Gearslutz.com - View Single Post - How we are going to save the music industry

tropicalhotdog · 17th April 2008, 04:22 PM

Who gives a flying fahooey about the music industry? Let it choke on remnants of it's own stinking necrotic flesh. The only relevant question (in my book) is how do artists get compensated for their creations? And you know what - not all of them will! The ease, affordableness and ubiquity of recording technologies has resulted in huge tidal wave of recorded music out there from countless musicians, and as in any defined system with a huge influx of actors, the vast majority of the output starts to cluster around the middle of the bell curve. In other words, there's a lot of mediocre shite out there. That's okay though - you add 100 new artists every second, maybe 80 of them are going to be forgettable, 10 will be humorously bad and 10 will be original and mindblowing.

But since the labels are dying, there's fewer actors playing the editorial role of deciding who's worth putting out there and who isn't and so it's up to the artists themselves (or their micro-labels). As has been pointed out enough times, once something is digitized, it's pretty darned hard to keep it from being pirated. So artists have to:

1) Be ARTISTS - find their own voice! I've run a small label and was crushed by how many young bands just try to create a look and a sound (in that order) focused only at getting a deal. No voice. No originality. No soul. But I digress.
2) Record themselves! Read GearSlutz and learn how! Gearlust is an ugly mistress, but a great sounding DIY recording is worth the price.
3) Figure out how to be heard among the fray (raise a flag over the massive crest of the bell curve, so to speak). Quality music isn't enough. Artists have to be able to find their audience in creative ways. Indpendent touring for baby bands is almost impossible anymore (for rock/punk anyway, which is all I know anything about), with how little bars and clubs pay and how expensive gas is. Work the net. Build a local following. Send bios and demos to EVERYONE you can afford to.
4) Find as many income streams as possible - gigs, merch, publishing and whatever they can get from sales of physical product as well as downloads/streams.

The industry does not serve artists. The industry makes (or rather, made) money from artists. Let it die. Computers may have killed the music industry, but they only help musicians.

But MTV killed music.

17th April 2008, 04:22 PM	#33
tropicalhotdog Gear nut Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: NYC Posts: 97	Who gives a flying fahooey about the music industry? Let it choke on remnants of it's own stinking necrotic flesh. The only relevant question (in my book) is how do artists get compensated for their creations? And you know what - not all of them will! The ease, affordableness and ubiquity of recording technologies has resulted in huge tidal wave of recorded music out there from countless musicians, and as in any defined system with a huge influx of actors, the vast majority of the output starts to cluster around the middle of the bell curve. In other words, there's a lot of mediocre shite out there. That's okay though - you add 100 new artists every second, maybe 80 of them are going to be forgettable, 10 will be humorously bad and 10 will be original and mindblowing. But since the labels are dying, there's fewer actors playing the editorial role of deciding who's worth putting out there and who isn't and so it's up to the artists themselves (or their micro-labels). As has been pointed out enough times, once something is digitized, it's pretty darned hard to keep it from being pirated. So artists have to: 1) Be ARTISTS - find their own voice! I've run a small label and was crushed by how many young bands just try to create a look and a sound (in that order) focused only at getting a deal. No voice. No originality. No soul. But I digress. 2) Record themselves! Read GearSlutz and learn how! Gearlust is an ugly mistress, but a great sounding DIY recording is worth the price. 3) Figure out how to be heard among the fray (raise a flag over the massive crest of the bell curve, so to speak). Quality music isn't enough. Artists have to be able to find their audience in creative ways. Indpendent touring for baby bands is almost impossible anymore (for rock/punk anyway, which is all I know anything about), with how little bars and clubs pay and how expensive gas is. Work the net. Build a local following. Send bios and demos to EVERYONE you can afford to. 4) Find as many income streams as possible - gigs, merch, publishing and whatever they can get from sales of physical product as well as downloads/streams. The industry does not serve artists. The industry makes (or rather, made) money from artists. Let it die. Computers may have killed the music industry, but they only help musicians. But MTV killed music.