For my share, I am primarily interested in released music/video material. And that is - concerning VM - not so much. I must admit that I am happy with that. Other artists release bulkloads of stuff where single exclusive tracks are spread all over various compilations, soundtracks, ... which are only available overseas. I am very annoyed to make expensive imports for a single track, maybe even pay customs fees and in the end get only one track for 30-40USD. Not to speak of a re-sell value of less than 5USD. It's sometimes hard to keep track of such releases, especially if you collect from more than a few artists.
If you're buisy with other things, like most likely everyone else here, it is even a hard job to read new messages, collect various informations about releases and get the essentials out of it. And then you still need some time to enjoy the fruits of your passion.
I have the Berlin Philharmonie VHS tape and its waiting now more than three months to be transformed to my PC and DVD. I've read that someone of this forum put a file to the goodies but even the chance of accessing that section does hardly "trigger" me at the moment. Most of the video files I have from my long past access to glenn's server are nice to see but they hardly provide state of the art quality and that is not the fault of the posters but of the releasers (or not releasers). But how dares to hope for more releases if there is so little interest.
Concerning the pictures: it is nice to see what people find but only few pixs are really teasing enough or in acceptable quality that I really download them. It is dissappointing to see that some agencies have nice photo sessions with her but the pictures are not available for common people, not even for money. Most of magazine/newspaper scans are spoiled by text, editing and usually of bad quality. Most of the concert pix are far beyond any professional quality but I do not want to complain about the great efforts all the fans undertake to get these snippets as they are all we have.
Furthermore, I am not a fan in the classical sense but only share the interest for music and just sometimes video/picture stuff all the other "private" topics do hardly bother me. I also do not go to concerts, not even in my hometown (too expensive, too crowdy, too noisy, tooo....)
So usually I just have a short look at those messages and go ahead. Furthermore I don't remember to have ever found anything special I could provide first. Although all the posters feel happy if they get appreciation and response by members I do not like to post such short comments as "thanks", "yes, mhm", "great". And for more I hardly find the time ore purpose.
Despite all that this is still the best VM place to get news and goodies (even without the goodies section).
I collect music from at least two artists where most likely I would be the only one who could provide new finds or rarities and their forums do either not exist anymore or have less than 10 membes and entries....
Imagine 3652 new entries per day. Who would read
Here I spend no more than 1-5 minutes every now and then and I am through with all that matters. Isn't that good to know that you missed nothing but still see that at least some people care and respond to questions.
Oops, today I "wasted" more than 15 minutes here, downloaded a handful of maybe new photos, got a reply to one of my rare contributions, wrote far too much at a time, and maybe just because there were some more new entries to look through than usual.
(Message not finished because of total exhaustion)
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