Quote:
Originally Posted by Mitch97  Hi all,
I wanted to start a thread dedicated to discussing solutions to what seems to be, by many people's standards, a crisis in the music industry. Record labels dissolve or get swallowed by corporations, and music, while may have the same strength of writers of the past, are sounding worse than ever. Please don't flame me for the exceptions to this rule like Coldplay and Radiohead. I'm talking about the majority of the stuff that gets released, especially the artists that are below the mainstream radar.
While listening to one of my favorite bands, Type O Negative, I was comparing the sound of their previous works on Roadrunner to their latest on SPV. There's no doubt the sound of the record from SPV is way underpar to their previous works. Whether this is the case or not, it hit me that while artists hardly ever made a dime from record sales, hot record sales is a snowball effect of positive influence. First of all, in my opinion there are fewer and fewer good-sounding records out there. A good and original-sounding record will boost tour sales and TOUR SUPPORT from the label. This benefits both the artist AND label. Second, hot record sales boost mechanical royalties and demand from companies to use a song in multimedia, thus boosting publishing royalties. This then effects publishing companies positively. And last but not least, the budget from labels, enabled by record sales, trickles down to the engineers, producers, mixers and writers that inhabit this forum.
I've been studying this changing musical landscape for some time now, waiting on the sidelines to see where exactly I can fit in and actually make a living at it. I'd like us all to put our heads together and come up with a solution to turn this thing around, and allow artists to make GOOD SOUNDING RECORDS AGAIN. At least let's give it a shot. |
This presumes that all artists
actually want to make 'good sounding recordings'.
I was getting some bands handing me a pile of CD's (very processed / generic sounding rock) and asking me to replicate the sound of their favorite CD's EXACTLY..
That sort of BS is purely ARTIST DRIVEN.. and in this scenario engineers and producers have their creative hands tied, as its basically copy cat or 'cookie cutting' work..
Some artists just want that 'sound de jour'.
If you tell a 19 year old in the studio to record, wanting to get the same sound as their fave CD's "hey how about trying something with your own sound?" - sometimes all you get back is the kid sitting there blinking, blank faced, 'whut doo you mean....?"
You can lead a horse to water, but you cant force it to drink.