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The Tom Delonge Thread


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39 minutes ago, _Kyle_ said:

Aha, found it! It was a Q&A, and Mark says they are indeed having meetings to make a vinyl happen.  Now what happened to that, I couldn't say.  Should start right at the relevant point if I copied the youtube link properly:

I'm also looking to see if Tom ever mentioned a physical release of any kind, but I'm coming up dry on that front.

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9 minutes ago, OliverTrump said:

I've mentioned it here before but I tried to get the rights to press DED and I was told they've already had offers to press 10,000 copies but the band isn't interested 

I'd almost guarantee it has something to do with Tom and Modlife.  That whole situation is very sketchy.  But my money is that whatever deal they worked out with Tom to distribute the album digitally via Modlife included some little clause that says if they ever release it physically it would have to be through him.  It really seemed like Tom was trying to actually make the band all his as he so loves to claim it is, and I bet that if they did press physical releases he would have actually stood to make more money than Mark and Travis.  Which I'm sure they weren't happy with at all.  Can't prove it of course, but it being a digital release through Modlife always seemed very suspect to me about what was happening behind the scenes at the time.

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2 minutes ago, _Kyle_ said:

That's a stretch as they've never even hinted at such a thing

I'm just reading between the lines, and yes its a lot of lines to read between.  But its a conclusion you can reach not without reason.  And its the only conclusion that makes any good sense to me as to why Mark would say they're meeting to make it happen, and then it never happening coupled with how they released the EP on Modlife, even though Mark and Travis had said they didn't want to be on Modlife (which is why they briefly had a coming soon Modlife page only to disappear not long after it being spotted). 

Again, could be wrong, but its the only conclusion I can reach that makes any good sense to the whole situation.

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14 minutes ago, _Kyle_ said:

Or you can take mark's word when he says he isn't a good business man? They don't seem really interested 

He said that in the same clip I showed you (literally word for word that that article you posted states).  It was a little earlier in the clip (around 11:15) and he was talking about having the album ready in time for the release date in a physical form.  So then a little later that girl asked, will there be a physical release which was where he clarified that they were having meetings right then to make it happen.  That article you posted probably only watched the first few minutes and thought, how crazy, they just forgot to do a physical release, and that's why we don't have one?  Well no, if they had kept watching they'd have realized he was only talking about having a physical release ready for the release date.  At least that's how he conveys it.

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I've always thought Modlife was an incredibly flawed concept for a business.

Like, on the surface sure it sounds great - you pay a subscription for a band you care a lot about, you get access thats more direct to the band, chance of early ticket sales, meet and greets, soundcheck entry, those 'modblast' things, limited edition merch, maybe demo snippets - whatever. you pay the price, you get a sense of exclusivity and access to limited items.

Now, if said bands account gains traction, then more and more people subscribe. you've got more and more subscribers but obviously, there's only so many meet and greets and early access tickets and limited edition pins or whatever that you can give out, because the more popular it is the less 'exclusive' that content becomes, and the harder it is to dish out to demand.

Basically, from what I could tell, Modlife would have been doomed by it's own success. it worked for bands on like AVA's level, because they were never going to have like thousands upon thousands of subscribers - their fans would actually get value for their subscription. but if they had someone of blinks level utilising Modlife, I think it would have fucked up royally. 

Tom makes cracks about social media stealing his ideas but ultimately they aren't subscription based, they're entire point is to be accessible to everyone and also - he didn't invent video chat. He can claim innovation all he likes, he was building off other peoples ideas and tailoring it to bands. thats literally it.

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32 minutes ago, Kay said:

I've always thought Modlife was an incredibly flawed concept for a business.

Like, on the surface sure it sounds great - you pay a subscription for a band you care a lot about, you get access thats more direct to the band, chance of early ticket sales, meet and greets, soundcheck entry, those 'modblast' things, limited edition merch, maybe demo snippets - whatever. you pay the price, you get a sense of exclusivity and access to limited items.

Now, if said bands account gains traction, then more and more people subscribe. you've got more and more subscribers but obviously, there's only so many meet and greets and early access tickets and limited edition pins or whatever that you can give out, because the more popular it is the less 'exclusive' that content becomes, and the harder it is to dish out to demand.

Basically, from what I could tell, Modlife would have been doomed by it's own success. it worked for bands on like AVA's level, because they were never going to have like thousands upon thousands of subscribers - their fans would actually get value for their subscription. but if they had someone of blinks level utilising Modlife, I think it would have fucked up royally. 

Tom makes cracks about social media stealing his ideas but ultimately they aren't subscription based, they're entire point is to be accessible to everyone and also - he didn't invent video chat. He can claim innovation all he likes, he was building off other peoples ideas and tailoring it to bands. thats literally it.

My opinion is that Modlife failed, mainly, because it didn't offer anyting new. It was an old thing but with a fancy name and promotion. All what I put in bold on this quote, which Tom promoted back in the day as the Modlife's core, is what we always called an 'official fan club' that, lately, evolved into street teams and other more exclusive kind of fan clubs.

In fact, Alkaline Trio had 'The Blood Pact' which, as you may remember, was an exclusive fan club, which allowed you to download a pretty nice amount of exclusive materials (complete shows, videos, studio recordings, demos...), and provided exclusive meet and greets and exclsuive merchandise. All that for a pretty much affordable price back in the day. Totally worth it, specially if you lived in the USA or UK -thinking about the meetings and soundchecks and stuff-.

So with Modlife was all like "ok, kid... are you reinventing the wheel or what?".

 

Edit: but that's his classic behavior nowadays. I mean... he's promoting his Poet thing and Strange Times as that kind of "transmedia" shit that goes into books, comics and movies as if it was this ultra revolutionary thing. But hey, guess what... that's what we call franchises. And they exist since yesteryear. Look at what George Lucas did. So, I guess the one who has to think before saying anyone or anything is stoling his ideas, is himself.

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44 minutes ago, M!ke said:

He said that in the same clip I showed you (literally word for word that that article you posted states).  It was a little earlier in the clip (around 11:15) and he was talking about having the album ready in time for the release date in a physical form.  So then a little later that girl asked, will there be a physical release which was where he clarified that they were having meetings right then to make it happen.  That article you posted probably only watched the first few minutes and thought, how crazy, they just forgot to do a physical release, and that's why we don't have one?  Well no, if they had kept watching they'd have realized he was only talking about having a physical release ready for the release date.  At least that's how he conveys it.

Yes and then they forgot, then nothing happened with those meetings. That doesn't mean Tom blocked the release like some maniac, like you constructed out of nowhere.

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Modlife isn't even an invention, its a band fanclub, which was around long before modlife.

If I am in a successful band and want a fan club, I'll just pay a bit to have someone set it up and I imagine it will be a hell of a lot cheaper than doing modlife and likely having to give over a portion of my subscription fee to Tom. Fuck that.

Really the only attraction to modlife is the Tom Delonge name recognition. That only makes sense for struggling bands and when your name recognition is a guy who tossed his entire career down the toilet, and who literally just disappeared off the site, its more like ", no thanks, Ill pass".

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3 hours ago, _Kyle_ said:

Ah, so Tom saved them money. Good on him.

Man, if you were in business you'd have people fucking you out of money right and left.

So lets see I got a guy, who basically turned our long term manager against us, who wanted full control of our band and wanted to make all the decisions, on when we tour, when we record, what songs we write, etc.

Now this same guy, wants OUR record released with his platform.

You'd have to be a complete fool to fall for that. I mean, I am gullible, but even I can see that one coming from a mile away.

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On 5/8/2017 at 3:03 AM, Kay said:

I LOVE GIVING MY OPINION IN DETAIL so thank you :P;)

Okay, I do love Dream Walker overall, but I don't love every song. I'll do a quick track by track - 

[edited out for length]

Wow this was exactly what I wanted. Haha. I agree with a lot of what you said, especially all the mentions of terrible lyrics, which are pretty much just expected of Tom these days. I feel like almost every song on the album has grown on me more over time, except for Anomaly and Kiss With A Spell which are the two songs I've loved since my first listen.

Kiss With A Spell seems like an especially polarizing song on the record. Tons of people hate it. I love it. One of my favorite AVA songs.

I've never been a big fan of The Disease or Tremors. They both just kind of bore me.

However, I haven't listened to The Dream Walker in a very long time because the digital copy I had would literally cause both my iPhone and iPod to crash whenever I tried to listen to any track from that album (it played fine on my computer, but not on any devices), which is funny, because it was the official digital copy that I got from To The Stars after buying the album. I guess I should just rip the songs off my CD, that would fix the problem.

 

 

OH WAIT. 

"This CD is a blank rewritable optical disc for you to burn your digital copy of the album or any content you choose."

Never mind.

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Modlife ultimately suffered the same fate as MySpace. Eventually, some better and more accessible form of the technology or platform arises. I don't think much about Modlife was particularly revolutionary, but some of the ideas were actually ok. Paying a subscription fee to have behind the scenes online access to demos, live chats, early presales, rehearsals is pretty cool - and many people would definitely pay 10-15 bucks a month to be able to get exclusive content from a favorite band that's not available elsewhere. I don't think that was the problem. The problem was more the fact that technology was invented where bands could do these things on their own terms (Instagram live, Snapchat, Facebook live, and numerous other online apps and platforms) - so as somebody mentioned - why pay a fee to stream your shit on modlife when you can do it on Instagram for free? Sure you might not get the few hundreds of monthly subscription fees coming in but you don't have to pay the fees to the company/Tom because you can just do it all on your own. And most bands would rather have free and accessible exposure for all on Instagram/Facebook/Snapchat/ect than make a little bit of cash streaming it to select people. So it wasn't a terrible idea - but it definitely wasn't revolutionary either.

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2 hours ago, M!ke said:

I'd almost guarantee it has something to do with Tom and Modlife.  That whole situation is very sketchy.  But my money is that whatever deal they worked out with Tom to distribute the album digitally via Modlife included some little clause that says if they ever release it physically it would have to be through him.  It really seemed like Tom was trying to actually make the band all his as he so loves to claim it is, and I bet that if they did press physical releases he would have actually stood to make more money than Mark and Travis.  Which I'm sure they weren't happy with at all.  Can't prove it of course, but it being a digital release through Modlife always seemed very suspect to me about what was happening behind the scenes at the time.

If that was the case, wouldn't olivertrump have been told that someone else already has the rights, not that the band wasn't interested.

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