Price or Quality

[tas]

Remix64 V2 is currently in the design part of the booklet. At the moment the CD stands to retail at the standard price of £10.99. This is the price set roughly for all remix CD's.

I could design a FULL colour booklet that amounts to 26 pages and looks very very proffesional and slick. But 26 pages full colour costs and boy does it cost.

The question lies, do you want quality or price.

The following are the possibilities....

pay £12.99 for the best looking product you have ever seen.
pay £11.99 for A product thats is still awesome, but misses a few things i could have added.
pay £10.99 for a standard looking product.

[Chris Abbott]

When I was getting BIT 3 done (24 page full colour including the cover)
they told me it was the maximum amount they could physically fit in
the case. If you go for 28 pages (26 + 2) they're going to have to use
really thin paper which will feel a bit... thin...

Chris

[dan gillgrass]

I think its 24 inc. the front and back cover (isnt it Neil?)

[Chris Abbott]

Even when BIT 3 was 24 pages full colour it only cost the end user
£10.99... and that was with me only getting £9.31 of that (the rest going to
the damn Government). Of course, the price is primarily why I can't
afford to get a repress...

I'm not sure the people out there would pay an extra £2 for a better
booklet: put it this way, if you sold the booklet on its own, would people
pay £2 for it? A great booklet is a nice bonus (and with BIT 3 was
integral to the product if the story helped you interpret the music)...
but there's a definite case of diminishing returns here.

FYI Sidologie was an 8-page full-colour booklet, which is all it really
needed artistically...

Chris

[Chris Abbott]

> I'm not sure the people out there would pay an extra £2 for a
> better booklet
(the people who read this forum
are not particularly representative of your average CD buyer, and
so you might want to take the poll result with a pinch of salt, whatever it
is).

Chris

[tas]

your right dan 24 + cover.

The booklet at it stands now in draft format looks SOOOO Beautiful. The designer has done a tremendous job, quite took my breath away at first.

The only way i could give the consumer a 24 page booklet (Full Colour) would be to raise the price of the CD by £2. Pretty much end of story.

Tho i have to agree i'm not really fond of putting the price up by such a huge amount. In an ideal world i would do this for the same price as £10.99 but the remix64 v2 costs outwiegh realisticness.

I personally don't actually want to go down this avenue of upping the price, I've already spoke to the designer to reduce the number of pages significantly, but i thought i'd open up this poll to get a better understanding of how people think.

[Chris Abbott]

> your right dan 24 + cover.
It has to be a multiple of four unless you want two blank pages.

so it would be 22 + cover.

Chris

[merman]

A great booklet is a nice bonus

Have to agree with Chris there. The Remix64 volume 1 booklet worked well without overwhelming you with unnecessary text. Obviously we would all like posh, professional looking work - but not at any cost

I voted £11.99, sounds about right to me.

Of course, the most important thing with the inlay is that you know what order the tracks are in - am I right, Neil?

[Chris Abbott]

> am I right, Neil?
(referring to the fact that the Remix64 vol 1 booklet was stapled in the
wrong order)

It wasn't Neil's fault, that one. It was the CD plant... and then they
shrinkwrapped them... fools!

Chris

[weblaus]

I'm not sure the people out there would pay an extra £2 for a better
booklet: put it this way, if you sold the booklet on its own, would people
pay £2 for it? A great booklet is a nice bonus (and with BIT 3 was
integral to the product if the story helped you interpret the music)...
but there's a definite case of diminishing returns here.

I know Chris probably won't be happy reading this, but the whole story stuff of BIT 3 was very much a waste of effort to me... it was neither very interesting nor did it really raise the music (which was perfectly fine) - I actually believe it would be really unfortunate if I had to know the story to get the proper amount of enjoyment out of the songs.

FYI Sidologie was an 8-page full-colour booklet, which is all it really needed artistically...

I haven't read a lot about this CD besides the initial review here and the big controversy in a long thread a while ago, but I'm sorry, I just have to voice my opinion anyway:

The booklet of Sidologie was pretty much like the music - uninspired and kind of empty. I (and another C64 music loving mate) was quite disappointed with what amounts to almost cloning Jarre a lot of the time and stuffing C64 songs right on top, and the second half of Knucklebusters, erm... let's just say we didn't like that part at all, resulting in Sidologie unfortunately becoming our least favorite C64-CD of the c64audio-sold bunch yet.

Anyway, back to the booklet: It's a bad sign when, apart from the equipment list on the back, there's noticably less information on the musical content in it than in the write-up on http://www.c64audio.com - why, for example, were the inspirations for each tracks not mentioned in the booklet? Not everyone knows all Jarre music by heart, orpeople wanting to buy the "original" material wouldn't know which albums to get.

I'm sorry if I kind of went on a negative rant there, but basically I wanted to state this on the point in question:

I beleive most people still buy CDs mostly for the music and not some fancy booklet - I for sure wouldn't want to pay extra. Personally, what I'd like to see is a decent-sized booklet filled with information about the tracks (like influences etc.), not unlike the ones done for the BIT-CDs (minus the story stuff of 3). And while a nice-looking design is a fine bonus, I believe that things like colorful pictures etc. can take a backseat compred to information stuff.

And finally, let me state that the cover for remix64 Vol. 2 is really nice and so infinitely better than the "look at my girlfriend"-picture forced on us on the first one (and yes, I know the booklet provided sort of a basic variant cover).

Erm, still yet another point, while I'm at it: The mentioned Galway CD that will debut at BIT Live Brighton - it will be available via c64audio.com as well, I hope?

[tas]

Ha, actually this could relate to the fact of volume 1, but do to a little error from my friend here, it could also be the case for V2

ha! dunno which one he means tho.

[Chris Abbott]

<<<
I know Chris probably won't be happy reading this, but the whole story stuff of BIT 3 was very much a waste of effort to me... it was neither very interesting nor did it really raise the music (which was perfectly fine) - I actually believe it would be really unfortunate if I had to know the story to get the proper amount of enjoyment out of the songs.
>>>
*shrug* Some people loved it, some people couldn't see the point:
but no one had to pay extra for it (except me), that's my point.
It was just a nice bonus if you wanted it, and there are some people
for whom it worked, big time. So it was worth it.

<<<
Anyway, back to the booklet: It's a bad sign when, apart from the equipment list on the back, there's noticably less information on the musical content in it than in the write-up on http://www.c64audio.com - why, for example, were the inspirations for each tracks not mentioned in the booklet? Not everyone knows all Jarre music by heart, orpeople wanting to buy the "original" material wouldn't know which albums to get.
>>>
I made all that stuff about the inspirations up when the booklet had
already been finished when it occurred to me it might be
a good idea to fill out the CD details on the site.

The inspirations are pretty self-evident by listening
to the clips, and the booklet is only read by people who have already
bought the CD (unlike the J-card). The information is much more
useful on the website than there, where it might prompt people to download the clips.

<<<
and the second half of Knucklebusters, erm... let's just say we didn't like that part at all, resulting in Sidologie unfortunately becoming our least favorite C64-CD of the c64audio-sold bunch yet.
>>>
Oh well. I think it's a genre thing again. These days although I'd dearly
like everyone who liked C64 music to buy each CD, the original
idea was to have a range of CDs where everyone would like _something_. And Sidologie fills a gap there: just not your particular one.
The whole idea of the CD was "Jarre does SID", and it does it extremely
well. But it's not for everyone... (indeed, none of the Cds are for everyone, really. Not even the BIT CDs).

The Galway CD will indeed be available on the website. I hope people find
that one exciting: Martin does, since he gets most of the profit

Chris

[merman]

> am I right, Neil?
(referring to the fact that the Remix64 vol 1 booklet was stapled in the
wrong order)

It wasn't Neil's fault, that one. It was the CD plant... and then they
shrinkwrapped them... fools!

Chris

Actually, I had forgotten about the booklet. I was actually referring to myself making a mistake about the track order on v2; it was kind of a private joke between Neil and me...

As for the SIDOLOGIE booklet, for the Jarre fans it was fun to compare it to the remastered booklets for the Jarre albums. For the rest, maybe the inspiration for each track could have been added...