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Flo S#cks, For everyone. Period. Unless you are the only person watching.. Ever..


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19 minutes ago, MikeRapp said:

No doubt, but the issue with DCI is the sudden and disproportionate draw it pulls on your servers. You might have a million college wrestling fans but rarely if ever are they all on the same streaming event at the same time.

Understood and agree. With many times more wrestling matches you could have smaller numbers per event but more viewers in total. Was just questioning the customer numbers raised earlier. 

Caveat... I have no idea of numbers but mention of college wrestling bit of an interest as Uncle went to Lehigh whose best known sports team is wrestling. And I know how rabid the alumni were at the time. 

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12 hours ago, MikeRapp said:

Rivals.com made that mistake in their early years. National signing day is the equivalent of dci finals and their service went down all day long. When it would resurface it took so long to load pages that people just walked away. Despite always being prepared for more volume, they always underprepared and underprojected.

Even after Yahoo bought them the issues continued. And Yahoo never admitted any mistakes and refused to make it right with subscribers.

Finally the leadership of Rivals itself said enough is enough. When it happened again for like the tenth year in a row, the ceo of rivals gave EVERY SINGLE SUBSCRIBER a one month REFUND. It costed them over a million dollars but it finally convinced Yahoo that the status quo was unacceptable. 

These issues are NOT the fault of subscribers. They are fixable. But DCI is going to have to basically say fix it or else. 

subscriptions would have to drop a lot before they will do anything

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On 7/18/2019 at 1:17 PM, Glenn426 said:

 What in the world is stopping FLO/DCI/Corps from securing the Sync Rights to offer a DVR Service, To offer Full audio and Video recording of past shows?

Surely ASCAP and BMI don't intend to stop a free market. The prices for these fees are negotiable..

Quick math here tells me FLO is charging $150 a year per person. I venture to say they have 20k to 30K Active FLOmarching subscribers. So annually they get 3 million to  4.5 Million is Revenue from Subscribers. (just ballpark, I'd be curious to know the true number, my estimates where based on the fact that they have 105,000 Instagram Followers) After paying the cost for the people running shows, maybe 4-5 people per show that are on tour you'd figure that they are hanging onto at least 1.5 - 3.5 Million after cost. Wouldn't there be some room to secure a sync license for each show.

And if the cost is so prohibitive, then why wouldn't DCI help FLO in sharing this cost. Why wouldn't DCI try to get Exceptions from the rights holders and argue for the educational value of these performances to bring the prices down..

IF having the Sync right to the shows (that allowed for DVR and Archives)  meant that the cost of the annual subscription went up $50 per subscriber wouldn't you pay to have that access? I would, in a heartbeat.

I don't know the details but It just seems to me like DCI freaked out after having the copyright issues questioned/fined a couple of years back and sold their soul to the First company who came along. 

Why can't DCI sell Ads to recoup the cost of the additional Sync licensing fees. I would not mind to see ads from the top Sponsors in the activity run throughout the stream similar to what we have for Regionals and Finals right now.Run ads during the Archives so that the Sponsors get maximum exposure for their buck.

What about Selling Title Sponsorship, Similar to what is happening tonight at Belton, the Yamaha DCI Regional Championship, Like College Football Bowls but for DCI.

Anything but sitting back and allowing Flo to destroy the product for now the third year is just simply crossing your hands and giving up while Taking in loads of cash.

 

At this point if I were DCI, When this current Multi-year contract ends,  I would hire 20 Intern Aged kids give them 3 Really good Cameras (One for each recording crew) Two boom Mics each to follow the tours around and provide a live recording from the box at each show. Stream the shows through Twitch or some other well established Streaming service that can handle the bandwidth of 25,000 Viewers and spend the rest of the money on the fees required to have DVR function and watchable archives of shows during the season.

Prioritize whats important,

  • Good High quality streams that wont fail because of limited bandwidth.
  • Great Sound Quality, "In the stands" Sound that are exactly what an audience member would hear sitting in the stands.
  • Little to no shows that are not Live streamed, Guarantee all TOC level shows are Live.
  • DVR Functionality during the Live Performance time + 3hours.
  • Archives of shows, In-season that can be watched at any point.

Not Important

  • In the lot access, Lothype, Youtube and other Independent media companies have this avenue covered, if you wanted to watch something in the lot you can probably watch it without having to watch through FLO.
  • Designer Interviews, Dan Potter and Marching Roundtable are doing an amazing job of this already and if given official access through DCI can cover all of the corps and news during the pre-season to satisfy the fans who crave BTS access.
  • Multicam run by an unexperienced person that is making poor decision on what to focus on and when.

 

Please do better DCI.

They don’t need sync rights to implement a DVR service. The Supreme Court has made 100% clear that time shifting constitutes fair use. Flo is just incompetent (or DCI is completely ignorant of copyright law).

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On 7/18/2019 at 1:41 PM, Jeff Ream said:

Flo has some issues, mostly on customer service. the broadcast has gotten better.

 

licensing fees and rights aint cheap. It's not like DCI and Flo are making millions on the deal. 

Again, you don’t need a license for DVR. Archiving is a different story.

Here’s a decent overview of the relevant law:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/08/victory-dvrs-cloud

Edited by jasgre2000
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On 7/19/2019 at 7:53 AM, Jeff Ream said:

DCi ignored the rules for years...lots of them...and had to cut a very large check to make amends for those abuses. the amount of fans that actually want those older offerings doesn't equal the cost of continuing to get licensing fees for that content....unless you're ok paying a whole lot more money.

 

People seem to think DCI is sitting on millions just rotting in the bank. They aren't. The main goal is to kick as much of what they make back out to the corps. The return on investment to paying all these extra fees for everything everyone wants is nowhere close to helping DCI or the corps financially. It's just not there. I'd love to see it. Thank God I got the older stuff hard copy, and made sure to get it to other places I can see it. But there aren't enough like me that want it to justify the cost.

DCI didn’t have to cut a check. It chose to. No court has ever found that it violated any laws.

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On 8/11/2019 at 12:05 AM, HouserCD said:

I contacted DCI about the ongoing issues with FloMarching after DCI Memphis and received the following response.

”We do not believe that this particular issue is systemic.  Live internet broadcasts travel over networks that are outside of a broadcasters control, and these routes may or may not experience issues that could result in occasional interruptions.  We apologize on behalf of FloMarching for any downtime you may have experienced.”

There has to be some way we can improve on this.  I would even be willing to pay more if it meant having a consistent stream if that is possible. 

 

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Flo (alleged) uses AWS as its backbone. That is the same backbone used by Netflix and a majority of other streaming services. The idea that it is AWS’s fault is laughable.

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1 hour ago, jasgre2000 said:

DCI didn’t have to cut a check. It chose to. No court has ever found that it violated any laws.

if they ever wanted to show old stuff in any way, they had to. trust me, they litigated it for a long time.

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On 8/20/2019 at 9:32 PM, Jeff Ream said:

if they ever wanted to show old stuff in any way, they had to. trust me, they litigated it for a long time.

Sounds like you have inside information, so I’ll take you word for it that they felt it was their only choice. My point, though, was that, too my knowledge, they were not legally obligated to pay anything. Did a court order them to pay? Was a lawsuit actually filed? (If so, that’s news to me ... but it sounds from your post like there was one). At the end of the day, the payment was voluntary, even if they felt they had no other choice.

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3 hours ago, jasgre2000 said:

Sounds like you have inside information, so I’ll take you word for it that they felt it was their only choice. My point, though, was that, too my knowledge, they were not legally obligated to pay anything. Did a court order them to pay? Was a lawsuit actually filed? (If so, that’s news to me ... but it sounds from your post like there was one). At the end of the day, the payment was voluntary, even if they felt they had no other choice.

i dont know of an actual lawsuit, but I do know many attorneys cost a lot of billable hours working the plethora of issues out. And with licensing laws now, yes there were fees....for old, new, streaming, playback, recording for sale, you name it. Many organizations followed the law one way. the mergers creating Tresona viewed the law the other way and went hardcore after anyone for violating it. And here's the rub.........Tresona can litigate DCI into financial ruin. They have the resources and would do it to be dicks. And their lobbying arm is hugely connected in DC and they'd be supported.

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