Blood Alliance shirts

[Power_Metal_Dom]

Makes me sad to hear the limitations placed on Steve but I understand it all makes good sense. I hope at least that fans can get past albums at gigs and not just the current one, it'd be a blow to become awestruck live and then couldn't pick up some of the back catalogue.

What would Steve's take be on fan-made merch? Obviously without the intent to mass produce and sell bootleg merch - if buying a new WoF shirt was out the question would making your own be crossing a line for the band?

 

[Symphony]

I would have no issue at all with people making their own merchandise

With the back catalogue, the first 3 albums are pretty much out of print. I have no way of buying "stock" of WOF, Neverworld or MND now....because the stock doesn't exist. We have about 35 copies of Neverworld left in stock currently.

We will be providing links to purchase Neverworld and Magic Never Dies on the new PQ website but Japan is the only place I believe where those records are still in print.

But you also have to consider that with a brand new line up and brand new album, we want to push the new album as much as is humanly possible

 

[Power_Metal_Dom]

Top man I better get to work on the Blood Alliance fridge magnet then!

 

[Andiferum]

Hahaha! Does want!

 

[Symphony]

They should be arriving mid March......certainly in time for the Symphony X shows. We won't have them at Hammerfest though due to the 25% commission taken by the festival.

I'm considering making pre-orders available next week too

 

[Andiferum]

Oh no! Find a way of getting me one at Hammerfest!

 

[Powerray]

Ordered !!!!!!!!!!! well it's preorder

 

[Symphony]

Ordered !!!!!!!!!!! well it's preorder

Top man! Thanks dude!

 

[Kingface]

Ordered mine! I'll probably end up buying one at Corporation when you support Symphony X as well if they're there but doesn't hurt to have two!

 

[Cronopio]

We won't have them at Hammerfest though due to the 25% commission taken by the festival.

How do they justify this?

 

[Symphony]

Ordered mine! I'll probably end up buying one at Corporation when you support Symphony X as well if they're there but doesn't hurt to have two!

You sir are a gentleman and a scholar!

 

[Symphony]

How do they justify this?

Typical festival policy I'm afraid these days....certainly over here.

Quite often you find larger venues do the same as well unfortunately.....which makes it even tougher for bands like ourselves

 

[Power_Metal_Dom]

Regarding the new website's shop - is there no way to buy a BA CD and a tshirt to only pay once for p&p? Incidentally, is the discography priced by how much is left in stock?

 

[Symphony]

If you look closely you will see that the BA and MOI CD's are available via the Napalm online store, MND and WOF are available via third party stockists......only Neverworld is currently actually stocked by us. The pricings, apart from neverworld, are based on what the sellers are actually charging.

The reason for this is that I cannot afford to have money tied up in stocks of CD's that can be bought cheaper elsewhere......for example if we are selling them...I cannot compete with the price offered by Play.com or Amazon for example.

It will be possible to buy BA shirt and CD combo at the live shows however, but I'm only carrying an initial stock of approx 40 BA CD's.....and I hope we will sell at least some of them on the SX tour and the remainder in May.

I'm just having to be a bit more savvy about these things this time around unfortunately

In fact ordering CD's direct from Napalm really helps us actually in terms of increasing the chances of tour support etc etc as the SX tour and May dates are being funded by yours truly.

 

[Andiferum]

Hopefully you won't have the problem of having to price-match Symphony X?

 

[Symphony]

Well you have to be prepared for that. Funnily enough we had to do that with Helloween back in the day.....and it didn't do us any harm at all. Still the most successful tour to date on merchandise

Admittedly we didn't have the recession factor back then either though

 

[Andiferum]

Yeah, true about the recession factor. A band my friend manages (Man Must Die) had to price match when they supported Machine Head. Consequentially, the shirts they wanted to charge £10 for were £20 and the hoodies they wanted to do for £20 were like £40-50. It's so shitty to do that to a support act! They should be entitled to sell whatever they want at whatever price they want.

 

[Symphony]

It's a tough world out there at the moment dude, that's for sure. Hardly anyone will cut you some slack or give you a break unfortunately.

The harsh reality is that everyone is looking for a bargain and yet we cannot afford to provide a bargain without taking the pain ourselves. I guess it depends on your definition of a bargain though I guess.

 

[Power_Metal_Dom]

If you look closely you will see that the BA and MOI CD's are available via the Napalm online store, MND and WOF are available via third party stockists

My bad, ta. Caffeine levels were low when I was looking.

In fact ordering CD's direct from Napalm really helps us actually in terms of increasing the chances of tour support etc etc as the SX tour and May dates are being funded by yours truly.

Message received and understood.

The harsh reality is that everyone is looking for a bargain and yet we cannot afford to provide a bargain without taking the pain ourselves. I guess it depends on your definition of a bargain though I guess.

Keep PQ in the black - receive more material, tours, merch.

Well it sounds like a bargain deal to me!

 

[1928]

You know, relating this to the piracy issue we've all discussed, I've tried informing people countless times re: the chunk of money venues take out of merchandise sales, and they still shrug it off, because apparently all people have to do is buy one t-shirt at a concert and that makes up for everything. And I'm going to bring a new emoticon to the table for this specific post: