Why We Go to Concerts but Don't Buy CDs

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Machinate
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Why We Go to Concerts but Don't Buy CDs

Post by Machinate » Sun May 25, 2008 6:53 am

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/th ... st092007ab
- discuss :)

I think it's a more complex scenario, but the main hypothesis is still valid, I think.

stringtapper
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Post by stringtapper » Sun May 25, 2008 7:04 am

I suspect it could have something to do with piracy but don't quote me on that. Seems in keeping with certain aspects of human nature that if people can get all the music they want for free that they would then tend to gravitate toward the one aspect of the art that you can't get for free. Maybe from boredom, maybe because they have more money since they didn't drop the $15 for the disc? Maybe because in our rampantly consumer driven society we somehow can't feel happy about something if there isn't some monetary value attached to it? I'll have to think more about this.
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sweetjesus
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Post by sweetjesus » Sun May 25, 2008 7:34 am

its about piracy and its totally fucked

my labels releases are often pirated within hours of release..

sites like rapidshare.com and megaupload.com are taking in bucketloads of cash from pirated content.

pirate forums make thousands of dollars per week from advertising revenue

and sites like blogspot.com would barely have anything worth checking out for many people if it were not for pirated content.

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Post by Johnisfaster » Sun May 25, 2008 7:36 am

so it seems she thinks that we go to concerts more and buy cd's less based on the production quality of cd's being too polished?

isn't it possible that we don't buy cd's cause you can download them and we go to concerts cause you can't download that experience?
It was as if someone shook up a 6 foot can of blood soda and suddenly popped the top.

stringtapper
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Post by stringtapper » Sun May 25, 2008 8:06 am

Johnisfaster wrote:isn't it possible that we don't buy cd's cause you can download them and we go to concerts cause you can't download that experience?
That's what I was saying and I think it's true.

As someone who is (stuck) in music academia I found her comment about wondering "why am I here?" to be a little, I don't know, dippy I guess. What, you want to hear mistakes? On purpose? I mean if she's implying people are just using pre-recorded material live then that's another story, but if she's talking about musicians actually being able to faithfully reproduce their recordings through live performance then I think that's silly. If you can do it you should. What am I supposed to fake a mistake so I don't sound too "plastic" or something? Surely she is talking about people using pre-recorded material. If not I'm fearing for potential musicology grads at Case Western.
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Machinate
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Post by Machinate » Sun May 25, 2008 10:05 am

Johnisfaster wrote:so it seems she thinks that we go to concerts more and buy cd's less based on the production quality of cd's being too polished?

isn't it possible that we don't buy cd's cause you can download them and we go to concerts cause you can't download that experience?
I think its a lot more than piracy. It's about the masses of freely available (pirated, Creative Commons etc) material that we get bombarded with every day. We have so much music that just listening to music in itself gets... boring.

It's not just that "you can't download the experience", it's that it's visceral and immersive like few things out there, I think.

pepezabala
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Post by pepezabala » Sun May 25, 2008 10:19 am

sweetjesus wrote:its about piracy and its totally fucked

my labels releases are often pirated within hours of release..

sites like rapidshare.com and megaupload.com are taking in bucketloads of cash from pirated content.

pirate forums make thousands of dollars per week from advertising revenue

and sites like blogspot.com would barely have anything worth checking out for many people if it were not for pirated content.

yes, but it's the other way round as well

thousands of bands and artists get free promotion from bloggers/peer-to-peer-sharers etc.
You don't have to pay not one cent for distribution/postage/printing/bandwidth.
People that are interested in your music doing a job for you, for free, that you normally would pay a promotion agency for.

Machinate
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Post by Machinate » Sun May 25, 2008 10:25 am

pepezabala wrote:
sweetjesus wrote:its about piracy and its totally fucked
yes, but it's the other way round as well
absolutely. It seems to be a given now, that in order to make real money as a musician you have to gig and gig hard. Then sell merchandise, CDs, live recordings and drinks ohoy on-site.

Then you can make heaps of money, more than any distribution deal could ever get you.

hambone1
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Post by hambone1 » Sun May 25, 2008 11:24 am

Machinate wrote:We have so much music that just listening to music in itself gets... boring.
For me, this is true regarding new music. And movies. And TV.

That's why I've really gotten into 'older' music, created and recorded when it wasn't so instant, so computerized, so multi-take, multi-tracked, auto-tuned, remixed, so construction-kit cut-n-paste. I've got a new appreciation for the talent, skill, originality and musicianship of music made without the electronic crutches of today.

I rarely go to see live music. I'd rather be doing something active than spectating. If I do, it's to see talented musicians.

I don't buy CDs any more. iTunes Store makes it too easy!
Last edited by hambone1 on Sun May 25, 2008 12:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by heavensdaw » Sun May 25, 2008 11:53 am

I was talking to a friend the other day. He said to me "your cd? how many are you going to sell? If you sell 500 copies you've done really well, a 1000 amazing! Man your cd these days is your business card and that's about it"

I think he's not so far from the truth..

I gave another friend the other day a copy of of Live Lite 5. He is always interested in working with Live.. A couple of days later I called him to see how he was getting on.. "oh" he said "a mate came round and he showed me where I could download a cracked version of Live 7. so I don't have any use for you Live Lite 5"

Yeah he's a mate but I can't help thinking 'wanker'.... If you asked him to do a set for nothing, I'm sure he'd tell you where to get off.

Almost everyone I know downloads their music illegally.. even the fucking musicians :roll:

Wtf

Hd

forge
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Post by forge » Sun May 25, 2008 1:24 pm

thing it's easy to forget is I didn't often used to pay for music in the 80s or 90s either - it was always taped onto casette

most of my music collection was on copied tapes

the thing I find incredible is just how amazingly incompetent the record companies (and movie/TV co's) have been at dealing with the modern age

they have as good as guaranteed they will play no part in the entertainment industry of the future where I think it will be all donationware like radiohead just did

I think you'll still be able to sell 'collectables' like vinyl or really interesting CDs, but ultimately there wont be megabucks from recorded music - and the flip side to that is you no longer have to pay thousands to record music

just looking on Youtube at how many quality independent productions are appearing (video and music) it seems obvious there is absolutely no point to labels any more, the youtube/myspace et al way of doing things is to get circulated, emailed to people, get known then get people to buy something worthwhile from you - either a live performance, merch or a collectable version of your recordings

the future is exciting, but get used to giving recordings away for free and figure out how else you can make money from it

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Post by Der_Makrophag » Sun May 25, 2008 1:26 pm

I actually buy CDs. I just like more to have something "real" in my hand rather than some file on my harddisk. But thats only a feeling.

But if theres one with the mentioned "overemphasised technology" I wont feel like going the the concert of this artist, if this CD bores me???

I like live-music because I can see what happen and be with people with the some passion together. What Mary Davis means with "why am I here" is refering not to hearing the same music as on the album or what, I think. I find it more refering to jsut playback the music, to get the job done. When you feel like your're only one guy who came to make the artist even richer. Because for me, in live-music you must feel that the artist is having fun too, and that he likes and does not forget his audience. Not like some bad-mooded DJ talking all the time to the Backstage-Guests...

I also think, the problem here is piracy and download-portals.
My English is not perfect, I know... Sorry about that.

Greetings from Germany!

P.S. to wishlist forum users: Please search for former requests. Otherwise they will be splitted into many small ones and we are loosing impact!!!

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Post by Angstrom » Sun May 25, 2008 1:29 pm

although the general culture of piracy is rife, I think it's only part of the de-valuation of recorded music. There are several other facets.

Music is easy to make now
It is much much easier to make a certain kind of music now. Very precise sample based looped dance music being the easiest. Any person with a computer has seen a friend knock a few loops together and make something very similar to four on the floor standardised computer generated music.

The computer assisted generation and perfection of music is devalued

If I were to tell someone I was a fighter pilot, they might be impressed. If I told them I just pressed 'go' and stop' and the autopilot did everything else, they would be a lot less impressed.

At a gig the punters get to enjoy humans supposedly making entertainment - at least there is some indication of a person entertaining them - not just a computer doing Apple iLoops.

community and belonging
the best part of any music scene - punk, dance, big band jazz, etc - was not the recordings but in being part of something. A punk gig was more about being in a tribe than about buying a record.
The gig demonstrates that connection to other people, which the record only indicates as a possibility. The individual feels validated by seeing so many / or few others with their similar interests.

Think of how goths get personal reinforcement through belonging to a wider social structure. They dress similarly and behave similarly, collect similar trinkets to belong to a social structure.

The music recording cannot deliver that social structure - it is merely a conduit to enable it. Going to gigs is a better method of meeting other goths and showing off your deathly stylings. The music is ancillary to social network.

Age of disconnect
in a time when the normal way to communicate is via internet fora, text messaging, emails, IM, virtual worlds, MMPORPG .... the actual chance to mingle with real live fucking humans is a total bonus and thrill.

the disconnected society of individualisation has generated an antipathy for that isolation, The individual human has a basic need to socialise and our techno society has undermined that need by providing methods of communication which are inherrently non-human.
I mean - a lot of you will have read my messages on this forum - but you wouldn't know me if I stood right next to you.

gigs are the antidote to modern interaction.

Again, the music is just a facilitator, not the reason.
Last edited by Angstrom on Sun May 25, 2008 1:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

forge
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Post by forge » Sun May 25, 2008 1:32 pm

- also - if you're worried about your future as a musician, it's worth remembering that even before the download days, most of the time the people who did really well were just people who stuck at it and kept going fro a long time

don't change your name, keep doing it, if you keep at it long enough and aren't delusional then I think there's a good chance your name will start to get out there

some very big acts were doing it for 10 years under the same name before they started to get noticed - it's easy to forget in hindsight that you often only know the early stuff of artists you like because you found out who they were from their later stuff

[/2c]

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Post by kaffein » Sun May 25, 2008 1:35 pm

Another reason people go to shows and not buy CDs is because they like be around like minded people, and try to catch some ass. :P

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