| Author |
Topic: What's wrong with the music biz |
chas smith R.I.P.
From:
Encino, CA, USA
|
|
|
 |
Ken Lang
From:
Simi Valley, Ca
|
Posted 19 Jul 2010 4:15 pm |
|
We used to be spoon fed by the record companies as to what we could hear. Now the available of music sources is everywhere. They no longer have the strangle hold on us and they are saying it's our fault we're not buying their stuff.
Perhaps they no longer have their finger on the pulse of music buyers as they used to claim.
_________________
heavily medicated for your safety |
|
|
|
Eric West
From:
Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.
|
Posted 19 Jul 2010 7:14 pm
|
|
It's a long shallow money trench in which thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs...
Then there's the bad side...
(I know it's supposed to be a HT quote..)
EJL
Ken is right though.
It's great to have other options that have to do with BETTER music.
I typically listen to 6 hours of Siruis XM at work. Sometimes I think about posting the highlights of my days' listening, but then I just lose track... Roadhouse, Outlaw Country and Willies Place. Can't beat it, and you can buy the records just as easy as you can from the Crap Commercial Stations. You listen to a bigger variety of Great Steel Players to be sure..
EJL |
|
|
|
Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
|
Posted 19 Jul 2010 8:10 pm
|
|
If you want to make a rabbit stew, the first thing ya' gotta do is go get yourself a rabbit. The same applies to music. It strikes me that a good chunk of the mainstream music biz has completely forgotten this simple principle.
Or maybe the problem is that the mainstream public has simply lost its taste for rabbit stew. I'm not sure I believe this, but this is what I frequently hear from the "halls of power". |
|
|
|
David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
|
Posted 20 Jul 2010 11:04 am
|
|
This is just another reiteration of the same whiny nonsense that's been written for the past decade or more. A lazy music writer doesn't want to do any research, so he calls up an "expert" and gets the "inside scoop" from a dinosauric record exec about how the whole music world's ruined, because the dinosaur isn't ripping off enough share anymore... and those sneaky wooly little mammals are snarfing up all the vegetation!
Look, CD sales are UP - and 80% of music sales is still in CD's, but they're NOT traversing through this guy's bank account first and he's... what? Hoping people will get stupid enough to support the parasites again?  Awwww, you po' li'l thing, you.
| Quote: |
| In America, Michael Jackson died, "we" re-released all of the Beatles stuff, and "we" had Susan Boyle, the Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga — and "we" were still down 12.7 percent and 16-something percent physical. |
But "we" aren't actually talented at creating anything, are "we"? And Discmakers & CDBaby are going great guns.
| Quote: |
| ...those are the people who are using TuneCore and iTunes to clutter the music environment with crap, so that the artists who really are pretty good have more trouble breaking through than they ever did before. |
...and dickweed here is the guy who's going to decide for us who's "really pretty good" because we can't think or choose for ourselves. And, just coincidentally, he's got the "good" one under contract! Whew! We're saved. He's announcing that he's willing to form a partnership with people who have no use whatsoever for him? Altruism just warms my heart.
| Quote: |
Wired.com: Who would it be making this happen? Are these people going to be at your seminar? Are you expecting companies to change or be formed as a result?
Silverman: Yeah, they’re going to be there — the lawyers and companies are going to be in these closed-door summit meetings talking about all these various issues. |
(Hint: better brown-bag your lunch, leechboy, your savings can't hold out forever) 
Last edited by David Mason on 20 Jul 2010 11:41 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
|
|
Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
|
Posted 20 Jul 2010 11:30 am
|
|
Dave, didn't you know that it's really lawyers and music biz executives who create the important stuff? Those damned musicians are the leechboys and girls, just sucking off the breast of the great music biz, right?
And them damned "hobbyists" are just ruining it for everyone. God forbid anybody should play music just because they love to do it.
I just have to link this earlier thread - http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=158193 - about Phil Alvin's rant about record companies - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd994qtXMJQ
|
|
|
|
Ray Minich
From:
Bradford, Pa. Frozen Tundra
|
Posted 20 Jul 2010 4:02 pm
|
|
Eric, XM-12 & XM-13 certainly make my life more fun.
Music, in general, appears to be in a funk.
There are pockets of greatness though. Them Texas Music people are puttin' out some great tunes these days.
_________________
Lawyers are done: Emmons SD-10, 3 Dekleys including a D10, NV400, and lots of effects units to cover my clams... |
|
|
|
chas smith R.I.P.
From:
Encino, CA, USA
|
Posted 20 Jul 2010 8:14 pm
|
|
| The part that got my attention was the volume of stuff that's being released. I put out a lp in 1987 and there were something like 5000 releases that year, worldwide. Last year there were around 132,000 releases and the question is how do you rise above that crowd? |
|
|
|
Daniel Morris
From:
Westlake, Ohio, USA
|
Posted 21 Jul 2010 4:33 am
|
|
Chas: EXACTLY.
When my one son was young and wanted to produce his own rap (' ') CD , that was an issue I presented to him. You can get your stuff recorded, you can get it pressed (or now set up for download), but just how in the world will anyone even know you're out there (outside of your parents and siblings)? Although he abandoned his lofty idea, I still find the same thing with music I play and/or record. Seems like some self-promotion, coupled with satisfaction in playing/recording music simply for the love of it, and contentment in finding a small niche to occupy might be the new "success". A musician friend of mine was a tad dismayed when he heard that another buddy and I had made $50 each for a 2 hr. bookshop gig. While I certainly would have loved to have made more, we played what we wanted to play, we were happy, and we did make some money. The industry has been committing suicide for years - witness their attempt to tax ALL blank cassettes years ago, because people might - MIGHT - tape records rather than buy them? Times change, we must change, and the industry doesn't get it. |
|
|
|
Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
|
Posted 21 Jul 2010 6:34 am
|
|
| Quote: |
| the question is how do you rise above that crowd? |
The time-honored way - gig a lot and develop an honest following of real people based on common love of real music one-on-one. If you control the means of production and distribution, you don't need to sell to millions of people to make a living. In a modern context, I don't see why a regional touring band can't produce, promote, and sell records in 5 figures and make a decent living at it if they're intelligent about it and don't succumb to the typical excesses that the whole 'star' mentality promotes.
Primarily, the digital age has simply put professional grade tools of production into the hands of most anybody of 'normal means' who wants them, and also gives them an inexpensive way to distribute recordings.
IMO, the whole concept of large companies of marketeers and payola-makers controlling the means of production, distribution, and cultural brainwashing to promote their 'product' was always bogus. I hope they die an ignominious death and perhaps we can get back to music again. I know they'll fight this to the death, but I know what side I'm on.
The reason I didn't go into music as a primary profession in the early 70s was because I felt it was more like playing a lottery than starting in a profession, and I think I made the right decision for me - I play when I want and still have my other professional work. In spite of the difficulties with the current music biz, if I was 18 now, I might feel differently. |
|
|
|
Mitch Drumm
From:
Frostbite Falls, hard by Veronica Lake
|
Posted 21 Jul 2010 6:41 am
|
|
| chas smith wrote: |
| The part that got my attention was the volume of stuff that's being released. I put out a lp in 1987 and there were something like 5000 releases that year, worldwide. Last year there were around 132,000 releases and the question is how do you rise above that crowd? |
And of the 132,000, about 80% apparently sold no more than 1 copy.
Vanity appears to be catching on. |
|
|
|
David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
|
Posted 21 Jul 2010 7:59 am
|
|
To me it seems to be simply a question of who "gets" to filter the output and decide what's worthy or not. Tom Silverman is taking the stance of the classic diamond-pinkie-ring new-Mercedes-every-year mogul, and the arrogance come shining through. Why DO the lawyers and execs have to have closed-door meetings, excluding the musicians who do the hard part....
There are all sorts of variant models for filters - both CDBaby and "radio" sites like Pandora.com use some sort of peer-to-peer model where listening to one thing will lead to user recommendations of something that's similar. Though, the results can be unintentionally hilarious if you enter something off-the-wall into Pandora's search. The SGF site here, itself, serves as a big filter for me, as do interviews with musicians about what they like.
There are now entire marketing companies and "professional" trendsetters dedicated to imitating peer-to-peer buzz, but the kids I've known see through this entirely - and the ones who don't deserve their Kid Rock and Britney infatuation, as surely as the Cowsill & Partridge Family fans deserved theirs. If you need somebody to tell you what you're supposed to like, well... 50% of people in the Western world have an IQ of 100 or less, and I don't care.
I have actually been responsible for de-programming a few John Mayer-addled guitar students, just by pointing out the original sources he mashed up - just graft Hendix & SRV licks onto 70's soul song structures & sing like the unholy offspring of Betty Boop, Dave Matthews & Tiny Tim... now they listen to old Mahavishnu on WolfgangsVault.com, no commercial potential whatsoever!  |
|
|
|
Richard Sevigny
From:
Salmon Arm, BC, Canada
|
Posted 21 Jul 2010 9:24 am
|
|
What's wrong with the music business? Well, first of all it's misnamed... it should be called "business entertainmanent music": it's hardly about music at all. It's more about marketing a profitable cult of personality.
The irony is that the crafters of this empty-calorie pop culture is that the next big thing they're always looking out for never comes out of the mainstream. It's imperceptibly out on the edges well under the radar of the music biz execs because they only see the world in terms of balance sheets... it only holds their attention if it grosses a particular theshold in a specific demographic... usually one with lots of disposable income.
The real good stuff is out there. It's just that you have to make an effort to find it. And it's not always where you think it will be. Country, Rock, Punk, and yes, even Rap were out there a good five to ten years before the powers that be even noticed they existed and then they went out and "created" stars to cash in on the phenomenon so they could get a piece of it.
If you think about it, it's not much different from the stock market. While some have made fortunes at it, studies have shown that the "experts" aren't much better at picking winners than someone with a dartboard... meanwhile, the real winners come out of nowhere because they don't fit the expert's definition of what a winner should look like.
IMHO 
_________________
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.
-Albert Einstein |
|
|
|
chas smith R.I.P.
From:
Encino, CA, USA
|
Posted 21 Jul 2010 10:08 am
|
|
| Quote: |
| It's just that you have to make an effort to find it. And it's not always where you think it will be. |
Given that I'm a dinosaur and not really "plugged in" to what is going on, I'm also not completely out of it. LA radio, considering that this is a market with 15million people, seems to be mostly "oldies", which begs the question, is the old stuff really that much better than the new stuff, or is there really any new stuff? (New stuff being reworked, re-combined, re-done old-stuff, for the most part) Which I'm sure there is, but they don't have the money to get the airplay or a good tour with great publicity. One of the bands I work with is confronted with that and when we did a short tour of one-nighters, we were reminded of why old guys don't do that.
Laura and I went to the Bowl to hear Kings of Leon, her current favorite band, and I enjoyed them, it was a good show and I really liked their attitude. It's also the same kind of music that I've been listening to since I bought my 1st album (Dion and the Belmonts) in 1957. On the way in to the Bowl, she said, "this is going to be music with a melody, music you can clap to, where people are smiling". I guess she didn't like the Partch Ensemble concert I took her to... |
|
|
|
Earnest Bovine
From:
Los Angeles CA USA
|
Posted 21 Jul 2010 10:33 am
|
|
| David Mason wrote: |
Why DO the lawyers and execs have to have closed-door meetings, excluding the musicians who do the hard part....
|
I think musicians do the easy part. Lawyers & execs do the hard part (sales). It's hard to make money by selling something that nearly everybody loves to make at home in his spare time, and loves to give away in a vain attempt to be noticed & loved. |
|
|
|
Leslie Ehrlich
From:
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
|
Posted 21 Jul 2010 11:39 pm
|
|
| Dave Mudgett wrote: |
| IMO, the whole concept of large companies of marketeers and payola-makers controlling the means of production, distribution, and cultural brainwashing to promote their 'product' was always bogus. |
Brilliant, Dave! Once again you've put my thoughts into words.  That's exactly why I gave up on the pursuit of stardom. If I made it I'd only end up playing what they want to hear and not what I want to play.
_________________
Sho-Bud Pro III + Marshall JMP 2204 half stack = good grind! |
|
|
|
Jeff Evans
From:
Cowtown and The Bill Cox Outfit
|
Posted 22 Jul 2010 2:32 am
|
|
| Earnest Bovine wrote: |
| It's hard to make money by selling something that nearly everybody loves to make at home in his spare time, and loves to give away in a vain attempt to be noticed & loved. |
Contrarian . . . and insightful. |
|
|
|
Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
|
Posted 22 Jul 2010 7:01 am
|
|
If the lawyers and execs were 'honest brokers' who simply promoted and sold music, I'd be much more in agreement with Doug. Of course, there are people out there who do just that - look for bands or singers with a concept they believe has potential and produce and promote them in their mutual interest. I completely agree that legitimate production and promotion of art - pop or otherwise - is hard and important work.
But I don't think that's the mainstream business model in the music biz. I think a business-savvy band these days can realistically promote and distribute their own music themselves. Yes, it's hard work, it requires serious hustling. I suppose not everyone is up to this, so it would be good if a new and truly cooperative music business model would evolve that would permit artists to focus on art and business people to focus on business without the artists losing their shirt. But I'm pretty cynical about the likelihood of this. |
|
|
|
David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
|
Posted 22 Jul 2010 7:35 am
|
|
It seems to me that the star-making machine model has caused a larger disconnect between the ability to play music insightfully & passionately, and the "fame" or popularity that results from being a great musician. The two have never been that connected, though drive and dedication are needed for both. Some of the best musicians in the world have always been playing in their living rooms, it takes a certain egocentricity and selfishness to put fame above all else.
However, the modern big-label, big-promotion model often rewards people with a high drive for fame, who often don't have the corresponding musical ability. The producers/managers/labels test and seek out candidates for the machine treatment who will do the radio stations, who will do the shopping malls, who will do the commercials, fragrance and clothing line.... I kinda feel sorry for the musicians in the 40-to-55-year-old age bracket who didn't grow up learning the requisite dance moves and facial expressions for TV appearances, yet they feel pressed to compete with the wiggly little bimbos in the "emote" category.
Hopefully, the machine is dying a quick and brutal death so that actual musical talent may start to become more important for actual monetary reasons, but it's impossible to say. You still have to want to be a star, and it will still interfere in some ways with your love of music. Artists have been wrestling with that one for a long time. Hendrix & Garcia had to die to escape, and I'm not sure any modern model will tolerate the long sabbaticals that many rockers have taken. |
|
|
|
LJ Eiffert
From:
California, USA
|
Posted 22 Jul 2010 7:53 am
|
|
What's wrong with the music business industry?,nothing. It starts with U yourself and the neighborhood U live in and the people you work with. Than you add it up with who U know and how U deal with them from city to city,people to people and that little dotted line you agree to.Just have fun in it and and pay the toll fee and it will give you back your fun for your money & time.  , I didn't mean Pay O La. Murderer/Criminal/Brutal and sometimes Right,Leo J.Eiffert,Jr. A life time Musician/Songwriter as A No Body from the 9th ward of New Orleans,Louisiana. |
|
|
|
chas smith R.I.P.
From:
Encino, CA, USA
|
Posted 22 Jul 2010 12:25 pm
|
|
| We've all been talking about the Music Biz as if it was about music. I recently read an article that, among other things, compared the Lady Gaga tour to the Lilith Tour. The Lilith tour, comprised of earnest singer songwriters, that are very talented, is canceling dates. Lady Gaga, who can sing and play the piano, but apparently can't dance, is more about outrageous costumes and imagery, which is about distraction. The Lady Gaga tour is sold out and her videos have a couple hundred million hits. This isn't to say that the music biz is not about music, but that the "big" audience is looking more to be distracted and entertained. |
|
|
|
LJ Eiffert
From:
California, USA
|
Posted 23 Jul 2010 5:58 pm
|
|
| Hey Chas,The bottom line is if you live for what you do in music,your in it.But,if your doing it for just the money it a business. Entertaining people is what they want. Also acting out what they would love to do is what they pay to get for their money. Most go to concerts just to say their where they no matter who it is.We can cut this topic in a hundred million ways and it still comes out the same in the end,just opinion.Leo J.Eiffert,Jr. & Pigeons Band |
|
|
|
Sherman Willden
From:
Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
|
Posted 24 Jul 2010 11:32 am
|
|
I heard once that Patsy Cline enjoyed performing faster material but the execs fought with her to perform the slower, melody performances.
_________________
Sherman L. Willden
It is easy to play the steel guitar. Playing so that the audience finds it pleasing is the difficult act. |
|
|
|
Robert Harper
From:
Alabama, USA
|
Posted 9 Aug 2010 11:32 pm I wonder
|
|
What was going on in the music world, just before Rock and Roll. Were people sounding like us. What was happening in country, before it split into Blue Grass and what we call traditional Country. Which version is actually traditional? Did Bill invent Blue Grass are was it always there. Look what happened to country when Rock and Roll come along. Chet took the steel out and the banjo and made the Nnashville sound to compete with Rock and Roll. Is the music in some sort of transition. I know record selling business is in trasition. It is not necessary to buy an entire CD, you can go to some Dot Com and down load the song you want. Hey even the musicians and singers sell this way. The way we receive TV is transitioning, Blockbuster and others are shutting there doors. Where is the next breakthrough? Where is the next innovator? People wil tire of the imitators and someone will supply orginality. A different sound/technique. Maybe we are too old and set in out ways to try something new. Maybe we aren't the innovators. Maybe the next sound and inovation will be from the old school or a mixture thereof. As log as we long for the past, we miss the future
_________________
"Oh what a tangled web we weave when we first begin to deceive" Someone Famous |
|
|
|
John Macy
From:
Rockport TX/Denver CO
|
Posted 11 Aug 2010 10:18 am
|
|
The music business isn't so bad if you're not in it...Cowboy Jack Clement
_________________
John Macy
Rockport, TX
Engineer/Producer/Steel Guitar |
|
|
|
