How you killed the business of music

[jbone1313]

Yes. That. ^^^^

[memes_33]

when there is massive amounts of content, ranging from revolutionary to shit, what the consumers need most is a filter. re-enter the dj: someone who is willing to sift through massive piles of shit to find the diamonds. the 'tastemaker'. once you know you like a dj, you begin to trust their decisions.

i guess a record label could be thought of similarly. i trust Stone's Throw because they have a solid record of putting out amazing content, so they are a great filter. if it's on stone's throw, chances are i will like it.

i think the artist will soon take on some of this responsibility as well. like on bandcamp, artists promote one-another. so if i like artist 'A', and s/he likes artist 'B', i'll listen to artist 'B' because there is a good chance i might like it, or at least a better chance than some other knucklehead i don't trust recommending something new.

so, yeah, its a seemingly endless pile of content to sift through, but i'd rather have that than some corporate shill being the filter (i.e. deciding an artist is good enough, i.e. profitable enough, to release their music)

[lumpenzero]

when there is massive amounts of content, ranging from revolutionary to shit, what the consumers need most is a filter. re-enter the dj: someone who is willing to sift through massive piles of shit to find the diamonds. the 'tastemaker'. once you know you like a dj, you begin to trust their decisions.

i guess a record label could be thought of similarly. i trust Stone's Throw because they have a solid record of putting out amazing content, so they are a great filter. if it's on stone's throw, chances are i will like it.

i think the artist will soon take on some of this responsibility as well. like on bandcamp, artists promote one-another. so if i like artist 'A', and s/he likes artist 'B', i'll listen to artist 'B' because there is a good chance i might like it, or at least a better chance than some other knucklehead i don't trust recommending something new.

so, yeah, its a seemingly endless pile of content to sift through, but i'd rather have that than some corporate shill being the filter (i.e. deciding an artist is good enough, i.e. profitable enough, to release their music)

You just described the perfect way of how to miss so much great stuff. With this method you can stuck in one or two subgenre for a decade. However, if you ignore or minimize your filters then your freetime will suffer.

[eyeknow]

fat beats killed the business of music, and protools. I saw sound city, I know these things.

[regretfullySaid]

I blame music. It's evil.

[thegoodsirjames]

interesting discussion
This vid by the same girl as above is especially fun for lovers of Live
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av_Us6xHkUc

[joefrost01]

So I guess there's a niche for a "find me genuinely new and good music that I'll probably like and probably not know about" service.

Being able to do an aggregate search across all the services like iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Reverbnation, Bandcamp etc. for something like:

music where category=electronic and style=downtempo and release_date<=today-7 and rating>=3 and liked_by_fans_of (Boards of Canada AND The Orb AND Carbon Based Lifeforms)
order by rating desc

Maybe it already exists...anyone?

[ikeaboy]

Just to introduce a different train of thought, most of modern free music isn't really free at all. Internet providers base their business model of providing ever expanding download speeds right? Their TV advertisements with harried mothers finally having connections that are able to cope with the son online in one room and the daughter in another with the new family 50mb line. What are they using these lines for? Downloading films, music and other content legally? I don't think so.
Internet providers business models are built in part on people downloading pirated content and als on people providing what used to be content with a cash value attached for free.
So we pay €30 a month to a corporation like UPC so we can stick it to record labels who were ripping off artists with 8-15% deals, but now the artist gets nothing 0% and he/she is lead to believe that's what it's worth.
New artists are supposed to be content with ego fluffing thumbs, likes and views. Meanwhile people are making money out of people's desire for artistic content and the new gatekeeper is the Internet provider.

Why else have 100mb lines? Facebook? Netflix can cope with 5mb. Online gaming? Perhaps but what percent of Sky/UPC etc... cutomers use it for that?
We were so in love (i was anyway) with the radical appeal of free music we let this happen. I teach Music Industry studies to Sound Engineers and each year, for the last six years, I polled the 48 students who spent what on vinyl, downloads etc... Last year well over half the students looking at careers in the music industry had never spend a penny in their lives on recorded music downloads or physical media. All but one lived in houses paying monthly broadband fees.
Taint right I tells ya

[Ryder17]

It was Apple, not the internet that killed music. The internet did not promote mp3's as a valid musical format to a generation and beyond in 2003, it was Steve Fucking jobs who did that! Mp3's were around a long time before iTunes but before Apple promoted them as a complete product, they did pretty much the same job as a blank cassette and home taping (which did not kill music)... it was 2003, the year of iTunes when the decline started. We now have to live with music consumers who are happy to only listen to mp3's or low quality streaming because their expectations are so low and their iPod headphones are so shit!

[ikeaboy]

It was Apple, not the internet that killed music. The internet did not promote mp3's as a valid musical format to a generation and beyond in 2003, it was Steve Fucking jobs who did that! Mp3's were around a long time before iTunes but before Apple promoted them as a complete product, they did pretty much the same job as a blank cassette and home taping (which did not kill music)... it was 2003, the year of iTunes when the decline started. We now have to live with music consumers who are happy to only listen to mp3's or low quality streaming because their expectations are so low and their iPod headphones are so shit!

You might have a point about Apple making MP3 more mainstream but I had gigs of Mp3s and so did most people I know before 2003 and long before I owned an apple product. Most people I know we're on Kazaa, Morpheus and grokster and then soulseek. Around then people started bringing hard drives round to each others houses and swapping huge libraries. I think the sense we were rebelling against something made it cool to younger people, big bad labels, greedy Metallica etc... And I thought of free music as an inevitability, people would make money touring (sadly this isn't solution for all), streaming services would step in (spotifys artists payments are insulting) but I've swung the other way over the last few years as I've done more research to support the course I teach (it's a further education course, I'm not a professor or anything like it).

I think one of the best statements of the argument I'm trying to make is a letter written by music a music lecturer and musician David Lowery to Emily White of the music Blog 'All things Considered' when he called her out about a blog post titled "I never owned any music to begin with" where she talks about owning only 15 CDs. It talks about how music is the victim of misinformation spread by those who stand to make money from the technology economy and the fallacies of the free culture movement. I highly recommend everybody involved with the music industry gives this guys letter a read.
http://thetrichordist.com/2012/06/18/le ... onsidered/

[su]

I highly recommend everybody involved with the music industry gives this guys letter a read.
http://thetrichordist.com/2012/06/18/le ... onsidered/

In depth thinking by someone who's not only thought and taught about these issues deeply for years but can draw on personal experience from musician friends. Thanks for sharing that.

[re:dream]

music where category=electronic and style=downtempo and release_date<=today-7 and rating>=3 and liked_by_fans_of (Boards of Canada AND The Orb AND Carbon Based Lifeforms)
order by rating desc

Maybe it already exists...anyone?

And it is just a step from that to some kind of bot that can assemble that music on order.

[regretfullySaid]

While there are suggestion based web apps like Pandora and last.fm I've found youtube to be the more useful. For one, I stopped using pandora and last.fm ages ago, i guess mostly because having to fire them up wasn't worth the resources, either because their suggestions sucked and/or I already knew them.
Mixcloud is useful as well, once you find djs you like, you'll get consistent output of stuff they're playing that you'll want to check out. If they have any competence then they'll have the tracklist like they're supposed to.
Half the time I just use Shazam because it's quicker and I like that it saves everything you query.
It gets about 89-90 % of the stuff I throw at it

So while you may have to be a little more proactive in looking for new stuff, tje payoff is better than algorithmic apps and still feels like less work than fidgeting with "like/don't like".

Anyway I'm not really sure music business is that different, it's just 1000x more saturated, because you don't need to spend much money or be a musician to make music now.

[Buleriachk]

Yes, this is a great article. I'm 73 now, and have lived on the edge for a good portion of my life as an American Flamenco guitarist - I wrote a correspondence course which supported me for a brief time before the computers and internet hit. I recognized the significance early on, and drew from my other skills (physics, math, programming) to survive with some help from my friends. I am now retired, and playing for a meal once a week at a small local restaurant - any tips go either to dancers that show up or the busboys...

I think of it as my contribution to the community that now pays my pension, SS, and reduced rent at my apartment. I have just enough for food, rent, gas, and an occasional toy, which is all I ever wanted....

As a musician, I consider myself extremely lucky, even though I'll only be around for a decade more, if I'm lucky, and I don't know how many years of that I can continue to play Flamenco. I can't imagine anyone sane going into music with the idea of making a living over the long haul these days, although I am grateful I don't have to think about it. Like most musicians, I held my nose and jumped, and damn near drowned, but things turned out ok in the end, more or less...

That said, one has to think of being a musician as being a preacher and god at the same time, and hope you get a local following. For Flamenco in the US as an American, that is absurd; as the technology changed, I only survived by using other skills, which was devastating to my practice time (a LOT of it is necessary to build the muscular strength necessary for Flamenco techniques).

I don't have any answers; but if you're not independently wealthy, IMO you have to be prepared to live on the street and accept the consequences if that is necessary... and have the courage to deal with the fact that it may never get better, and is more likely to get worse... unless your sermons to yourself can sustain you.....

But these days many other traditional occupations are the same way. The only constant is change, but why does it have to be so huge?

I think one of the best statements of the argument I'm trying to make is a letter written by music a music lecturer and musician David Lowery to Emily White of the music Blog 'All things Considered' when he called her out about a blog post titled "I never owned any music to begin with" where she talks about owning only 15 CDs. It talks about how music is the victim of misinformation spread by those who stand to make money from the technology economy and the fallacies of the free culture movement. I highly recommend everybody involved with the music industry gives this guys letter a read.

http://thetrichordist.com/2012/06/18/le ... onsidered/

[nathannn]

Yes, this is a great article. I'm 73 now, and have lived on the edge for a good portion of my life as an American Flamenco guitarist - I wrote a correspondence course which supported me for a brief time before the computers and internet hit. I recognized the significance early on, and drew from my other skills (physics, math, programming) to survive with some help from my friends. I am now retired, and playing for a meal once a week at a small local restaurant - any tips go either to dancers that show up or the busboys...

I think of it as my contribution to the community that now pays my pension, SS, and reduced rent at my apartment. I have just enough for food, rent, gas, and an occasional toy, which is all I ever wanted....

As a musician, I consider myself extremely lucky, even though I'll only be around for a decade more, if I'm lucky, and I don't know how many years of that I can continue to play Flamenco. I can't imagine anyone sane going into music with the idea of making a living over the long haul these days, although I am grateful I don't have to think about it. Like most musicians, I held my nose and jumped, and damn near drowned, but things turned out ok in the end, more or less...

That said, one has to think of being a musician as being a preacher and god at the same time, and hope you get a local following. For Flamenco in the US as an American, that is absurd; as the technology changed, I only survived by using other skills, which was devastating to my practice time (a LOT of it is necessary to build the muscular strength necessary for Flamenco techniques).

I don't have any answers; but if you're not independently wealthy, IMO you have to be prepared to live on the street and accept the consequences if that is necessary... and have the courage to deal with the fact that it may never get better, and is more likely to get worse... unless your sermons to yourself can sustain you.....

But these days many other traditional occupations are the same way. The only constant is change, but why does it have to be so huge?

I think one of the best statements of the argument I'm trying to make is a letter written by music a music lecturer and musician David Lowery to Emily White of the music Blog 'All things Considered' when he called her out about a blog post titled "I never owned any music to begin with" where she talks about owning only 15 CDs. It talks about how music is the victim of misinformation spread by those who stand to make money from the technology economy and the fallacies of the free culture movement. I highly recommend everybody involved with the music industry gives this guys letter a read.

http://thetrichordist.com/2012/06/18/le ... onsidered/

Thanks for posting this, I enjoyed reading it.

For years I have been on the side of people who thought 'music should be free and that musicians will just make money from touring and merchandise sales'. Now Im starting to think that this is not the best idea and its not working.
Musicians need money to buy gear,every one needs a proper setup with whatever instruments they need to make music and now along with that they now need a proper camera to make their own videos and do their own photo shoots since they will have to take on that role also.
Musicians need proper transportation to and from gigs and rehearsal space. All of this cost a lot of money that is out of the reach of most musicians starting out and was once all paid for through a record contract
Without people buying music there is no record contract and most people are stuck with their sub par equipment and pirated music software aimlessly uploading songs so a few friends might click like.
I feel now that a lot of us would have a real career in music if we had the same industry that we had in the 90's.