during the recession & financial
turmoil of the early 1990s was like something like this:
crossing a bridge between two utterly different ways of doing things;
building the bridge while crossing it;
Endless Grief firing bullets from behind & chopping the supports;
future prospects on the other side hiding;
faith in the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse.
While making the crossing, we traveled with as many family members as
we were able. In 2002 we are on the other side of that particular
Great Divide. Some of our family fell away & some of our family are
still with us; but it is no longer our responsibility to hold up an
umbrella for them.
A key failing of David & myself throughout DGM's history has been to
support a member of the Team when wiser counsel would allow them to
stand on their own feet, even where this included falling over. This
failing is:
partly the fault of trying to be helpful;
partly the arrogance that accompanies rescue attempts;
partly feeling responsibility for the repercussions of our
initiatives.
It became very apparent in mid-1999 that a new new-model was & that
DGM-as-constructed was not that model. The creation of Bootleg TV was
driven by David's vision of an appropriate business & distribution
structure to match our original aims given the rapid changes in the
industry, those changes primarily driven by technology. An efficient
structure to address DGM music distribution & business would have
freed David & Robert to return their greater attention to music,
production mastering & creative projects.
Bootleg TV raised $4 million and closed, along with many other
companies in the high-tech downturn, without being able to meet its
promise. The need for that model continues & the vision of that model
persists. Someone, somewhere, is addressing it at this moment. When
broadband comes to life, a version of this model will take off.
Bootleg TV is worthy of a separate history, along with the history of
Endless Grief, as a snapshot of one period of social, cultural &
economic history.
IV
DGM has done some things well, some things not well.
1. DGM Was A Very Bad Conventional Record Company: Failure.
i) DGM was a very bad conventional record company, but DGM was not set
up to be a conventional record company. A Conventional Record Company:
a) provides artists with a publicity & promotion machine;
b) provides (relatively) large amounts of money (much of which doesn't
actually reach the artist);
c) and in return for the risk and investment owns the artist/s and
nearly everything connected to them, in totality.
This is one approach, and it continues to have effect.
ii) Artists have tended to expect of DGM that it function as an
old-model company - quasi-managerial and providing promotion,
distribution & financing - while enjoying the benefits of DGM as a
new-model record company: artist profit-sharing, non-exploitation,
non-ownership, non-risk.
iii) DGM was useless at establishing the names and careers of artists
who were not already well-established.
iv) One artist has expressed disappointment that their records were
not better distribution. Distribution was not, and is not, a
difficulty for DGM.
DGM can put its records on display in nearly every record shop on most
of the main streets in the Western world. All this entails is paying
for the display, paying for the pressing, paying to ship the record to
the store, paying for the record to be shipped back again when no-one
has bought it, and paying to store the returned CDs.
The question is: why should DGM pay for this when there is no
reasonable chance of recovering & recouping the cost? Alternatively,
how much does the artist consider fair that DGM should lose on making
their records available? We have no wide catalogue of successful
artists to support the relatively less successful on the label. Who
pays for the distribution?
DGM makes available records that otherwise probably would not have
been made available. If this is not acceptable to the artist, then
better that we all move on. This particular artist moves on owning two
albums, and DGM moves on with the accumulated debt of making those two
albums available.
v) In his diary, now at Krimson News, Evan of The Rosenbergs has
expressed dissatisfaction with DGM's financial dealings. If Evan would
like to «spill the beans» on DGM dealings, as he puts it, he has my
encouragement and support.
Evan's comments are easily understandable & readily forgivable. They
are also injudicious, misleading & a little unfair. At the end of our
business relationship The Rosenbergs will own their record & DGM will
be owning the $150,000 Rosenbergs' debt.
The defining moment for me was lunchtime on Thursday 28th. March, 2002
at DGM HQ near Salisbury, Wiltshire. David & I were meeting to discuss
the current & arising situations presently underway. Adrian Molloy,
The Rosenbergs' manager that DGM employed & whose office is now at HQ,
came into David's office and asked for $3,000 to settle The
Rosenbergs' financial accounts in the US.
The agreed ceiling of $150,000 for The Rosenbergs had already been
reached; I did not consider it my brief, nor DGM responsibility, to
extend our own borrowing to put The Rosenbergs' books to bed: rather,
I see that as the artists' own responsibility. So, I declined.
Robert the younger man, burning with music while facing a largely
uncaring world, and an older man whose sharp judgements have become
rounded with many years' experience of disappointments in life, I am
now more accepting & understanding of events & people's reactions that
once would have elicited a harsh response. But, simply put, if given
the choice I would rather own my record than the large debt that
enabled it to enter the world.
Perhaps the distance between those who pay the bills, and those who
expect them to be paid, is too great.
vi) DGM employees have, in the main, been artist-friendly &
artist-supportive. Some have authorised advertising that had no hope
of recovering the cost by generating additional sales. David & others
spent many hours discharging managerial functions, that were not part
of our responsibility, when the costs of that time could never be
recouped. Several of the artists were well aware that they were taking
advantage of DGM's good nature.
vii) DGM's close proximity to Guitar Craft and Crafties in its early
period generated a supportive & non-judgemental context more
appropriate in Guitar Craft than for a company that had to pay its
bills. Pennies did not always drop and, when they did, not always
quickly.
viii) DGM UK administered DGM US for nothing & DGM Japan for nothing.
DGM took no money for organising & negotiating releases in Japan. Our
Japanese partners took a percentage & we considered that adding a DGM
UK percentage was onerous for the artists. DGM US became
self-sufficient but didn't seem able to reach the point where it could
support the UK operation. So, DGM UK survived on the European
distribution which, spread over 10 territories, required huge amounts
of processing - paperwork, administration & accounting. It often cost
more for DGM to render accounts to the smaller artists than the total
of their royalties.
viii) The Vicar has looked on in disbelief at the business decisions
of DGM, the trading organization he dismissively calls «The Charity».
Summary:
i) Good at presenting music to the world that would otherwise probably
not have been presented, or under conditions that would have
compromised it. Not any good at encouraging people that weren't
interested in buying it to buy it.
ii) Not very good at providing artists with large amounts of money.
However, for the Crimsons at least, the royalties that otherwise would
not have been available became part of the income stream of the
lifer-pro musician.
iii) Not very good at promoting the careers or artists that the public
didn't know.
iv) DGM's global view was not matched by sales.
v) To some extent, DGM appears to influence the people that influence
the people. If that's all we achieved, that's already quite a lot.
vi) Bootleg TV would have provided a distribution & business structure
that DGM was unable to provide, working almost completely in the world
of bricks & mortar.
Conclusion:
Never allow your business to become reliant upon artists: there is a
conflict of interest between what is right, true & necessary; and
supporting the business structure. The creative act cannot be other
than hazardous. Were DGM to continue as it was, it would become
perverted.
The distance between those that pay the bills, and those that expect
them to be paid, is considerable.
2. Ton Prob Production Mastering: Success.
This is mainly David & Robert taking original analogue tapes of
varying quality and making them sonically presentable, even
exceptional. David's conscientious work over long days & nights, weeks
& sometimes months, made the King Crimson archive series - Epitaph,
The Nightwatch, Absent Lovers - and the Collectors' Club possible. And
where DGM artists delivered records that were not quite of the
standard all had hoped for, then David sprinkled fairy dust.
3. The King Crimson Fan Club: Failure.
The success of the KC Archive series & the Club lead to DGM becoming a
de facto KC Fan Club. Normal business was often interrupted and
delayed by fan communications & interaction.
4. The King Crimson Collectors' Club: Wonderfully Mixed Blessing.
A stunning model of how to provide archive material & snapshots of
process to those most interested: success.
As a business model, only 3,000 members make this nearly uneconomical:
close call.
Discovery of rare items, including materials not yet available:
success +.
As a way of focusing on the past, and holding back the future: close
call.
As a way of identifying DGM with the KC Fan Club: total success.
5. King Crimson Quasi-Management: Mixed.
i) The industry looked to DGM as responsible for the entire KC
catalogue, de facto KC management, and responsible for all of KC
activities over the years. This worked for as long as DGM had the
confidence and support of the Crimson players.
Increasingly, several early members expressed their lack of confidence
in DGM & its RHVL. Discussions aimed at establishing a consensus
regarding releases & licensing became fractious, extensive & time
consuming, even aggressively insulting on an escalating basis. Seeking
agreement among early Crims on a common course of action might be seen
as the triumph of hope over experience.
We have a high tolerance of dissent and a low threshold for active
ill-will. In DGM office-speak this is sometimes referred to as the
No-Jerk Policy.
i) 1969-71: Failure.
ii) 1972-2002: Success.
Irritation, angst, disagreement. Pride in the work. No ill-will.
6. DGM Website: Mixed.
i) Guestbook & Diaries: Success.
DGM has been very good at encouraging interaction & dialogue between
its artists & family, and the interested public. This didn't generate
income directly, but that wasn't the primary aim. Any sales were a
fortunate outcome - this might be a DGM leitmotif.
The written word/s represents a high investment of energy & attention
from a lot of people. Most Diarists hesitated before exposing
themselves to public ridicule and I am grateful that they proceeded.
Many comments on the Guestbook have been highly informative, although
probably not always in the ways that the poster intended.
Guestbook & Diary functions are not properly the job of DGM. DGM
initiated them, sponsored them, they are well-received. Now the idea
works, it is appropriate that this is over to someone else to maintain
it.
ii) E-Commerce: failure.
The new home for the Diaries & Guestbook on Krimson News validates the
work, although this is not reflected in DGM income. The website was an
old-model creation, before steam gave way to electricity, and the
site's operations were subsidised by DGM. A new-model site would have
allowed for online ordering, streaming, downloads & subscription
services. Attempts to set this up failed.
Acts of heroism by Dan took the site about as far as it could go
without a complete rebuild, and a complete rebuild was impossible
while the site was fully up and running. Dan managed to get a Model T
onto modern highway but it was never possible for the site to become
self-supporting.
7. DGM Catalogue: Mixed.
Some of the catalogue would not have been released without DGM and
deserved to be. And some releases did not have quite the musical
necessity that the world needed their appearance.
8. DGM US Office: Mixed.
It may be impossible for an American office to have an English brain,
unless that English brain is also resident in the American body.
V
The Past
Where we are going is how we get there.
There is no mistake save one - the failure to learn from a mistake.
All those who have given me real, or imagined, offence - please know
you are forgiven.
Those I have offended, for any of my real or imagined failings, please
forgive me.
VI
The Future
Monday 8th. April, 2002; 14.56
DGM HQ.
Call & e-mails are coming in, and Bill Bruford is visiting tomorrow,
with concerns over The Sad Event. The change in DGM's condition, from
that of about-to-be-moving-on to that of
being-arrived-at-having-moved-on, is not sad at all. It is a triumph,
resurrection, rebirth, a Wonderful & Joyous Event.
16.03 An e-mail has arrived for David Singleton from a character whose
ongoing correspondence with us has been reliably hostile. Today's
letter is friendly and open, commiserating with what he perceives as
the collapse of DGM. Why should his only friendly & open letter be in
response to our (presumed) failure?
17.31 David of The Rosenbergs has been on the telephone,
disassociating himself from Evan's comments. This for soon-posting to
the shell DGM site.
DGM Business Aims.
May we trust the inexpressible benevolence of the creative impulse.
DGM is a business structure & vehicle for the projects of Robert
Fripp, David Singleton & The Vicar, trading under precepts of the
ethical company. These projects include King Crimson, the ProjeKcts,
Soundscapes, Ton Prob & The Vicar Chronicles.
The Ethical Company
Recognisable features of the ethical company, in the literature and
discussion of business ethics, involve these attributes:
transparency,
straightforwardness,
accountability,
owning-up,
honesty,
fairness,
common decency,
distributive justice.
Recognisable features of a company whose base is ethically challenged
are these:
dissembling,
use of threats,
unkindness to employees,
a widespread use of gagging orders,
an inequitable distribution of company income.
A company which would rather conduct its business:
verbally (particularly with regard to disputed issues) instead of
committing its views to writing;
commonly resorts to litigation, or employs the frequent threat of
such; employs gagging clauses as standard policy;
pays its directors highly disproportionate sums in comparison with its
employees;
this company is suspect and should be avoided wherever possible.
It is a sad commentary on current business and public life that this
needs to be written, or debated.
transparency + straightforwardness=honesty
accountability + owning-up=responsibility
distributive justice + fairness=equity
common decency=goodwill
The Four Pillars of The Ethical Company
Honesty
Responsibility
Equity
Goodwill
Robert Fripp,
DGM HQ, Wiltshire, England;
Monday 8th. April, 2002.
--
Marco.
marco...@hotmail.com
www.germinale.com
Il sito di IAMRP: 
www.split.it/users/aboz
"La terra ormai è approssimazione,
  tutto è enfatizzato, dalla terra si estrae
  la luce vera, la sotterranea linfa.
  La corrente sotto terra è vorticosa,
  non si ferma e ci decapita
  con quel filo di nylon che è la fretta
  la produzione di velocità"
(Germinale, 'Cielo & Terra')

ha finito i nastri da pubblicare
ROTFL!
M.
Visita il portale del progressive italiano
http://www.fromgenesis.net

 ha finito i nastri da pubblicare
Non credo proprio... leggete bene...
--
Marco.
marco...@hotmail.com
www.germinale.com
Il sito di IAMRP: 
www.split.it/users/aboz
"La tromba dunque, trasforma il fiato
  ai soffiatori guanciuti, emette suoni
  attraverso la campana, in bui umidi
  corridoi di lamina d'oro o di ottone,
  la canna dell' aria è dritta e lunga o a ritorte."
(Germinale, 'Trombe, Scale')

 Buona lettura.
Domanda:
Non ho avuto nè la pazienza ne la voglia di leggermi tutto il documento in
inglese quindi non sò se già nel suo interno c'è la risposta alla mia
domanda, nel caso, sorry...ma non dovrebbero uscire, per la Discipline, i
remaster 24 bit di Earthbound, USA e THRAK? inoltre, il più volte rimandato
nuovo album in studio dei King Crimson (ora si dice a fine 2002) che fine
farà?
Il sito della discipline è quasi tutto disattivato, si accede direttamente
al Nuovo Metal dei KC e da lì si può andare solo al Dscipline Mail Order
(che spero funzioni correttamente visto che l'altro ieri ho ordinato Level
Five).
Insomma, qualcuno sa qualcosina in più?

 ha finito i nastri da pubblicare
Non ne sono sicuro, stavo giusto leggendo in questo momento che il Kinc
Crimson Collector's Club cambierà modalità di funzionamento, non ho letto
ancora tutto ma mi pare di capire che verrà data la possibilità di
acquistare i cd anche singolarmente, o in quantità ridotta, rispetto alle 78
(mi pare) sterline che costava l'iscrizione.
Il tutto a partire da Agosto.
Ciò lascerebbe pensare che stiano effettivamente rashiando il barile, ma non
al punto da sospendere totalmente le pubblicazioni, ma leggendo qua e là nei
vari siti gestiti da Fripp, mi è parso di intuire che il tutto sia nato per
via di casini con quegli indefinibili dei Rosenbergs...

 Crimson
uaz :-P

 farà?
Il nuovo KC non avra' problemi, visto che esce per la Virgin sempre
che esista ancora). Anche i remaster che citi dovrebbero vedere la
luce regolarmente. Il KCCC si trasformera' in una serie di dischi piu'
accessibili dal pubblico, senza *l'obbligo* di comprarne almeno sei
per volta. Almeno credo. Chi vivra' vedra'.


per riassumere dice che la DGM ha chiuso perchè:
era una casa discografica che si assumeva tutti i rischi mentre i benefici
andavano solo ai musicisti.
alcuni musicisti oltretutto non erano soddisfatti a causa della poca
visibilità.
le uniche entrate provenivano dalle ristampe.
Fripp ammette di aver prodotto dischi di gente che avrebbe fatto meglio a
continuare a zappare l'orto.