The crisis of proliferation

Discuss anything related to audio or music production.
Angstrom
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The crisis of proliferation

Post by Angstrom » Thu Sep 24, 2015 1:39 pm

Or "Dude, where's my music industry"
... in 1976, a French polymath called Jacques Attali wrote a book that predicted this crisis with astonishing accuracy. It was called Noise: The Political Economy of Music and he called the coming turmoil the "crisis of proliferation".
Soon we would all have so much recorded music it would cease to have any value, he said. And this "crisis of proliferation" has come to pass
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34268474

If you are interested in this sort of thing.
However, most new musicians do not want to hear it, I'm amazed how many local musicians still approach me and when I ask their aims it's still "sign to a label, tour and build a studio". Like this is 1992 or something.

If you are within the Great British Empire you may be able to listen to the interview - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b069xcys

beats me
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Re: The crisis of proliferation

Post by beats me » Thu Sep 24, 2015 2:00 pm

I’m beginning to believe that if you want to achieve anything anymore you should adopt a general mindset of “ignore the reality”. Otherwise you are just going to get paralyzed and/or give up.

Not that I follow my own advise. :|

tedlogan
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Re: The crisis of proliferation

Post by tedlogan » Thu Sep 24, 2015 2:07 pm

Hmm, very interesting read. And I'm a little bit surprised a guy from Hot Chip is struggling to buy a 1-bedroom flat. I thought they were quite big - big enough to afford these things. Granted, it is London, but still. Shows what I know.

I'm glad music is not my job though, but an obsession!

Edit: actually, being able to buy a flat in London, especially Zone 1-4 - he's doing pretty damn well, especially for a musician. You gotta be earning around £60k+/year on average to afford it with a deposit of £60k...not that it takes anything away from the original point of this thread.

Angstrom
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Re: The crisis of proliferation

Post by Angstrom » Thu Sep 24, 2015 2:30 pm

it's important as creative people to keep an eye on the current state of the market we operate in. Many creatives wilfully deceive themselves and do not want to have their 1980s era dreams dashed. There are also lots of people who will say "I read that touring revenues now surpass record sales", but the reality of those figures is: ticketmaster is making most of those revenues. Whenever anyone sends you a graph with concert revenue on it, consider that this is not "as paid to the artist" it's gross turnover.

Lets not become a cargo cult, praying for mysterious gods to drop their bounty. The world keeps changing and the opportunities change too.

The creative industry has moved on, for a while being an average musician was a pretty decent job. My Grandad was a session trumpet player and bought a huge house with his royalties!
These days our opportunities exist in different areas. Perhaps it's selling loop packs to garageband users. Perhaps it's in licensing background music to Twitch gamers. who knows, but it's changing.
It's certainly not in touring 250 capacity venues and selling albums.

TomViolenz
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Re: The crisis of proliferation

Post by TomViolenz » Thu Sep 24, 2015 2:52 pm

Angstrom wrote: Perhaps it's selling loop packs to garageband users. Perhaps it's in licensing background music to Twitch gamers.
:x
It's certainly not in touring 250 capacity venue.
Why not?
If you fill a 250 capacity venue every weekend, I think you'd do pretty well.
Unless you assume every musician aims for big villas and private jets... :roll:

TomViolenz
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Re: The crisis of proliferation

Post by TomViolenz » Thu Sep 24, 2015 2:56 pm

beats me wrote:I’m beginning to believe that if you want to achieve anything anymore you should adopt a general mindset of “ignore the reality”. Otherwise you are just going to get paralyzed and/or give up.
This! 8)

Emanresu0891
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Re: The crisis of proliferation

Post by Emanresu0891 » Thu Sep 24, 2015 3:54 pm

TomViolenz wrote: Why not?
If you fill a 250 capacity venue every weekend, I think you'd do pretty well.
Unless you assume every musician aims for big villas and private jets... :roll:
I think this topic is focusing on the present along with the future of sustainability within the musical economy.

How long will an artist with a limited audience be able to sustain playing to a crowd of 250 every weekend when the market is oversaturated?
Will this artist be able to keep such a small devoted fan base for 30 or 40 years?

TomViolenz
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Re: The crisis of proliferation

Post by TomViolenz » Thu Sep 24, 2015 4:38 pm

Emanresu0891 wrote:
TomViolenz wrote: Why not?
If you fill a 250 capacity venue every weekend, I think you'd do pretty well.
Unless you assume every musician aims for big villas and private jets... :roll:
I think this topic is focusing on the present along with the future of sustainability within the musical economy.

How long will an artist with a limited audience be able to sustain playing to a crowd of 250 every weekend when the market is oversaturated?
Will this artist be able to keep such a small devoted fan base for 30 or 40 years?
possibly not, but it certainly has been done before.

I'm not saying that becoming a musician is a generaly wise career decision (it's not!), all I'm trying to do is dampen the doom and gloom hyperbole in Angstroms posts a little.

Record sales as a revenue stream are pretty much dead, yes, and so is anything even resembling income security for the future through licensing and sales.

That doesn't mean we all have to become loop makers and corporate whores if we don't want to starve.
At least I deeply hope so :?

And besides there are only so many loop makers the market can bear anyways and to expect anything like a secure income for 30-40 years from that is just as naive (but way less rewarding!)

Emanresu0891
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Re: The crisis of proliferation

Post by Emanresu0891 » Thu Sep 24, 2015 8:34 pm

I like the idea of what new rap artist are doing right now. They are dipping into everything they can think of. They have clothing their own labels, studios and some even have their own strain of weed.
However, I don't know if it would transition well over into the electronic and rock worlds due to it being perceived as corny or selling out... It has also has been done before though.
The worst approach would to throw in the towel just because you think that you can't make a living with your music. Plenty of people are still making a good living and a lot of them have only been around in the music scene for a few years.

No one has mentioned the really good thing that has come from the fall of the old system yet..Its agism. I feel you no longer need to be a teeny bopper to make a living in music. Sia was like 35 when she came out with her first hit and I am noticing a lot more "older" people getting noticed in various ways. Really all you need is drive and some inexpensive gear to make the music.

Angstrom
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Re: The crisis of proliferation

Post by Angstrom » Thu Sep 24, 2015 9:20 pm

Yeah, when I gave examples of selling loops, stems, or streaming rights to twitch users that wasn't an exhaustive list of new options. Also as Emanresu pointed out - there are other new avenues to explore in branded products, etc. which some musicians are exploring succesfully.
My point being that some types of musicians will chose to not embrace these new options because they don't fit into a preconceived notion of what a musician looks like and does. And that this mental image of a musician is outdated. It comes from the period from somewhere around 1960 to 1995. A quite short time span.

beats me
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Re: The crisis of proliferation

Post by beats me » Thu Sep 24, 2015 9:43 pm

I think a good percentage of producers would be more than thrilled to just get a good listen count, say 10,000. Forget about making a living. Sad thing is a 10,000 view count seems like a lofty goal even though the entire globe has access.

TomViolenz
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Re: The crisis of proliferation

Post by TomViolenz » Thu Sep 24, 2015 10:00 pm

beats me wrote:I think a good percentage of producers would be more than thrilled to just get a good listen count, say 10,000. Forget about making a living. Sad thing is a 10,000 view count seems like a lofty goal even though the entire globe has access.
This is a very good point. And I think it is mostly the result of us living in an inbetween time, where the old industry still exists and is powerful in getting not only the best deals in the new mediums (Spotify et.al.), but also still maintains the biggest mindshare with their products.
Everyone can access any music ever made and more is made each day, but the majority of the audience still listens to the same 50-100 artists featured by the big labels.

I think the only way to overcome this for the newcomer artist is to fully embrace all the new possibilties of self production, self promotion, self management, fanbase building, network organization and yes merchandising.

So basically the artist of today needs to do everything the labels used to do.

On the one hand this sucks, but on the other hand it is very liberating.

But I think anyone still looking to sign with a label (outside of some very special circumstances) is setting him/herself up for failure. Because even if they do something for you (quite unlikely), they don't do anything you couldn't do yourself nowadays for much, much better terms!

I think the only thing a touring musician can't really do without is a good booking agency. Getting all these contacts for venues to play and maintaining the contacts and schedules is hard work and somewhat arcane insider knowledge.

beats me
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Re: The crisis of proliferation

Post by beats me » Thu Sep 24, 2015 10:39 pm

I was listening to a recent Shirley Manson from Garbage interview and she made the good point that major music industry isn’t going to take risks anymore. They are going to laser focus on what they feel is their manufactured sure thing, at best scoop up an artist that is well established on social media. In a way it’s like they are saying “Oh, you don’t need us anymore? OK, good luck with that. We still pull the strings and have more money than you. Let’s see who is irrelevant first.”

TomViolenz
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Re: The crisis of proliferation

Post by TomViolenz » Thu Sep 24, 2015 11:15 pm

Which is both funny and sad of course. The individual artist is of course gonna be irrelevant first, but that matters not the slightest when looking at the big picture.

The future is gonna be be many individual artists who outsource individual tasks to specialists and have each niche audiences aquired through social marketing.
Not anymore a few who earn insanely, but many who get barely by while loving what they do.

I'm not sure what they plan to do about that.

But one thing is for certain, they won't go out without making everyones life hell for as long as they possibly can :x

Machinesworking
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Re: The crisis of proliferation

Post by Machinesworking » Fri Sep 25, 2015 5:48 am

Youtube.

Seriously, the last couple breakout artists, people who have done it with little or no backing have been youtube stars.
Die Antwoord are the best example, if you want fame anymore you need to not just have great music, but a whole story line along with it, multimedia is the future for sure IMO. Die Antwoord a band from South Africa doing a type of rave rap I normally wouldn't listen to had such compelling videos that I bought tickets to their show the minute they came out in Seattle.

Electronic music has had such a mixed history with marketing. A lot of people want to be known as this great producer DJ etc. just stand up there and play a few lines on a keyboard with a laptop and that's about it... IMO that's always going to be the hardest way to get recognition. Gimmicks are annoying sometimes (DeadMause etc.) but a whole persona and feeling like you're stepping into an alternate reality is the reason why this works.

I think with dance music of any kind it's dammed near impossible to go off record sales alone, and standing out from the crowd is also a trial.
Kraftwerk had the robot thing.
Prodigy had the punk rasta guy thing.
Daft Punk robots again..
Justice have great youtube videos...

Being BT and being this frosted hair LA pop bland dude thing is going to always be the hardest way to get a name for yourself.
That sort of thing needs record labels etc. Getting a whole branding thing going with defining videos IMO is the way to go these days.

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