Marching Music Downloads, RIP

[IllianaLancerContra]

1 hour ago, Jeff Ream said:

possible...we don't know. i think we're also finding out maybe things weren't as great as we thought under Dan. and remember, Nate, like Dan, serves at the pleasure of the board, who too many have their own prioritized interests they are more concerned about than the activity as a whole. I'd love to see some OC and All Age people have more of a voice.

We need visionaries like Jones, Bonfiglio, Warren, etc who are willing to look past just their own interests.  

[Jeff Ream]

10 minutes ago, IllianaLancerContra said:

We need visionaries like Jones, Bonfiglio, Warren, etc who are willing to look past just their own interests.  

but did they? originally only the top 12 had a say. 

[IllianaLancerContra]

2 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:

but did they? originally only the top 12 had a say. 

I think they did.  At the 1971 meeting during VFW (?) nationals everyone got to speak.  It was a Canadian Corps that came up with the name 

[cixelsyd]

16 hours ago, IllianaLancerContra said:

We need visionaries like Jones, Bonfiglio, Warren, etc who are willing to look past just their own interests.  

I have never agreed and disagreed with the same post more than this one.

We do seem short on visionaries compared to the 1970s.  And you cannot have a conversation about drum corps visionaries without mentioning Jim Jones.  His corps essentially invented touring (along with much of the visual aspect of the artform).  The others?  Don Warren avoided touring for as long as he could.  On the other hand, George Bonfiglio took his corps on the most expansive tours, going west four years in a row and so forth.  But in the end, he folded his corps because he found it was only sustainable as long as it remained in the top 12.

And that is the problem with even our greatest visionaries.  They created a system that really only looked after 12 13 25 21 corps.  There were 400 such corps back when DCI started, a veritable ocean of activity.  For awhile, DCI corps figured they could pee in that ocean with impunity.

[Slingerland]

1 hour ago, cixelsyd said:

They created a system that really only looked after 12 13 25 21 corps.  There were 400 such corps back when DCI started, a veritable ocean of activity.  For awhile, DCI corps figured they could pee in that ocean with impunity.

Nothing was going to stop drum corps from shrinking in the 70s and 80s, since the bedrock (the local town corps) was made extinct by the movement of the baby boom thru the snake of time, and the number of adults who had the time and interest in volunteering for their kids' activities was likewise shrinking.  Speaking of shrinkage, let's consider the veterans posts that were primary funders/hosts of the activities, and their sharp decline in the 70s. Demographics and social constructs made the deterioration of local drum corps all but inevitable.

Factor in the major recessions of the mid-70s and early 80s, and the erosion of local ability to fund and run drum corps was only accelerated.

What I think is inarguable is that the exposure of the top corps to a nationwide audience via the PBS telecast of Finals definitely had an effect, in that it gave the most motivated kids a reason to seek out the best corps, rather than the nearest corps, since they wanted to play at the top levels of the sport.  That's playing out today across youth sports ("drum corps" = "travel teams" in almost every meaningful aspect).

What's been disappointing is the inability of DCI, the last ten years, to be aggressive in monetizing the changes in the media environment for the benefit of the corps. Of course, if they were aggressive in protecting their property, some online vlogger would complain that they were being heavy handed, so....  😎 

Edited January 7 by Slingerland

[TenHut]

18 hours ago, IllianaLancerContra said:

We need visionaries like Jones, Bonfiglio, Warren, etc who are willing to look past just their own interests.  

Amen.

[Jeff Ream]

18 hours ago, IllianaLancerContra said:

I think they did.  At the 1971 meeting during VFW (?) nationals everyone got to speak.  It was a Canadian Corps that came up with the name 

yes, but the top 12 had all the say. 13-25 got some say later, but it took years for them to be fully in the club

[Quad Aces]

On 1/2/2026 at 9:51 PM, combia1 said:

Synchronization rights aren’t needed for audio-only recordings. They aren’t needed for live broadcasts. They are only needed for the production of not-live recordings where the audio is synchronized with visual content.

Is this true that services like Flo or Box5 don’t need sync rights for their live broadcasts?

It intuitively makes sense to me that they don’t, otherwise they would probably be in the same boat as DCI regarding sync rights and being too cost prohibitive for entire broadcasts.

However, every way that I try to look up this answer says that they do in fact need sync rights.

[cixelsyd]

1 hour ago, Slingerland said:

Nothing was going to stop drum corps from shrinking in the 70s and 80s, since the bedrock (the local town corps) was made extinct by the movement of the baby boom thru the snake of time

As the history is rewritten over time, the baby boom is a popular excuse given for drum corps declining in numbers as the peak of the baby boom subsided.  But the math does not add up there.  The baby boom was not even a factor of two, while drum corps has suffered a tenfold decline in number of corps.

Of course, that whole line of reasoning ignores the youth activities that grew while the baby boom tailed off.  One of them was competitive high-school marching band.

Quote

 and the number of adults who had the time and interest in volunteering for their kids' activities was likewise shrinking.  Speaking of shrinkage, let's consider the veterans posts that were primary funders/hosts of the activities, and their sharp decline in the 70s. Demographics and social constructs made the deterioration of local drum corps all but inevitable.

Like they say, that was merely a failure to "develop new revenue sources".

Quote

Factor in the major recessions of the mid-70s and early 80s, and the erosion of local ability to fund and run drum corps was only accelerated.

There was a major recession in the 1930s, and drum corps surged through it as if it never even happened.

Quote

What I think is inarguable is that the exposure of the top corps to a nationwide audience via the PBS telecast of Finals definitely had an effect, in that it gave the most motivated kids a reason to seek out the best corps, rather than the nearest corps, since they wanted to play at the top levels of the sport.  

Okay, now you found part of what I meant with my "pee in the ocean" remark.

We should first recall what this activity is supposed to be.  It developed as an activity of friendly, sporting competition among peer groups in over a dozen different service organizations, VFW and AL being two prominent ones.  Back in the day, these groups understood that it was difficult enough to muster enough people, equip them, rehearse routines, and travel to events where other such corps would gather - so they gratefully welcomed and supported every additional corps that came along, win or lose.  (Well, most of them understood this.)  To that end, they established common-sense standards of fair play, one of which was to refrain from recruiting marchers from their competition.

When the touring flavor of drum corps became a thing, some of those corps developed a sense of entitlement.  Certain corps of that ilk felt entitled to attract recruits directly from the ranks of "local corps".  They felt that because they were touring corps, they were now a different species; the local corps were no longer their peers, and therefore release rules should not apply.  Evidently, common sense should no longer apply either, because an activity that cannibalizes their own is not on a path to growth and success.  But it seemed like an ocean of corps at the time... what could go wrong?

Quote

What's been disappointing is the inability of DCI, the last ten years, to be aggressive in monetizing the changes in the media environment for the benefit of the corps. Of course, if they were aggressive in protecting their property, some online vlogger would complain that they were being heavy handed, so....  😎 

Speaking of heavy-handed... DCI should partner with Tresona.  

[combia1]

11 hours ago, Quad Aces said:

Is this true that services like Flo or Box5 don’t need sync rights for their live broadcasts?

It intuitively makes sense to me that they don’t, otherwise they would probably be in the same boat as DCI regarding sync rights and being too cost prohibitive for entire broadcasts.

However, every way that I try to look up this answer says that they do in fact need sync rights.

I’m not sure what they are called, but there are different requirements for broadcasting or streaming a live event vs “after the fact” viewing like DVD, VHS, the Fan Network, etc. The “live” rights do allow for a single re-broadcast on a 24-hour delay. That is why you can always watch BOA, DCI, and WGI finals the next day. But only the next day.