Damn...read the "kill home studio" thread - some food for thought

[alphajerk]

the problem missed here as well, is that music has been the "art" of the everyman. it isnt a contrived form like painting, writing, or even movies... its something the human race has naturally done always. from churches, to plowing fields, to family gatherings.

some people do it purely out of love, others who have possessed genius through history got paid for it via benefactors [like kings and so forth]... and then in the 20th century... the labels decided to try and make it into a product. and really only for the past 70 years or so.

but what started out as them seeking out the genius as had been done in the past by benefactors and have a catalog to earn into the future with.... they have manufactured image with short term profit and no long term payoff. im wonder more and more how this weak catalog the majors are paying for now will sell into the future.

assley simpson might of sold 3 million albums [which isnt a huge success for a pop star these says... and i highly doubt it will last for much longer], but i would be willing to bet the label bought a good number of them and spend any profits made from those sales on their payola marketing of her. there are far mroe than 3 million stupid people in this country, just look who is president right now.

songs that became standards were ones that existed for more years than the whole music industry has existed passed down from generation to generation... music is NOT a PRODUCT driven artform. its a societal gathering, a human connection. it doesnt suprise me that its failing because society has all but taken it away.

from humanity becoming less communal and more private, yet with technology now can create it themselves to rival what hte labels have gaurded against the "comman man" from doing before.

this is a revolution, a proletariat art threat. the labels serve no purpose anymore. a kid in his room can create an album and distribute it over the internet to a worldwide audience now, for less money than a power lunch with a dipshit AnR guy.

[zakco]

Originally Posted by alphajerk

there are far mroe than 3 million stupid people in this country, just look who is president right now.

[SeniorityFedup]

This is gearslutz not music slutz. So any one saying that music and mono are the perfect match. You probably dont understand the concept behind being a gearhead. Im all about hearing a well mixed well panned intrusive art form if i pay for it might as well get a full moneys worth if called for. So much technology today .. Why not? Then again what a touchy subject

[antoniosolo]

I do not create music so that I can play every part as the most entertaining and provoking part on purpose. Music to me is a feeling where you find a groove and progress and includes lyrics that tell a story. Too much showmanship ruins a performance in my opinion. The perfect song/lyrics is entertaining and provokes feelings. As usual a few can OD off of the process. Great songs don't require every trick you can come up with, three chords does sometimes suffice with a story to go along with it. I can't over analyze this artform which has turned into a money machine which has turned into a black hole for record companies! Play your instrument and find the groove.....

[Yago]

Holy necro Batman , a four year old thread resurrected !!!

Worth it to read DJWayne post :P

[synthoid]

Two reasons that the movie industry hasn't (yet) been as hard hit as the music business:

1) movies as digital files are so big that they have been more cumbersome to pirate than music. A song can be downloaded in a few seconds and hosted / served for next to nothing. full-length movies are much larger and cost real money to host and real bandwidth to download.

2) the public, at least in the U.S., still has a habit of going to see new movies in theatres. opening weekends still account for the bulk of the revenue in the movie industry. that flash of consumption helps stave off the effects of piracy, because by the time films are widely available for piracy the studio / distributor has already made a lot of money from it.

Every business that is flush with cash looks like it is doing things more intelligently than a business that is on the verge of bankruptcy.

-synthoid

[kats]

Originally Posted by synthoid

Two reasons that the movie industry hasn't (yet) been as hard hit as the music business:

1) movies as digital files are so big that they have been more cumbersome to pirate than music. A song can be downloaded in a few seconds and hosted / served for next to nothing. full-length movies are much larger and cost real money to host and real bandwidth to download.

And just when it's close - wammo, Blue Ray!

Audio OTOH? Nothin' happening. Christ, vinyl is coming back eh - if that doesn't tell a story, I don't know what does.

[princeplanet]

Interesting how 4 years hasn't changed how I respond to the OP's complaint. Producers worldwide are always doing amazing stuff- but the labels, radio stations and therefor the public ain't buying it. So you never, ever will hear this stuff. Not the fault of the Producer's, then, is it?

[amanitas]

Interesting thread but I really don't get it.

1) There is more awesome "art house" music being made now than ever before, IMO. It might not be pushed in your face the way that some of the more "product oriented" stuff is, but it is certainly being made, and definitely being talked about and promoted to some degree. Consider TV On The Radio - here is a band using a combination of modern technology and good old fashioned songwriting to make forward thinking "art house" music that simply could not have been made 30, 20, even 10 years ago. Beyond that, they are actually enjoying a fair degree of commercial success. All the loops, the high track count, the millions of different ways you can mangle a piece of audio - and people are saying we stopped making progress in the 60s?

I'm in Vietnam right now on tour with a pop artist, and I was at the gym in the hotel watching Channel V (a music video channel in Asia). This is the same style of programming (ie MTV style) that according to some people on this board, has killed off "good" music. And what band's video came on? Dirty Projectors. I can't think of a more avant garde, interesting, innovative, "art house" rock CD that came out recently, and lo and behold here is a big budget video of their song (with wolves and alpacas no less) being broadcast to people who don't even speak their language on the other side of the planet.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I call bullshit on anyone who thinks there isn't any good music coming out now. Regardless of what you think about Ashley Simpson or Lindsay Lohan, to deny that anyone is making "good" music now, no matter how you choose to define "good" is a complete and total falsehood. If you haven't found any, it's only because you aren't looking hard enough.

2) The whole fetishizing of music from the past. There was plenty of garbage being made in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. The thing is that time filters out most of the crap, so people are left with the misconception that for example the 60s were only about Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones.

Plenty of crap, novelty songs, celebrity records, etc. came out before. It's just that they have been largely forgotten about because there is newer crap for people to push in your face and make money off of. You might not like Lindsay Lohan's record, but are you going to tell me that Bruce Willis' The Return of Bruno is ****ing high art because it was made in the heyday of the music industry when record budgets were huge and bloated?

3) Ignoring the contribution of computers/software/etc. to the recording process because it isn't "slutty" enough or whatever and then saying that we haven't made any technological progress since the 70s is factually incorrect. I hear music, both in the "art" and "product" categories, that utilizes sounds that simply were not available 10, 20, 30 years ago.

It's like the "Drum Machines Have No Soul" slogan. Sure, I would agree that they don't. But neither do real drums. It's the person using it, and what they do with it, that counts. If you are really serious about this line of thinking, then you best sell your vintage ludwig kit, your zildjian cymbals, even your drum sticks, and start hitting stuff with your hands.

Saying Autotune has ruined music, because so many people use it to make crap music, is like saying that microphones ruined music because at least one of those was involved in every single crap song that was ever recorded. It's just a tool. And in our industry there are more people designing and building tools for recording audio and making music now than at any point in history, as far as I know.

Sorry for the rant.

Back to work now....

[Spindrift]

Originally Posted by princeplanet

Interesting how 4 years hasn't changed how I respond to the OP's complaint. Producers worldwide are always doing amazing stuff- but the labels, radio stations and therefor the public ain't buying it. So you never, ever will hear this stuff. Not the fault of the Producer's, then, is it?

Classic case of "gotta eat". Either you:

a) "have other means" and can afford to make inroads to new cool stuff (ie. not make the coin)
b) are gonna starve
c) conform to the ways of today's pop music market (Pop, Corp Country, etc)

Worth a watch folks:

Before The Music Dies

Keith

[sameal]

maybe im just an ass but the movie industry hasn't been putting out much of anything good for some time now.

rehashed movie's from yesteryear, endlessly ******** sequels, even dumber captain macho action films, and crappy sappy love storys with the same repetitive ending. even zombies are getting old.


from what I've been seeing outside some small number of amazing and creative things, is predictability. they don't understand the concept of overstaying there welcome.

[PinnacleProdUK]

Originally Posted by djwayne

Hey f_ck head, why you pickin' on sweet little Ashlee ?? Do your homework, Over 3 million cd sales, sold out 40 city tour, she's grossing about $30+ million this year...that's failing ???????

And do you think that's because she has an "amazing voice" or she is generally a great recording artist, or do you think maybe it could be something to do with her marketability and image, maybe her appeal to the younger audience and squeaky clean image helps a hell of a lot to sell her records.

Referring to the OP, the movie industry will and does promote new talent in indie films/short films simply because it has been well written and well acted regardless if the actors appeal to the general public or not, the same can not be said for the music business,

I can go out to gigs all over the UK tonight and see a lot more talent than I can by sitting in and watching MTV all day at home,

but Image and marketability come first to the big labels, which in my view has seen rise to more and more indie labels and "project studios"...

[kats]

Originally Posted by princeplanet

Interesting how 4 years hasn't changed how I respond to the OP's complaint. Producers worldwide are always doing amazing stuff- but the labels, radio stations and therefor the public ain't buying it. So you never, ever will hear this stuff. Not the fault of the Producer's, then, is it?

Just to clarify, my original point had nothing to do with song writing, talent, or musicianship. It had to do with the medium.

[sameal]

Originally Posted by kats

Just to clarify, my original point had nothing to do with song writing, talent, or musicianship. It had to do with the medium.

i'd have to disagree with the technology involved. there's been a billion technological advancements both good and bad in the industry. and what you consider good and bad is entirely up to you. each person is different. digital is just another option, no matter what people think of it. it does have it's place, and so does analog.

i personally love digital elements for what it brings me in the music i make. analog is wonderfull and great sounding, but i can't afford it, and digital is giving me the option to do what i like to do in a price range i can afford. beside that i like the idea of having both.

recording machines in big studio's have changed tremendously with digital coming into play. there are still the classics, but thats because there classic. and no one to this day has come up with anything that beats them.

if were speaking as far as medium, we have tons of options. cd, vinyl, mp3, tape. what more do you need?

5.1 is working it's way in there. and i think it'd be fun to work with, but how many people are actually gonna care enough to have a system good enough to give a crap? we already have that problem with stereo, everyone listening through ear buds and ipods. if it's not fast and accessable no one gives a shit. there's a small number of people actually equipped with a proper sound system be it car or home, to actually appreciate the work that went into the recording. and an even smaller number of people who actually listen and don't just turn on the stereo to have background noise to whatever else there doing.

i'm not saying we shouldn't do 5.1, it will enhance the experience, but it'll only get to a small market of people, i don't see this being a solution to the problem you brought up. as far as engineering, there's plenty of successful and talented people doing great stuff still.

i actually don't really see the problem at all. but then again im not doing this seriously, so what do i know?

how many people are actually buying blueray?

[kats]

In the original post I made 4 or 5 years ago I asked:

"What has the music industry done in the last 30 years to make the listening experience more thrilling than in it's past glories."

That's the point of the post. The movies and TV have given us surround, imax, & HD, while the music industry gave us 44.1/16 and down graded us 20 years later with mp3. Gee, how exciting.

But even still, when the CD came out - the buying public went nuts, at least it was cool and sounded better than the average home stereo. But that's been 20 years ago already and the novelty has definitely worn off!

I don't understand why this observation is so hard to get...

(PS I don't think 5.1 is the answer either, I was just trying to make an example.)

PPS

The "kill the home studio thread" was a thread on GS damning the home studio's for ruining the recording industry. My post here was in response to that, that the recording industry should not have sat on it's laurels to even let that issue be a possibility.

[sameal]

well beyond downloading the medium straight into your brain i'm not sure how much farther we can milk this cow really.

(don't give them any ideas.)


i don't think another medium option is really gonna solve anything. lets say they do. we can already count on this new medium to need a new player. so now on top of buying this new medium at probably a much higher cost then c.d., i have to get a new player at a much higher cost then my old player. (the reason why blue ray seemed so unappealing to me.) we may get lucky and the speakers will work with this new player (unless it's made by apple), so we'll say they do for arguments sake. now what? well lets buy some new medium.

well we know there gonna re-release some classic albums so now i get to buy my old collection again. and we know not all of them will be re-released on this new medium, so i have to keep my old player around to play the c.d.s i just can't live without that never got re-released on this new medium. now i'm paying for my record collection and player twice. well now it's time for some new albums. well good music seems to be at an all time low for the 2000's so my selection is slim.

i just don't see the motivation to purchase something like that.

[Tommy like sound]

I almost think this post should start again since it has become boarded by djwayne who can't talk properly because he's got some teen tart pop stars bits in his mouth.

The original post by Kats I think, was to me very insightful. I'm surprised everyone has responded to it so negatively. The comments about mono are to me very interesting because they suggest a different opinion on what we as audio engineers do. Is our job to be a messenger of sorts, or are we artists ourselves? I too sit in concert halls and listen to orchestras, & I too haven't come across a recording or speaker set that does the experience justice. Can we not from that alone see that technically we are not all the way there yet?

This era or music written and selected by accountants and slapped on to whichever teen tart is in fashion doesn't seem to be ending! Personally I don't listen to the radio so I don't actually care that much. I prefer the music of dead people. There's still a lot of gigs and festivals that have mainly good music so I think the mainstream can do what it wants. But movies are in 3D, I pay twice the cost of a DVD to go see one, and I always will.

George Massenburg asks why we the audience don't demand at least 24bit 192 releases of modern albums. We all own the technology, terrabytes are a dime a dozen, But we still conform to low standards of audio set by the limitations of the 90's! People bought DVD's they already owned as VHS. They'll pay for better sounding audio if it's marketed properly.

[Tommy like sound]

As a separate note, I do think the industry has sidetracked from its privileged position of who and what to promote. One of my all time favorite artists Nick Drake was allowed to record 3 CD's even why none of them were selling. Island records said to themselves this guy is amazing and he needs to be preserved. I'm sure they hoped to profit, but today no one would get that many second chances. It was the same in the classical world. Very rich families often sponsored prodigal musicians so they could do things other than play the church organ. Thank god they did.

Good luck with your project on artists who deserve to be heard Katz, I'm planning a similar thing with a busking album.

[toasteh]

Originally Posted by djwayne

Hey f_ck head, why you pickin' on sweet little Ashlee ?? Do your homework, Over 3 million cd sales, sold out 40 city tour, she's grossing about $30+ million this year...that's failing ???????

No, thats her audience failing, at life and taste.

[cjogo]

Hey whatever sounds good on headphones --I still have a 5.1 cassette in my car >> in other words it takes 5 minutes to rewind to the 1st song

[kats]

Oddly enough, since I wrote this post something did come up and put music listeners back in their chairs and made them pay attention.

Guitar Hero.

I was at my friends house watching his 13 year old playing 21st Century Schizoid Man by King Crimson, with his stereo dimed! HAHA

Who'd a thunk??

Anyhow, there's one shitty example that made millions and turned on a new generation of kids to music. I'm sure we can do much better.

[Aaron Miller]

I found this relevant to the Ashlee Simpson debate:

[QUOTE]WIlliam Hung, the American Idol 3 contestant whose awful rendition of 'She Bangs' during the show's auditions has sparked a national craze, released his first CD, entitled Inspiration, on Koch Records this week ... and it debuted on the Nielsen SoundScan U.S. Album Sales chart (also known as the Billboard 200) at #34, with sales of over 37,600 copies. According to MTV, its surprising debut was driven by strong sales at a few major chains, such as Trans World (Coconuts, FYE), where it placed 5th chain-wide, and Tower Records.

Comercial success doesn't equal talent--and that's the only argument that I've heard in her favor.

[John Eppstein]

Originally Posted by 7 Hz

I don't agree at all.

You have a tainted and narrow view of the musical world.

Stop complaining, start doing.

And we dont need 5.1 for music, no one sits in the middle of a stage when a band is playing. If you cant say it with mono, it isn't music.

+100

Music is art, not technology.

And if Hollywood is making such great advances why are most new movies crap?

[John Eppstein]

Originally Posted by Tommy like sound

The comments about mono are to me very interesting because they suggest a different opinion on what we as audio engineers do. Is our job to be a messenger of sorts, or are we artists ourselves? I too sit in concert halls and listen to orchestras, & I too haven't come across a recording or speaker set that does the experience justice. Can we not from that alone see that technically we are not all the way there yet?

Think about it as an analogy to graphics - Picasso could do great work with a pencil on a napkin - literally. Mono is similar. A great artist can make do with the most basic of tools - everything else is just window dressing.

What a lot of people seem to forget these days is that it's about the music! If the music isn't there nothing else matters. Nothing. Oh, maybe people will be jazzed by the latest whiz-bang effects for a little while - but soon it will all be forgotten, like those gimmicky stereo effects records of the '60s...... I bet you don't even know what I'm talking about, do you? (Don't blame you, I'd like to forget them too....) Yet the simple mono recordings of The Beatles, done in the same time period, are topping the sales charts even today.

Of course this is Gearslutz, where gear is supreme above all - but we should remember that in the real world our obsessions are as nothing.......

[John Eppstein]

Originally Posted by djwayne

You got it backwards. If it sounds even okay on mono or stereo, if properly mixed, on a good 5.1 system, it'll sound awesome. It's a huge difference.

You think think the movie theaters should yank out their surround systems and install mono, just for the sake of "purity"???? Bull sh.....t.

People don't live in movie theaters.

[PDC]

Originally Posted by kats

Furthermore, this has also lead to "cookie cutter" pop music, and a general waining of the improtance of music as part of what makes our culture.

History proves otherwise. If you think cookie cutter music hasn't always existed, you are incorrect. Ever listen to music of the 50s?

The studio industry has been too bloated, too saturated. The few top tier studios left have the the top tier producers/engineers. That is as it should be IMO. The days of the recording studio existing for walk-in and local business are over. The cat is out of the bag. This is the time for artist and producer owned studios.

I see some of your logic being comparable to the bitching label's logic. You are mad that you no longer have control or are a player, so the whole industry and music will suck now. Music does not suck. Good music is being made. You just won't see it or here it on TV/radio. This is as it should be. Once something becomes popular, it is no longer making an impact IMO.

[kats]

Originally Posted by PDC

History proves otherwise. If you think cookie cutter music hasn't always existed, you are incorrect. Ever listen to music of the 50s?

The studio industry has been too bloated, too saturated. The few top tier studios left have the the top tier producers/engineers. That is as it should be IMO. The days of the recording studio existing for walk-in and local business are over. The cat is out of the bag. This is the time for artist and producer owned studios.

Yes of course it is a cycle going around for the 2nd time or so. As you remember the "cookie cutter music" of the 50's, don't forget the democratization of the technology that enabled the Sam Phillips' and Elvis Presley's of the world. This isn't the first time the cat got out of the bag my friend. The difference being that the big studios didn't lie down and blame the Sam Phillips of the world for their demise.

That is what this thread is about. It says in in the effen title "kill home studios". Read that thread first, then mine will make more sense as this was a response to that - to which I disagreed with the premise that home studios ruined the business of the majors.

I can't believe I'm arguing this 5 years later... I'd like to thank whomever bumped this stupid thread for being a PITA.

[husky band]

I will agree that the current state of music is at a very low place these days but, why? Technology has made music so cheap that one can hear it anytime and any place with little or no effort. 200 yrs ago before there was anything recorded you had to either play it yourself or go where it was being played live. Technology has changed all that. More and more people are becoming passive listeners and less and less people are actually playing the music. I think this is a big reason for the decline in quality of today's music. The decline of the big recording studio and the rise of the project studio is a result of Technology as well. When a person can spend a few thousand bucks and put together a 24 + track studio that can turn out a mix that rival stuff the big boys can do, why is anybody surprised that big studios are dieing? I know this makes some of you grit your teeth but, most people listen to their music compressed at least 12 to 1 through $10 ear buds (Ipod) or cranked up to 120 db in their car system. How much difference will the average listener hear listening to anything recorded on State of the art equipment vs an ALL IN ONE mic-pre-ADA -> a laptop using Chinese condenser mics? I'm a high school band director / music teacher. I can tell you that kids today are hungry for something better from the music community. I think the answer is more people actually playing music.