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If your brother wants to make money doing music (regardless of the fact that I think that's a bad reason to start a hobby, but w/e) he should tour. If he has the internet to distribute his music, he will have fans all over. Use myspace to set up a tour, go out on tour and make enough money to get to the next town. If attendance at shows is flat, it's because people are tired of it, and even if new people are coming to the shows, old ones aren't anymore.

But that's kinda not the point. I don't know why your brother wants a record contract; he doesn't stand to make money because he magically is on a record label. Certainly not by selling CD's. Record labels take almost 100% of CD sales. Bands make money at LIVE SHOWS and via SELLING MERCHANDISE. Tell him to sell T-Shirts and bumper stickers and whatever.

The bottom line is - Nobody makes money as a musician. Those that do are very lucky, and are a tiny minority. Do music because you love it. Like my friend (whose slashdot userID is KEPSUX): everything his band does can be found at http://www.atomicraygunattack.com/ and is free. He'll sell you a CD with artwork and a track list if you want it, or a T-Shirt, but it's for the music. Not for the dollars.

Yeah, there ya go. I didn't know the details, but even when we recorded this admittedly piece of crap thing, we could tell that something we were doing wasn't coming out like other albums.

By the way, that was recorded by using the PA as a mixing board and using the line out, and a Sure SM-58. Plus a warzed copy of Cool-Edit Pro. It was really low tech. We figured it was something that we did wrong. But later, after I'd left the band and they recorded The Sting (their much more mature concept album based on the futurama episode of the same name) - even though by that point they have multiple good mics, and an Echo Layla sound card for multitrack recording, etc. - it's still the same thing. It's "not as loud" as the latest crap from nickelback or dashboard confessional or whatever the kids are listening to these days.

Thanks for the explanation.

~Wx

I thought it was also a place for crap bands to get some publicity. You could post your own blurry pictures there.

While not opposed to P2P, indie musicians have the chance to put themselves out there without relying on virus/spyware/legally-scarry loaded p2p systems. You can get webhosting CHA_CHA_CHEAP (500 gigs transfer for $50 a month ain't hard to find..and 500 gigs is a SHITTON of mp3's) to distribute your songs on a website. The hot part is you have the chance to actually track how many hits you get and control what songs are available, not to mention create more traffic for your site giving you the chance to promote tours/shows/t-shirt sales all in the same swing. In fact, in a shameless plug....I'm *IN* a underground band that records and puts out our albums all DIY with full album distribution on our website.

This is our new album
And this is our "main" website.

In fact, within a couple of weeks we will have a music video on the site as well, with not only the ability to stream the video but actually download it in high quality to your hard drive. I don't get bands that don't offer these types of features. It's insane!

While not opposed to P2P, indie musicians have the chance to put themselves out there without relying on virus/spyware/legally-scarry loaded p2p systems. You can get webhosting CHA_CHA_CHEAP (500 gigs transfer for $50 a month ain't hard to find..and 500 gigs is a SHITTON of mp3's) to distribute your songs on a website. The hot part is you have the chance to actually track how many hits you get and control what songs are available, not to mention create more traffic for your site giving you the chance to promote tours/shows/t-shirt sales all in the same swing. In fact, in a shameless plug....I'm *IN* a underground band that records and puts out our albums all DIY with full album distribution on our website.

This is our new album
And this is our "main" website.

In fact, within a couple of weeks we will have a music video on the site as well, with not only the ability to stream the video but actually download it in high quality to your hard drive. I don't get bands that don't offer these types of features. It's insane!

These people are nuts. IF you have the PC in the same room as the MIC's you don't have high enough quality MIC's for the PC noise to make a difference, and if you do have MIC's that are picking up HARDDRIVE noise you need to build yourself a control room for the PC to sit in. I have a one room studio right now, and I get amazing quality with $200 of mics and a Duron 1200 based system running Cool Edit Pro and a soundblaster live. Go listen to what I've recorded - here (Download 'Bessy the Cheeseburger' or 'Justic Le Pig'..they are the cleanest things we have up.) These are currently just rough mixes and not mastered. Thats comming when we are done tracking. Anyways, tell me you can hear the harddrive in those recordings. Yea right. The computer is sitting RIGHT NEXT to the mics. For gods sake, my power supply fan is louder than the harddisk.

The other problem I see with this setup is it has no multitracking ability. I have just recently added a echo Layla sound card to my setup and can track up to 8 channels at one time. It's amazingly awesome. If you are going to spend all that money on recording gear...get a Echo Layla. It's worth it.

I'm also about to build another room onto my house so I can have a control room...not for silencing my PC, but for convenience of being able to mix a drumset on the fly. Anyways, this is just silly.