In a posting last week , we covered a Times-Contrarian article that Neil Young is considering releasing all his unreleased album projects for subscribers well in advance of their normal physical releases.
In response to a NYA Letter to the Editor by Uncle Eddie -- who is concerned about living long enough to ever hear the unreleased albums by Neil Young -- Neil reflects on his aging fan base and what to do. Neil writes that he is looking to accomplish releasing everything in 2020.
And the response thus far has Neil thinking about "A New Tier (Uncle Eddie's Tier?)" which he contemplates on yesterday's posting on Times-Contrarian | Neil Young Archives. This higher tier would access unreleased material.
As with all things internet related, the issue of piracy is the challenge. How to post unreleased material and maintain exclusivity in age of rampant theft, corruption and piracy by the evil parasites which crawl amongst us innocent "Children of Destiny"? But we digress ... yet again ...
Bumper stickers will be issued. #UncleEddie
via UNOFFICIAL Neil Young Unreleased Archive - NYUA | Twitter
So here's to Uncle Eddie! And who says that writing a Letter to the Editor is a waste of time?
Ok first things first ..... the entire attraction ( bait ? ) to get us to sign up as paid subscribers was access to EVERYTHING Neil has recorded and filmed , and all will be uploading and updating constantly once the site is up and running . Now we find we will have to pay more to access anything more than what we already have here at home in our collections. And then along comes " Uncle Eddie " and suddenly at a mere suggestion of all these rapidly evolving " new " plans gets a tier ( extra cost ) named after him ? Makes you wonder who " Uncle Eddie " is in the Neil Young organization . Pardon me for being a little suspicious . IT IS 2019 after all ..... and we are dealing with Neil here ... I'm sensing another bug out .
ReplyDeleteOK, Unknown #477. sure we hear you. always something, isn't it.
ReplyDeleteso how about this. suddenly there's been an deluge of "Unknown" commenters. we think this is due to the demise of G+.
would you mind doing us all a favor? could we trouble you to assign yourself a handle?
it'll help us better respond to anon/unknowns and minimize identity confusion. Everyone, this identity shifting under various IDs has long been problematic. normally we try not to address "Unknown"s, but we see this is going to yet another one of those neil threads where some folks get riled up about getting ripped off.
yeah, no one likes to get ripped off. get it. totally. but really? look in the mirror man.
things are moving so f'n fast these days, that the best laid plans are obsolete by the time they reach the market.
so either support the Man's Archives vision or get the F out of here.
either you want the unreleased stuff like Uncle Eddie on his death bed. Or you don't.
we question whether your motives are honorable, genuine and from the heart? or...
To me Neil can do whatever he wants. He ‘s my friend and I accept his choices. I ‘m just grateful he ´s still alive and creative. By the way how much money do you think he should making with the archives. It must barely cover the costs if it does.Peace.
ReplyDelete@ Chris - thanks for this. we do realize we git a bit exercised above w/ Unknown #477.
ReplyDeleteand thanks for posting with an ID as well.
in terms of your question about $'s/profits, while we don't have any particular insights, the primary goal is to make self sustaining. IOW, pay staff salaries, pay for bandwidth, storage, servers, etc.
from what we know, the costs of running NYA are substantial. That says nothing about the huge platform investment to create a brand new eco system never been done before. that was millions and millions. doubtful whether that will ever be re-couped.
so our point with Unknown #477 was: do you want Uncle Eddie to die without ever hearing HomeGrown, Chrome Dreams I, Toast, etc?
Or do you want Uncle Eddie to die a happy man after listening to the unreleased Archives gems?
we know what we want. we know what you want, Chris. you get it.
the unfilled legacy? or not.
the choice is in our hands ... as always. now take the opportunity and do something.
the hour is getting late ... we gotta job to do ...
peace
I have to agree with Unknown. Nobody's perfect, but I'm beginning to feel that Neil can be a bit of a money grubber. "A millionaire through a businessman's eyes" as Neil sings on Don't Be Denied.
ReplyDeleteI have a beef with Neil, who I supported during his rollout of PONO, because after all the hype, he just dropped it, seemingly without a care about all the people who put their money on the line.
I would love to hear him say he fucked that one up and is sorry to the people who believes in the project.
I'll support Neil but I remember when Archives I came out I had to buy a special Blueray player for about $400 so that I would be able to get the downloads which came few and far between. I look forward to any unreleased material sooner rather than later since we're all here for a finite period of time. I've seen too many "coming soons" that are years in the making (Archives II, e.g.) and still not available as 2020 approaches.
ReplyDeleteHaving just read the “New Tier” on NYA, I see what Neil is getting at. It’s risky to put all these unreleased albums on NYA because people would be able to record them and share them with others. As a result Neil would be out all the copyright money, so he’s trying to figure out how to make impossible for these releases to be copied and still make them available to listen to on his archive site.
ReplyDeleteRight now it’s only $19.99 a year, which is incredibly inexpensive, so even if he were to double that price I feel it would still be a bargain. That being said, we’ll have to wait and see what actually happens. As we all know, when it comes to Neil, it’s all a crapshoot. Colorado was supposed to come with the making of film in a deluxe edition in December but now Neil has stated in the letters section that they aren’t sure how they are going to release the film. Time will tell I guess.
Peace
God damn. When's freaking "Homegrown" gonna come out Neil!
ReplyDeleteChannel Neil TV is more future proof...subscription websites have been around a long time and look to continue. Luv the NYA and think it is ground breaking so bring it on. I'm happy "play and pay" I think the sub now should go up plus $5
ReplyDeleteI'm at the age where I would rather spend 25 grand on a music system with Neils unreleased material and new stuff than on a new car or a fancy jacuzzi. Spend it before you die. Peace and Love
ReplyDeleteI'm watching Muddy Track again, since it's back up on the Hearse Theatre.
ReplyDeleteso great to see Neil & Pegi happy in the back of that car or bus in Muddy Track...
ReplyDeletecontrast that to an aged Neil shilling for Bezos now and Pegi is no longer with us
getting old is a mother-fucker...
death sucks...a wound that never heals for those left behind
Neil has been slippery with NYA. At the beginning, Neil was pretty clear that NYA was going to be "all of the music I released" plus photos, news clippings, lyrics, credits, videos and a lot of context around the music. As much as we wanted NYA to be the big unreleased vault open for all, it was just never promised to be that way. The unreleased albums teased on the timeline were always intended to be released as physical product and then show up on NYA about the same time. Maybe a day earlier than the physical release. But they were never intended to be exclusive to NYA.
ReplyDeleteOver the last year, however, Neil has teased his "users" at various times through "Letters To The Editor" that he would be adding outtakes and single tracks in addition to the albums into NYA. And Neil has received a lot of feedback from users that exclusive content was what would drive his fans to NYA and keep them there. Well, we have been waiting for a while for this and it hasn't happened. One example was the promised addition of bonus tracks into the file cabinet fro Tuscaloosa. In the end, there were "unforseen legal issues". So it may be harder than Neil had previously thought to put bonus tracks out there. God knows why. Doesn't Neil own all of this stuff?
Now Uncle Eddie has tugged on Neil's heartstrings and made him talk, yet again, about adding things exclusively to NYA. Now there is talk of a new pricing tier. All said, this is probably fair because one would be paying for albums way ahead of their actual physical release. Neil has never promised this to regular NYA members. Just single tracks. There were hints that NYA would be considering ways to put things like "The Bottom Line" boot out there, but never anything concrete was promised. So I do not believe we are NOT getting anything promised by Neil today in the regular subscription. And should we pay more for new features, such as getting whole albums exclusively on NYA? Again, I think it is fair. And if you do not pay, you will get all of that stuff anyway, eventually, at the rate of about 2-3 albums a year with all of the reference material.
So I'll state it another way. NYA gives you High Res streaming, and extended multimedia metadata for all of Neil's music, AND the chance to get good concert tickets for $20 per year. Perhaps more features will come. But if you want to get early access to whole albums as yet unreleased and possibly on-demand movies, then yeah, that will cost more. Personally, I think Neil has huge challenges to put "exclusives" on NYA, but if he can get it done, then great!
One possible impediment to this happening being Reprise.
ReplyDeleteAnd a second being: threat of bootleg.
He's already promised us 13 CDS of physical release in 2020 (Homegrown, NYA, vol 2, set 1, Alchemy).
@ Lone Red Rider - lots to unpack here and a bit time pressed. many thanks for sharing this which we know many may agree and disagree with.
ReplyDeleteso we're going to ponder this a bit and put up as a COTM for further discussion.