Marching Music Downloads, RIP

[Jeff Ream]

1 hour ago, greg_orangecounty said:

In 53 years if the activity can’t seem to figure out how a kid can buy an authorized copy of his performance after paying all that money, time, and effort, it begs the question of who the activity exists for.  What do all these positioned adults get paid to do? 

no one working for DCI is making money on the licensing. the copyright holders are.

[perc2100]

On 12/17/2025 at 1:33 PM, pags said:

I can't say that it's "good news" or "bad news".  To me, it's a "we'll see...".  I'm disappointed in the lack of access to purchase something I really like to listen to, but I also understand that they need a certain volume of purchasing engagement to justify it.  If they're not getting that, then the best I can do right now as far as "good news" is that this decision means they're trying to make sound financial decisions for the effective stewardship of the activity as a whole, and that is a sign of good management (which we all should want)

IDK, I think "DCI is eliminating a service it's offered for years with zero replacement" is inherently 'bad news.'
As many have said, it's understandable given the complexities of copy right laws and whatnot, and I think for fans/consumers this is bad news to an extent.  Perhaps not monumentally bad, as I presume the service is closing shop mostly because not enough people are buying to support the service, so perhaps overall this is a neutral development.

I have not purchased anything from DCI since they sold Blurays; I think DCI shows nowadays are so intertwined with audio & visual that just the music doesn't work as much anymore - at least not for me, as I don't see shows enough times for the recordings to spark tons of memories of vis moments.  So for me personally this doesn't impact me at all.  But this seems to be the last way anyone can get any official recordings of drum corps performances, short of ripping youtube vids or whatnot illegally, so that makes me feel this is not a great thing over all.  I know just as a music teacher than paying copy right holders for marching band or color guard or winter percussion is expensive, and my program isn't remotely close to high profile like DCI, doesn't use nearly as many different pieces or composers as the average DCI production might, etc.  So I 100% get the legal hassles involved here, as well as the expenses.  But for fans, this is a bummer

[hostrauser]

1 hour ago, perc2100 said:

doesn't use nearly as many different pieces or composers as the average DCI production might

Bingo bango bongo. I've always been that guy to create a mess, so let me do it one more time.

Yes, copyright laws are complicated. They are also not something that sprang out of the ether yesterday. If my memory serves, DCI/Phantom Regiment couldn't get audio reproduction rights for the Loris Tjeknavorian "Dance of Ecstasy" segment of the 2008 Spartacus show, and that segment was cut out of the final CD presses and VHS/DVD releases. This is almost a 20-year issue DCI has been dealing with and, this might be a surprising opinion, but I think they got pretty darn good at it.

No, the problem here is the corps. More specifically: the show designs.

My understanding is that, as the legal entity that was producing these audio files for reproduction and sale, it was DCI's responsibility to get the audio reproduction rights for every song for every corps. And now we have "progressed" to the point where musical show design is all about crafting 30-second impact statements, so you have eight or ten or fifteen musical snippets per show, multiplied by 25+ corps... the amount of money and labor hours spent obtaining all of those rights had to have become astronomical. I would bet a very small amount of money (hey, I'm not Elon Musk) that the sound editing and production costs paled in comparison. It just seems impossible to me that the audio production costs (which I know more about than copyright law, admittedly) could be so high by themselves as to not make this a feasible product. DCI made it very clear that this was a bottom line decision: corps can still go through all of those steps if they choose (and, since many corps run in the red or very minorly in the black, I'm guessing most corps WON'T), but it's entirely on them now. DCI was just losing too much money on this.

Look, I'm not going to doomsay this is another nail in the coffin of DCI. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but either way the world is a much different place now than it was in the early 90s, when many peoples' introduction to DCI was through PBS or VHS or audio recordings. But it was those very audio and video recordings that carried many of us through the offseason. That kept our interest in the activity high. That helped get us excited for what the next year would bring. Who knows, maybe DCI will keep trucking along and this will be barely a speed bump.

But as someone who has purchased EVERY finals audio package from 1992-present, I'm both very sad and thoroughly annoyed.

[larry333]

Good for the bootleg guys. 
Bootleg Drum Corps recordings are and will become a major part of the Drum Corps merchandise ecosystem.

What DCI should stop selling is those awful and cheaply made t-shirts and other poorly made PepWear items.

 

 

[rollinthrurolls]

10 hours ago, larry333 said:

What DCI should stop selling is those awful and cheaply made t-shirts and other poorly made PepWear items.

 

 

We (my circle of friends) have started referring to them as disposable. They are good for a year or two if I'm lucky, then they become oil rags, cleaning rags etc. 

[ranintothedoor]

One thing that can be said about this whole movement... 

... finally, in a digital age, live music is growing in importance again.  

... and physical copies of recordings will become more and more valuable as the digital landscape become more treacherous.

The holder of high quality audio/visual records of every corps' performance in the DCI age will become almost a source of truth and historical record for the art these organizations produce.  

I think I will begin downloading and burning to disc every Cadets performance I can find.  

[Jeff Ream]

16 hours ago, perc2100 said:

IDK, I think "DCI is eliminating a service it's offered for years with zero replacement" is inherently 'bad news.'
As many have said, it's understandable given the complexities of copy right laws and whatnot, and I think for fans/consumers this is bad news to an extent.  Perhaps not monumentally bad, as I presume the service is closing shop mostly because not enough people are buying to support the service, so perhaps overall this is a neutral development.

I have not purchased anything from DCI since they sold Blurays; I think DCI shows nowadays are so intertwined with audio & visual that just the music doesn't work as much anymore - at least not for me, as I don't see shows enough times for the recordings to spark tons of memories of vis moments.  So for me personally this doesn't impact me at all.  But this seems to be the last way anyone can get any official recordings of drum corps performances, short of ripping youtube vids or whatnot illegally, so that makes me feel this is not a great thing over all.  I know just as a music teacher than paying copy right holders for marching band or color guard or winter percussion is expensive, and my program isn't remotely close to high profile like DCI, doesn't use nearly as many different pieces or composers as the average DCI production might, etc.  So I 100% get the legal hassles involved here, as well as the expenses.  But for fans, this is a bummer

it is a bummer. i remember years ago when WGI was eliminating their ran network, the cost to house everything alone...not just licensing, but just keeping what they had and then continuing to add content was an "expensive space hog".  i get that, and man i'd love to have some recent percussion shows on physical media or even able to stream, but just housing all of the content is costly, then add the licensing costs, producing physical media costs...and not enough sales at a decent price....it's a money loser. Remember DCi's mission is to get money so i t can give it back to the member corps. things that lose money does not achieve that goal

[cixelsyd]

11 hours ago, hostrauser said:

Look, I'm not going to doomsay this is another nail in the coffin of DCI. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but either way the world is a much different place now than it was in the early 90s, when many peoples' introduction to DCI was through PBS or VHS or audio recordings.

Your point is not trivial.  Over the years, hundreds of thousands of kids have discovered drum corps when their band director played audio/video in the band room.  Now what are their options?

FloMarching is only a live-streaming service, so it is unavailable when kids are in band class.

The only other option is YouTube.  As experience shows, virtually all of the drum corps content on YouTube infringes on one or more copyrights, and only stays there temporarily until (one of) the rights holder(s) requests a takedown.  Soon, when AI agents get involved, those takedowns will come so swiftly that the idea of YouTube as a surrogate drum corps media repository will vanish.

This is a deeply significant loss to the activity.  Doubt this decision was fully thought out.

[Terri Schehr]

45 minutes ago, cixelsyd said:

Your point is not trivial.  Over the years, hundreds of thousands of kids have discovered drum corps when their band director played audio/video in the band room.  Now what are their options?

FloMarching is only a live-streaming service, so it is unavailable when kids are in band class.

The only other option is YouTube.  As experience shows, virtually all of the drum corps content on YouTube infringes on one or more copyrights, and only stays there temporarily until (one of) the rights holder(s) requests a takedown.  Soon, when AI agents get involved, those takedowns will come so swiftly that the idea of YouTube as a surrogate drum corps media repository will vanish.

This is a deeply significant loss to the activity.  Doubt this decision was fully thought out.

That’s exactly how I found out about drum corps.  My junior high band director played Fleetwoods of Cabs, Yankee Rebels, and Sky for us.  We did an exhibition at the Illinois state fair show in 1968 and that’s where I saw my first show. And then in 1971, he had Norwood at our school for camp. I joined the next fall. 

[IllianaLancerContra]

13 hours ago, larry333 said:

Good for the bootleg guys. 
Bootleg Drum Corps recordings are and will become a major part of the Drum Corps merchandise ecosystem.

What DCI should stop selling is those awful and cheaply made t-shirts and other poorly made PepWear items.

 

 

Wasn’t one of the reasons DCI was formed was because there were bootleg recordings being sold and the Corps didn’t get any $ from it?