A Mark In Time
Mark Knopfler Discussion => Mark Knopfler Discussion Forum => Topic started by: herlock on February 22, 2012, 04:07:43 PM
-
You will find below my email exchanges with Simfy (from most recent to oldest, so read bottom to top).
I just suppressed my name to comply with the Forum policy not to use real names (although I personnally find this policy strange, I would have no problems at all using my real name, but well, I comply with the rules).
I am just amazed at how unprofessional and short-term focused these people are...
-- ------
sorry for my late reply, i was sick.
When was the purchase and please send me the purchase number, so i can check this. You got an invlice, this one i will need aswell, cause as i already explained, the shop was closed due to internal agreements.
Our company used to have the live recordiung part and the streamingpart, and the focus was put to streaming, so the live recording part was shut down in 2011.
Greetings
Julia
_______
Customer Service
simfy AG
Vogelsanger Str. 187
50825 Cologne, Germany
Management Board: Gerrit Schumann, Georg Bergheim
Supervisory Board: Dr. Hendrik Brandis (Chairman)
Registered in Cologne, HRB 66600
Dear Julia,
Thanks for your response. However, I find it very unsatisfactory from a
customer perspective:
- As a customer I bought the right to re-download my concerts in my private
space, should I need to do so (which is the case, by the way). You're just
telling me that the concerts I paid for are lost ??
- You did not bother to send a notice to your customers that the service
will be shut down; this is highly unprofessionnal, to say the least.
- And now, you do not even bother to explain to me what happened and why
the service is closed. What was the "strategy" behind this ???
Do you really think such an attitude will give you loyal customers ???
I am not resting my case, I ask you firmly to escalate this issue and to
give me proper answers.
Julia, 09. Febr. 14:53 (CET):
Hello,
thanks for your mail.
Unforunatelly we closed our live recodring shop simfylive in summer 2011. Due to that ordering any live concert ist not possible any more.
Greetings
Julia
_______
Customer Service
simfy AG
Vogelsanger Str. 187
50825 Cologne, Germany
Management Board: Gerrit Schumann, Georg Bergheim
Supervisory Board: Dr. Hendrik Brandis (Chairman)
Registered in Cologne, HRB 66600
Hi,
I used to have an account at Simfy (see below). I purchased 10 Mark
Knopfler's concerts.
Now that I want to go bakc to my space and re-download some of these
concerts, I just can't.
Trying even to purchase a concert on simfy live works until checkout, then
redirect me to a facebook page of a Simfy application; I downloaded this
one and tried to create an account, only to be told that the application is
not available in my country !!
I find it outrageous that I can't access anymore to my PAID products
without even an notification. The simfylive page is still up but not
running ! What happened ?
I do not care about this simfy application that is not even available in my
country. All I want is the service I paid for and am used to - downloading
my paid concerts and new concerts in high-quality MP3 format.
Please help !
Many thanks and best regards,
-
I however am surprised that you really expect that you have eternal access to a download page, even when you paid for it? I think in offering a complete
and successfull download the company has done what it was paid for. Why not saving it, making a back-up copy and enjoying THAT for the rest of your life? Maybe I am naive, but I cannot see the problem...? ??? If you have missed to produce a back-up, well, it is your fault.
Just my two cents,
LE
-
You'll find below my response to them today. I *do* have backups... I just wanted to point out that it is not fair and not professional to suppress a service which was advertised (you will have access to your downloads later) WITHOUT notice. I did not expect it to run forever, but at least I would expect to be notified if it is suppressed.
And of course I'm pissed off with the suppresion of the live concert service...
Ho well... to everyone his/her views !
Cheers
Dear Julia,
Thanks for your answer.
I will not bother you anymore with my concerts, as fortunately for me I *do* have backups of them. I appreciate your offer to help to find them. My point was just to show you what could happen to some of your customers who where not even *told* that the service is closed !
I personally think that closing this activity is a big mistake. There is a lot of demand for live concert purchase. What Simfy did with the USB stick at the end of the concert was very innovative. At the very least, you could have let people continue to purchase the existing concerts, what does it cost ?? How does an artist like Mark Knopler react when he realises people can't buy his concerts anymore ? this is a loss of revenue for the artists, right ?? If people cannot trust that the service will last, there is a loss of confidence and therefore a loss of business...
Please feedback this comment to your management, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one to think that way.
Many thanks for your help anyway.
Best regards,
-
Hmmmmmmm....
I see and of course I get your point. I am not happy about the closing of SimfyLive, too, because that will probably mean no more live downloads from future shows unless PC/MK are able to find another service than Simfy. From that point of view, you are right of course. I have 26 shows from 2010 and now wish I had them all. But on the other hand I have had more than 18 months time to get them so I see it as my own fault not to buy them in time.
But I still don't think a company has the duty to inform anyone who ever bought anything from them about their plans to close down the store. I think
you are a little too hard to dear Julia, who impersonates the store. Any shop can close. It is not a club, you are just buying something, and when you return the next time and the doors are shut, well, shit happens. That's how I think it works today. It is not customer friendly of course but it is the way it is.
Please do not think I am in want of a fight with you, it is just that I think you are maybe just expecting too much. But maybe some input from some other folks would be helpful. It is however good for us fans to know and read now what has happened, so us forumers have to thank you for your efforts and your correspondence with them so we now know there's no SimfyLive anymore.
LE
-
thinks it will be any use passingthis on to PC? sort of as a warning of how not to do things in the future (As it seems obvious from some of Guys' replies that it will not be the last time they offer live rcordings)
-
I'm not angry with you at all, your manners are fine and everybody's entitled to his own opinions :)
I believe that although I put pressure on her to escalte the issue, I remained polite to "dear Julia" and tried to be peaceful and smoothing in my last email.
I respectfully disagree with you on one account: if I bought something from a shop and the transaction is 100% closed, of course I cannot expect to be informed if the shop closes; however, the situation is slightly different here. I created an account with Simfy, I bought not only some files on my harddrive, but the promise that I will be able to come back later and manage my account; in that case, a notice saying "please note that this service will be closed on <date>, so make sure your download all remaing items, and apologies for the inconvenience" would not be too much to ask, I believe.
I'm also quite curious on how they deal with the Artists. Granted, the revenue generated by concerts 18 months after the fact must be very small; still... what about to the artists who trusted Simfy to distribute their concerts more recentlly, much closer to the closing date, where those concerts were still "hot" to download ? were they notified ? compensated ?
As a professional I just find their attitude to be well, close to amateurism.
Ayway...
-
thinks it will be any use passingthis on to PC? sort of as a warning of how not to do things in the future (As it seems obvious from some of Guys' replies that it will not be the last time they offer live rcordings)
Thanks Pottel, I think it may be a good idea. I don't know how to contact PC, if you tell me I can do so, or otherwise if you already have a relationship with him, I hereby autorize you to quote my emails to him :) up to you.
Cheers
-
don't have his email addy at hand here, but i am pretty sure that someone on this forum has and can contact you to hand it to you. i know Guy posted it once but i cannot find it using his search functionality.
-
Guy has the post address from PCM on his site, in his ABOUT menu.
LE
-
It's clearly another Crowfly scandal.
Do these people really think we can buy 50 shows in just one year ?
Next time I know what to do and I will have no mercy. They don't want to sell ? No problem, I won't buy more than needed ;)
It's only a question or organization and coordination.
-
Yup...
As of now, there is no legal offering at all for MK's live recordings.
I have a rather straightforward attitude towards piracy:
-if there is a reasonnable legal offering, I buy
-otherwise... i have no remorse.
Guy hinted that they have been recording every show since 2005 (audio only, obvisouly), and that there could be something one day like "MK live anthology, 2005-2011" (audio only, too bad). I really hope this will see the light of the day.
I suggest that we now treat the live recording formerly known as Simfy's just like the Passalong ones: as Public Domain !
-
agree man....
-
These companies are in business to make money. If they aren't turning over enough profit for a particular product or service, then they have to adjust their business model so that it will make it profitable again, even if that means terminating some products or services. Unfortunately, between Crowfly and Simfy it doesn't look like offering up these concert downloads is a profitable business practice...at least for the companies. I know other bands (Metallica for example) have made it work by mixing, producing, and selling the recordings themselves through their website. Perhaps this is an avenue that PCM is exploring?
In terms of the older DS material, I think MK & co. know that there is a market for some kind of official release, but from what I've inferred from reading Guy's forum, they seem to be held up by legal issues.
-
...Guy hinted that they have been recording every show since 2005 (audio only, obvisouly), and that there could be something one day like "MK live anthology, 2005-2011" (audio only, too bad). I really hope this will see the light of the day...
Holy guacamole!! A simfy quality recording of every show since 2005?!?! It sounds too good to be true :o :o :o :o
-
I e-mailed Paul Crockford the very same day I started this thread and he answered that "In this moment we are working on it"
Then more or less a week ago Guy said that the fact that every concert since 2005 has been recorded is something the management has not forget.
That makes me think they are thinking about something, maybe selling digital downloads from the official site, who knows.
PCM mail in Guy
-
Ah, I see. Cool.
LE
-
Oh man, is there some kind of electronic petition we can collect names on or SOMETHING to get them to sell those recordings? >:(
There are SO many audience recordings of concerts that I'd always wished I could get a soundboard-quality recording of; of course, I always thought that was just dreaming...
-
Oh man, is there some kind of electronic petition we can collect names on or SOMETHING to get them to sell those recordings? >:(
There are SO many audience recordings of concerts that I'd always wished I could get a soundboard-quality recording of; of course, I always thought that was just dreaming...
+100
-
Here is (below) the answer from "dear Julia" to my last mail.
This is quite enlightening about the viability of the business model - high advanced paiments, not enough sales to cover.
The solution to this seems quite simple to me:
The business for live audio music seems to be quite small, restricted to die-hard fans.
Every artist today have the necessary equipment to record their own shows; besides, their teams are the best placed to mix them the way they want it to sound... not too much flute please... :) So, there is no need to engage huge fixe costs, like having a dedicated Simfy team following the tour with their own equiment, etc. Just let the artists provide the recordings.
Still, you need to distribute them. This can be done individually on each artist's web site, today it is very easy to build an e-commerce web-site; but still, there is an interest for a centralized, well-known purchasing plateform, to attract new customers and for the sake of convenience: istore, amazon, can do this perfectly.
Why not do exactly what Kindle Direct Publishing does now for e-books ? any author can now compile his own book, send it, and wait for money to come. Give 30% to the store, period. No fix costs. No retainers. No advanced paiments.
Am I dreaming that something like this could be possible in this century, or what ?
Hello <Herlock>,
great, that you have the backups.
You are not the only one who does not understand, why simfylive was closed. But the point behind that is, and this is something customers do not know, is that the contracts that allows us to record artists includie very high advance payment. At some point a company then has to check if the spend money gets back by selling concerts. After 2 yaears of live recording the managenet decided to closed that part.
Licenses always have a certain validation, after that time we are not allowed to sell them anymore. That is why you can not order any more concerts.
I will pass ypiur feedback over to the managent.
Greetings
Julia
_______
Customer Service
simfy AG
Vogelsanger Str. 187
50825 Cologne, Germany
Management Board: Gerrit Schumann, Georg Bergheim
Supervisory Board: Dr. Hendrik Brandis (Chairman)
Registered in Cologne, HRB 66600
-
Looks like really something is gonna happen with the official recordings made by the band...
-
Yeah, I posted today on Guy's forum about whether or not the recordings could be considered "Public Domain" and got this answer:
"I don't think that file sharing would be condoned no matter how available they are BUT all I can do is say that the future of the many live recordings we have has been discussed and fans are considered. You will understand I cannot say more. "
-
Awesomestiously!