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The Way the Music Died
segfaultcoredump writes "Frontline just released a show entitled The Way the Music Died, an in-depth look at all that is wrong with the music industry. The show will be available for online viewing on May 29th. Their website includes the full text of all of the interviews done during the show, including a very interesting one with musical legend David Crosby, where he hits the reason the industry is having problems right on the head." Reader robl adds "This is a good sequel to the 2001 Frontline episode, The Merchants of Cool which showed how the music industry markets its wares to teenagers and how it hypes artists."
I was searching the page for quotes from people that I believe are the best ones to be asking for information. I don't see any artists on there that openly support free music. Why not? Those artists are the ones that you should be supporting... They are the ones that are comfortable enough with both themselves *and* their fanbase to believe that they can make it without having to worry about being backed solely by the money-grubbing conglomerates.
... The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died." Crosby also argues that the quality of music has suffered because of corporate interference. "It doesn't matter that Britney Spears has nothing to say and is about as deep as a birdbath," he says.
David Crosby is a music legend known for his solo performances as well as his work with the Byrds, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. In this interview, he recounts how the music industry has changed over his career. "When it all started, record companies -- and there were many of them, and this was a good thing -- were run by people who loved records," he says. "Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants.
I can tell you the way the music died... It died when the musicians became the money-grubbing motherfuckers that most of them were told to become. They want to make millions of dollars and they have the conglomerates brainwash their fans into thinking that it is acceptable! Music is now a business, of course it isn't run by the people that care. Why should it? People that care don't worry as much about the money. They worry about what matters... Pleasing the people that enjoy music. Everytime you plunk your change down for iTunes, CDs, DVDs, whatever, remember that a portion of that goes not only to supporting multimedia conglomerates that control everything it also goes to supporting DRM, lawsuits against others, and lavish parties where people enjoy laughing at you for buying their shitty music.
Music that is controlled by the conglomerates is now not created by the musicians it's created by the conglomerates. They decide what's going to be a hit and what's not. Billy Joel and his "cut it down to 3:05" bit. Do you really want to listen to music that is price-fixed, controlled, and owned by people that don't give a fuck about anything except how much Grey Goose they can drink out of ornate ice sculptures while crying about how much money they are losing because they refuse to ship as many CDs as they used to?
From Crosby's interview:
It changed it from being about the music to being about what you look like.
No wonder Britney Spears is famous!
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Treat ALL your customers like criminals = You fail.
when limp biskits got a record deal.
Crosby's point that record company executives actually cultivate and take pride in their philistinism is not news, but refreshing to hear anyway.
Music is magic. It's been mankind's magic since the first caveman danced around his fire going "Ugga bugga, hugga bugga!" That was music, and he was happy. And we're still doing it, and it makes us happy.
;-)
I think he means European dance music is still doing that
iTunes is a good idea. It delivers the music to you cheap, pays us, doesn't cheat anybody, and it cuts out all middlemen -- very good
I don't think so, Mr. Crosby! Cuts out all middlemen? The RIAA are still there taking their fat chunk. The artists get a tiny chunk. Of course, if you're smart enough to release tracks directly to Apple (like Ben Folds has been doing lately), then you can get a lot more.. but most RIAA-promoted artists can't do this.
...is it kind of thin? I mean, multiple drug busts, the last one involving a firearm? I'll be the last one to criticize him for smoking dope, but it's not like it helps his credibility.
Probably more damaging is the fact that the music industry he's most familiar with is that of the 1970s, not that of the contemporary industry. Sure, he's involved, but as a veteran/player, not as an up-and-coming musician.
The music "industry" is a temporary phenomenon brought about by the original expense and difficulty of fabricating and distributing recorded music. As this expense drops to zero, we *should* go back to the way things used to be - professional musicians making a modest income providing live entertainment for live audiences. Unfortunately, people don't go out that much anymore (except to the mall) but electronic distribution can compensate. The music industry is dead; long live the music profession!
I was always wondering when somebody respectable and intelligent would note what the majority of America can't see: music today is CRAP. I don't care what my friends tell me, or what the TV tells me, there's no way around it. You don't get the studio mastery of the Beatles, nor do you get the sheer energy and excitement of Zeppelin.
I see two types of music industry, one marketing orientated type (MTV basically) that panders to people that don't actually like music. (they just like the imagery and style associated with thier particular flavour of pop, the 'Hip hop' guys like eminem, the 'punk' girls like pink etc).
The other type is that real music industry, where bands aren't marketed as a way of life. What is an Aphex Twin fan like? What kind of clothes should i wear if i like Amon Tobin or Sabres of paradise?
Seeing as I am firmly in the second group, I don't care very much what happens to the MTV industry. They never got any of my money, and they probably never will.
just my 2 centi-'S
That's right, I hate to say it, but recording killed music as it existed. Now, we have 2-3 minute soundbites that are played over and over in replication on thousands of cd players and computers. Gone are the complexities of performance. We've abandoned a culture of performers for a culture of listners.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
I hope that this will get the industry thinking about how their foolish actions have affected their customers (...ya right..)
Hopefully this show will get as much attention as Merchants of Cool did. We had to watch that in class x amount of times...
-----
overflow
DIE
Hasn't this happened in history several times over? With anything from tribes to countries/governments to corporations?
Most everyone I talk to thinks that top 40 music on the radio sucks. I happen to agree (except for 50 cent, haha)
I think I'm one of the few lucky enough to have lived by and grown up with an excellent college music station. Through their various shows and DJs, I've been able to find out what type(s) of music I'm really into, rather than having the Big 5 tell me what I like.
The moral of the story is that if you dig a little deeper than what's on the surface, you can find the real gold. I believe Indie bands always prove to have much more talent and creativity than the producer-molded garbage you hear on top 40 stations.
That said, Epitonic is a great site to listen to cool songs and figure out how to break away from that mainstream cycle.
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
I saw most of this show on TV last night. I found it interesting that they did NOT mention the Internet or P2P file sharing as a cause for poor music sales. Instead I think they nailed it when they said - More lax regulations on radio station ownership is to blame. Now that everything is Clearchannel, you can only play what they want. Artists used to get their big break by a local station playing their music. - Video is also to blame. You can't just sing any more, you have to look good too. They used Brittney Spears as a prime example--nice to look at but can't sing her way out of a paper bag.
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
After all, it's not to their advantage to have the music that people really like (And not the crap that gets fed into the public via Clearchannel channels) out there, cheap and uncontrolled. I bet they are going to find even more ways to a). squeeze more cash out of the artists AND the consumers. b). lobby for even tighter restrictions on copying (dmca, italian gvt. handing out jail sentences). All because of the goddamn arrogance of a few satin baseball jackets in the big offices that thought their 'dope' should be the only stuff that young people should smoke/ listen to.
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
Music will always live.
What is dying is the way big record companies make business (I know.. it's not disappeating any time soon, but anyways, it's dying slowly).
But around the world there will always be people willing to make music, perform music and freely share music.
We've known since the early 80s that video killed the radio star.
Read any good sonnets lately?
I suspect that there will be a "sea change" in the music industry as well as big paradigm shift. Things do tend to find their way even through the tumbles to the extreme. In the meantime, I'm glad I'm 46 because I grew up when great music, by and large, made it to the radio (yeah,yeah, I know, I'm a cranky old fart).
Keep smiling!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Someone like Ms. Hudson (who certainly has talent) has to be very lucky to get the exposure that she needs to be successful. Perhaps this episode will get her some more exposure. I'm certainly thinking about buying her album (if I can find it).
Or perhaps we could flash-mob (or would that be slash-mob) teeni-bopper radio stations and request her single.
1) I am encouraged by the amount and quality of home-recording equipment around these days. For $500 or less you can get decent microphones, and for another $500 you can get decent editing and processing software which surpasses last decade's state-of-the-art. To my mind, this gives me as a musician a whole lot of freedom to make music the way I want to.
... like government, or ethics?
2) However, I couldn't make a living like that, unless I were to be picked up by someone. And the point of the Frontline show is that the "someones" willing to pick up new artists are diminishing in number. In the long run, I believe that the problem will be solved by a shift in the market; after all, musicians receiving patronage has a long and glorious tradition.
3) But, in the short run, the situation stinks. What is interesting here is that we have gotten exactly what we wanted, so to speak. Music marketers discovered what types of music people were willing to pay for. The majority of us said "Yes" to 3 minute singles with catchy choruses repeated ad nauseum, sung on video by sexy-looking stars, and we said "No" to 20 minute explorations created by groups like Yes, Kansas, or Rush. Which raises an interesting point: if majority rule and utilitarian thought produces such obvious garbage in the music realm, what garbage can it produce in other areas
/ramble
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
Finally a post where I can do some blatant self-promotion of a music site I've been working on. It's called cStream
http://www.cstream.com
Unlike most sites, we don't charge artists to post their music (i.e. like music.download.com, soundclick.com etc...) and we provide them with unlimited storage for their music. We don't believe in DRM, all our files are distributed as MP3s. After all DRM is not really effective if you can Buy. Rip. Burn MP3 from any music store with DRM (Buymusic, iTunes etc..). Thus DRM is a really weak level of protection for music.
We've only been open for a couple of months but already have a few hundred songs. We try to sell artists music and give them 50% of the revenue. Our problem is that because our music is independent music generally no one has heard it before. Because we only give away 30 seconds of the song in high quality our sales are fairly low.
We've been thinking about switching our model to providing full length lower quality copies of a song with the ability to purchase high quality versions of the song.
err... I think the reason he went "ugga bugga, hugga bugga" was the hot charcoal he stepped onto...
Two:
Greedy stupidity
SteveM
I had to check and see if the author was Rob Enderle. So music, which has been around since the dawn of time is dying? Fuck off!
I hate sigs.
Frontline just released a show... ...will be available for online viewing on May 29th.
If it's not available yet, then it's not been released.
Follow me
The current ethos in the United States of America is all to do with surface and nothing to do with substance. It doesn't matter that Britney Spears has nothing to say and is about as deep as a birdbath. It matters that she has cute tits, and that's all that matters. She doesn't sing in concert; none of them do. Those are samples. Push a button, out comes the vocal. Do you ever notice, when you're listening to them in a live concert -- any of them, Janet Jackson, any of the rest of them -- that they're not breathing heavy? Even though they're dancing like crazy. That's because you're not hearing what they're singing. You're hearing a tape.
That says it all.
One 1987 Washington Post article reported that record executives believed that the price of a CD would eventually settle around $10.
Twenty years later, production costs have come down, but consumers are still complaining about the cost of CDs, which now are priced at upwards of $16. The industry's main lobbying arm, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), responds that prices have come down. According to an article published on the RIAA's Web site, "Between 1983 and 1996, the average price of a CD fell by more than 40%. Over this same period of time, consumer prices ... rose nearly 60%. If CD prices had risen at the same rate as consumer prices over this period, the average retail price of a CD in 1996 would have been $33.86 instead of $12.75."
Anyone who has burned a CD on his computer for less than a dollar may still wonder why a product that is so cheap to manufacture could cost so much. The answer is that while the cost of physically producing a CD has dropped dramatically over two decades, the costs of marketing that album have grown tremendously. For example, in the early 1980s, music videos were an optional route for the industry to promote their artists. Now labels are expected to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars producing music videos for all of their major artists. Even marketing a major album to radio can costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. And if an album is unlikely to get on radio or MTV, some labels have decided to launch costly television advertising campaigns to gain exposure for their artists.
However, the price of a CD isn't just paying for expensive marketing campaigns; it's also subsidizing releases by other artists that will never sell enough to make a profit. An artist at a major label may need to sell more than a million units before the venture ends up in the black. Most albums never sell anywhere near that. According to the RIAA, only 10 percent of albums ever achieve profitability.
Until music is considered and treated as an artform first and foremost, the commercial music industry will remain permanently broken as their priorities are transposed.
The early masters like Mozart and Beethoven were supported/sponsored by patrons thus freeing them to indulge their creativity and create truly legendary music that has outlasted their mortal lives and should last long after the members of commercial music industry sponsored music acts meet a similar fate....
are you disillusioned buy the highly falsely advertised concoctions prescribed for US by the greed/fear/ego based payper liesense stock markup FraUD corepirate nazi execrable, that's supposed to make you healthy, happy, horny, etc....?
alternatively, we offer a strange brew, that's good for you, & freely distributable, too.
If the big music conglomerates die, people will still continue to make music...
There's a lot of talented musicians and bands out there. Maybe they only play in bars and small venues; maybe they still have a day job; maybe you have to make a special detour to that out-of-the-way independent record store to find their records.
We can all live without music conglomerates and their lipsynching puppets.
The point is ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of it's forms - greed for life, for money, knowledge - has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed - you mark my words - will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you.
----Gordon Gecko----
This article is all the more reason to support independent labels that actually care about their artists. There are labels that actually care about getting quality music out there, because the survival of their business depends on it. They care about building a loyal fan base, signing quality groups, and giving them the resources to develop into the group's vision, not the label's.
--
Using GNU/Linux - Windows-free zone!
Before making a commitment to IT at school, I thought quite seriously about going to a music production school(I'm an amateur producer already). Besides the fact that it was too F'n expensive, I also decided that music is an art, and shouldn't be a buisness. Similarly, it goes against my philosophy that music, and all art, should be free; or in trade regulated by the artists themselves.
The thing is- Britney Spears, the boy bands, Creed, and anything you'll see on MTV, are not artists, they're buisnessmen(as if you didn't know). The music industry is slowly(quickly) diluting from pop music, and if you're anything like me, you don't have the capacity for it.
I think the biggest problem with the music industry comes down to this: they are charging WAY too much for a single album-length Compact Disc.
At US$18 per disc, no wonder why music sales are down--people can't afford them! It's also created the financial incentive to try to get around these high prices, hence the rise of P2P sites. This is a classic case of an economic cartel that is being undermined. Also, for just a little bit more money you can buy a DVD movie, many of which not only have the movie but also additional featurettes out of the wazoo. Think about it: you can get the Extended Edition of the first two Lord of the Rings movies for around US$28 to US$30 at most retailers; it has so much stuff on four DVD's it would take you weeks to browse it all.
If the RIAA would just allow their member companies to price their CD's at US$11.95 per album-length CD the incentive to pirate music would drop drastically.
An interesting site and one I'm sure that I will be visiting (and purchasing from) often.
As for the samples, 30 seconds are nice (60 are better) but one thing that has caused me to buy a TON of music is radio streams. Some sites have set up various genre-themed channels where they play the music that they sell. You get to hear the entire song, hear other music that you might not have thought of sampling, and all of the track info is carried with the stream.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
It's nice to get a little history lesson from someone who was there during the "birth" of the industry as it exists today. His words strike a chord with me (bad pun, not intended) and I am saddened by how they don't don't seem to offer any hope for our generation of music. Even if the music industry dies, it's not going to happen overnight, and we have to sit here and wade our way through the sludge that sells for "music" these days.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Personally, I don't purchase CDs anymore. You can flame me all you guys want, but I don't see the point in doing it anymore. I strictly download music from a ton of different sources and use that to listen to anything. My car has a built in computer that I use for music, movies, etc.. Granted, the quality may not be as good as an actual CD, but it's something that I can sacrifice. And even most times I can borrow and copy the CD from a friend.
Hmmm.
Or was that Jan Hooks in a skullcap?
that everyone is posting :
....
:-D
"the one reason the music industry died is . period." ??
and ALL of them are different reasons?
maybe its a combination of shitty music, greedy record companies, greedy musicians, drugs, cmdrtaco, drm, napster, filesharing in its many forms, mtv, britney spears, lack of innovation, disney, lawyers, riaa,
get the point? there's no 1 reason the recording industry is in the current state that it is.
and think about this...
Recording... INDUSTRY...
one more time...
Recording... INDUSTRY...
notice that second word:
INDUSTRY
They operate like a business would because they are a business and their main purpose is to make money. They may do it the sleazy way but hey thats BUSINESS.
Besides, there are plenty of indie bands (the mindset, not the genre) that work their ass off and distribute their own music and such. You just have to look harder because all that is advertised is the hot product from the Recording INDUSTRY.
Hey theres that word again...
rant over.. sorry for the caffeine overdose
Get paid to code OSS
It was a good show, the reasons they listed why the music industry is in such trouble:
CD sales in the 80's caused a massive boom in the industry because everyone was replacing their older records. This caused major industry corps to come in and gobble everyone up, because they wanted in on the action.
But the new corp culture revolved around quarterly reports and set schedules. So musicians are pressured to produce on a schedule to meet profit quotas. This doesn't make for good music.
MTV also changed the face of music. If you can get on MTV you get massive exposure. The problem with MTV though is that it's about image as much as it is about the music. So we end up with pop stars like Britney Spears who's pretty to look at but sounds like drek.
Clear Channel now owns a significant amount of radio stations and they will only accept so many new songs in a week. Record people now look for a "sellable" song that the stations will play(basically something just like they're playing already) because you want that mass exposure to hook people into buying your album. It's not about good music, it's about having a hit single.
Could a song like "Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida" be released today?
And is that a good thing or a bad thing?
On a Tuesday new release day, DVDs turn out to be priced cheaper than CDs. I can pick up a DVD for ~$12-13. Depending on the movie, that's 2 hours of entertainment, not including some of the special features, extra, etc...
I think RIAA needs to take a few clues from the MPAA. Having hte luxury of a DVD burner I can copy others' movies, download create my own.. whatever. But with the price so low for movies, it's not worth it to me. The point? Make the price for creating your own stuff more expensive than actually purchasing a pre-packaged one. Factor in your time to download the songs, getting the best quality, and making sure they all work (if from P2P programs) and it may in fact be better to just purchase it yourself so long as it wasn't $20.
Hmmm.
From the David Crosby interview:
That's not a good thing, because it means that anybody that looks good in a well-shot video is suddenly at the top, whereas hugely talented people, who are great musicians, can barely get arrested.
Don't sell yourself short, David. You are hugely talented, and have no trouble getting arrested.
If I could download music for a low cost (like iTunes) with no DRM, I would gladly pay for it!
I think the TV industry also should consider something like this: p I have a tendency to forget certain TV shows are on. If I miss them, I download them from BitTorrent. I would gladly pay them $3-5 per episode -- but again, no DRM.
...General Motors sues filesharers for illegally downloading cars off the internet via p2p networks.
Completely agree with you.
Not unless he bought Sony records. They released "Musicology" by "Prince" on April 20, 2004.
Looks like the temporary independence was just another PR stunt, like the temporary name change.
So what's preventing some of the big names (like Crosby) who "get it" from starting an iTunes-like service where they cut out the middlemen, and give 80% of the proceeds to fellow (up and coming) musicians?
Between 1983 and 1996, the average price of a CD fell by more than 40%
Of course, in 83, CD prices were artificially high because sales volumes were substantially lower than vinyl, and as the 'alternative' format shops wanted a premium for stocking them. Also, manufacturing processes weren't available then that are now... a substantial amount of that extra price was actually extra cost.
I see a lot of posts saying the music industry is dying because today's music sucks and has no innovation. But if you actually look at history, that has always been the case. What has been the most popular has always been fairly tame, shallow music. The "good stuff" that is always remembered is rarely on the top of the charts. Go back and look at the actual music charts for the 60s, 70s and 80s. You'll find a huge amount of crap (in fact it is almost exclusively crap). That is because the most popular music is almost always easily digested pop songs. Today is no different. The most popular music is simple, easily digested, and easily forgettable, just like the "great music days" of whatever decade you want to pick. Today's music isn't any worse than yesterdays music, we just remember the good stuff from yesterday and see the crap of today.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
In what way is his record of illicit drug possession colour in any way what he has to say about the recording industry?
I'm 33 and have newphews and nieces that are 16-22. We're basically a generation apart, but the sad thing is that I listen to the exact same music they do. Do I listen to the same music my parents do? No. Why? Because the music I listen to is very different.
But music hasn't evolved much since the 70's, so bands today sound like they did then. If it had evolved I'd hate the music my nieces and newphews like and they'd lament that I just didn't understand it.
A new video game I bought, Battlefield Vietnam, featured select tracks from songs from the early 70's. While playing it I was shocked at how good those songs were, not because I could recognize good music when I heard it(even though it was good), but because you could drop any one of those tracks on a modern alt/rock music station and it'd sound like any other song on the radio today. Music just hasn't evolved much in the past 30 years.
From Crosby's interview:
"No packaging cost, no promotion, no lairs of distributors, each taking 20 percent off as it goes by."
That should read:
"...no *layers* of distributors"
After reading the article and getting to the end...the stuff about msuic going back to cavemen and music is magic and corporations are evil and are destroying the world. I can't help but think that it is time for the Wild Stallions to break through all that and save the world. Who knew that Keanu Reeves would really be "the one" (or at least the 1/2, we cant forget about bill or was it ted...shit!)
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
I look at the "popular" music today and can't help but think, don't any of these bands actually know how to play their instruments anymore? Where's the talent.
It is at this point that I recall Ringo Star and bands like The Monkeys. Perhaps it has always been this way.
But, then I remember the musical genius of bands like Yes, ELP, Rush, etc., and think to myself, where are bands like that today? I guess there are some, but you never hear them on the radio.
as has been pointed out so many times, gluttony.
exactly the same thing that killed microsoft and everything else. once people realise that other people are willing to pay for things, they charge extortionate rates.
this is the very reasin i DONT pay for things. if people charged fair amounts of money for things, i would happily pay. the fact that they charge huge amounts simply drives me (and countless other people) to get the music/software/anything illegaly (free).
i dont see anything wrong with downloading music (hence the thousands of songs on my computer), the artists and record companies are still making millions more than they should. just like footballers, actors and the rest of the uncontributing world. by that i mean people who earn ridiculous salaries for doing things that in almost no way whatsoever assist mankind in developing.
compare the wages of actors, artists, sports stars and other people of the same type, to people like doctors, programmers, physicists, architects.. the whole world is majorly screwed up when it comes to money.
its so tempting to learn about hacking day after day just so that one day i might be able to create a virus which causes banks and other big monetary cooperations to crash completely... of course, i wont. but it is tempting nontheless.
and it has nothing to do with labels... in fact I'd venture to say that most bands that sound better on their albums than live AREN'T signed.
I don't see how having a garage band (pun not intended) using a tracker to cut a cd and then can't play it live is a corporate thing?
the show agrees with the prevailing slashdot opinion that record companies suck, but as someone who watched the episode, let me point out that it does not address (well) many current and relevant issues, such as downloading music (original Napster or iTunes), underground recording (DJ Dangermouse), fair use or other slashdot favorites.
It seemed rather a limited episode to me. Just look at the press reaction page for the episode (and no, not all of the comments are from reactionary neoconservative RIAA lobbyist stooges).
Shame on Frontline for making a relatively poor episode; I have to agree with Roger Catlin of The Hartford Courant when he says "When it wanders away from subjects of grave importance, the usually excellent 'Frontline' can stumble badly."
However, when they are on, they are on, IMHO.
And Kudos to Frontline for posting such negative criticism on their own website; such honesty is rare.
I just checked out the site, and it is cool - listened to some of the samples, and there is a good buzz to some of the music, BUT...
All the samples I listened to seemed(???) to be from the BEGINNING of songs, so they are mostly intros. It would give a better flavor if the saples were from the middle of the song (the chorus, in a traditionally structured song) as they do on Amazon. (And I HAVE bought stuff from Amazon having heard nothing but the lo-fi samples.)
Que voy a hacerle yo
Si me gusta el whisky sin soda
1. Buy technics turntable + phono amp
2. Go to used record store and buy albums with oh-so-80s lookng covers
3. (optonal) rip to MP3
4. Enjoy music that has been forgotten and never ripped to cd.
I never paid more than $4 for a record, being exposed to all sorts of music I've never even heard of before! Mind you, it's all 80s, but it's good!
Look at what happened to movies. The golden age of Hollywood produced some of the greatest movies ever made, will real artistic content. Look at new releases today, it's mostly crap.
Same thing with music: jazz, blues, early rock. The US produced some great stuff. What's on the radio today? Total crap
Thank you MTV & ClearChannel.
(yes, there are still some decent indy (& even mainstream) movies & bands...)
there's no place like ~
music and art should challenge the audience. If I want pop corn, I'll go the grocery store and grab a bag. The worse part is the music industry is aggressively trying to squash all alternative forms of distribution. they are doing their best to make their products the only products for sale.
Now labels are expected to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars producing music videos for all of their major artists.
Really? Everybody I know says the artist pays for the music videos - the labels simply front them the money.
The truth is that as long as the RIAA can make the fistfuls of money they will continue to do so because they are a business. As soon as that business model become unfeasible, for them, not us, they will switch and find alternatives. Even with the piracy and decline in music purchasing they are still raking it in. There are too many 12 yr olds with disposable income that simply must have that latest Britney, NSync, or Avril album and will get it.
I also liked his comment that VH1 and MTV have unwittingly made music more about look and feel then about music. Most of my music dates back to before the 90's, with some notable exceptions.
Sir, there is a dragon outside with an armful of armor. He's inquiring if we offer free refills.
Let's see the record corpations are few. Owning the wave lengths as well. The puplic is force to go outside the system now to hear anything new. Any type of innovation is outside this system. Yet the program aired last night only showed oneside. The side of the Record Corperation. I thought for a moment the general Masses might get informed but I was let down. Oh, did anyone notice that the supposed cd's they showed in Walmart were they're Discount DVD's!?
"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."-Albert Einstein
For a very good example of this, you only have to look at Richard Branson and the Virgin group. Until the release of Tubular Bells (Virgin 1), Virgin just ran a few small record shops. It was the sucess Tubular Bells that made Richard Branson and launched the Virgin Group.
I guess what I'm saying is that I think the alternative music industry is doing just fine, it's just the big labels who chase the mega profits that are imploding.
When i was really young they still played videos, now its mainly BPP (bitchy people programming, real world etc)... since I couldn't find a reliable source of music there or from local radio I had to *gasp* look into the local music scene ;) (radio here does have noise in the basement and local lix for area bands, and mandatory metallica etc which plays some decent stuff)
... questions).
with the internet and a network of friends that are very into music, finding good stuff really isnt that hard. Of course, i'm into metal stuff thats kinda niche (soilwork, dark tranquility, etc) more than anything else, but talent/art is easy to see. Either way, I've found the underground metal scene is pretty nice, because there's not really an money there, all the bands are only together because they like the music. The upshot is that they're not well known, and most of the time, they love hanging out with fans and talking about music (but not the 4000 have you heard of
It takes a while to find what you like. I got lucky and found some nice russian mp3 servers when i was in seventh grade, got some at the gates and I could just tell that was the kinda of music I really liked.
The thing i see most of is that music is treated like a commodity and people dont want to spend a lot of time finding really good music, when they can have shit provided to them thats "good enough." That, and people seem inclined to idol worship, and it seems much easier when the subject can be seen (downside of a video, people spend more attention looking then listening).
sad but true.
You just have to look a bit harder if you want to turn yourself on. (I won't link to audioscrobbler because they're having server problems atm and that would just be mean if I got modded up!). Most of my favourite music now is coming out of non-english speaking parts of the world - south america and the basque region are particularly juicy atm imho, and there's many more places producing great innovative music. speaking multiple languages is optional :) you just haven't heard any of it, most likely.. what i find incredible is if you go to these places you can buy "our" (usa/uk) music everywhere, and yet the most you get in a music store here is a pathetic little "world" section, that in no way reflects what the people there are actually listening to. why is this? are we (as a race of white caucasion middle class brits/americans) so close minded? what the %*^%& has gone wrong?! I was utterly bored with music until I discovered this. Seriously recommend others do the same. none of it would have been possible with free (in both senses) P2P networks. Right, i'm really tired and it took ages to write this but hope it inspires someone to go hunting.. listen to Cafe Tacuba, listen to Fermin Muguruza, heh well that's just where i started i dont' want to get into specific bands 'cos it's all a matter of taste but there's something for everyone with an open mind i swear :)
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
Have you actually priced CDs lately? Go to amazon and put a bunch of stuff you might actually buy in your cart. Note the club price, too.
I've bought a few hundred CDs in recent months and I've averaged $10 each. That's less than your $12 figure, no?
I've written about this here.
Yeah, retail prices stink, but your price point is very handily met by a store that delivers.
Amy
I think it's safer to say that mainstream music hasn't evolved as much in the past 30. There are lots of new or different styles of music, it's just that unless you listen to certain stations you probably aren't going to hear them above your regular rock/alternative stuff.
These days, we have more access to more production - but most people are too lazy to increase the effort needed to sift the 99.9% percent of the dirt to find that 1% of the pure gold.
.. can't be that...
The industry did all it could to hide & bury the good stuff. I'm fortunate to have friends that are collectors and conossieurs in different styles, so I can pick a few hints and save a lot of time - and at least sometimes listen to good music.
It is very sad that everything is targeted toward some imposed and supposed teenage fashion, all with the single purpose of stealing the small few bucks out of unsuspected teenagers' back pockets. The next logical step would be that instead of giving kids monthly allowance parents simply mail the check to RIAA in some sort of subscription scheme (like: tax on having a naive teenage kid in the house that will fall for every silly fad and trick in the book each season in a row until they get kids of their own)...
Oh, what... No,
there is a point to all this!
P.S.:
There was always junk, but mass marketing of today has mad junk the law. I can't figure out what happened to MTV. If I accidentaly switch to it for a second, it seems like that it's the same show all day long all year round: a guy with naked chest, golden chain around his neck and a fur coat over the shoulders, surrounded by GLLYBs in bikinis on a luxurious set. It almost seems that every video made uses the same yacht and the very same three fancy european top brand cars in an exclusive paint-job!
Disclaimer: I did not RTFA but I did read a lot of the comments, and I'm hearing a lot of self-masturbatory, "I'm better than you because I don't like mainstram", blah blah crap.
Its very simple. Listen to what you want. If it makes you smile, cry, laugh, clap, then its good FOR YOU! No one else (not even a poster on Slashdot) can tell you what you are going to personally enjoy.
Is music dead? Absolutely not. I hate to say this, but this is one reason why the p2p is good (no...wait...I didn't mean that!...). I can listen to lots of EVERYTHING! If I hear about some musician, I can go check out their stuff. If its good I buy their album. If it sucks I don't listen to them any more.
So don't tell me that there are no good, innovative musicians anymore. They exist. Find them. Go to clubs. Read websites. Download mp3s. But for Bob's sake, if you find an artist you like, BUY THEIR ALBUM! Otherwise they will never make another one.
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
What this means is that it is the business of recording companies to engage in somewhat risky behavior - they bring in artists that may become a big hit and sponsor them. It doesn't always work out that way, but enough do that it covers the costs for everything they do.
This is essentially how a venture capital fund works as well - not everything may be a hit, but enough works out that it keeps everything going.
This does mean that there are a lot of expenses going through the system that need to be paid for. So, the one "hit" that they get pays for the other 9 that didn't quite make it but a lot of promotion was done for.
One big problem today is that such strategies aren't very well thought of. The executives are looking at this in a more risk-adverse way and this leads to not wanting to take chances. So, we have endless copies of things that have been a hit with the hope that this is less risky and more of a sure thing. This sort of thinking almost always leads to failure, and I think there are precedents for saying so.
To PBS' credit that they are posting what the press is saying about the show, even though most of it is quite negative.
--- What?
Glad I could help. I just hope people walk away with the right information and conclusions, rather than "oh lookie! validation of my own agenda.", which I'm already seeing.
BTW I see Michael and friends are back to turning, on and off the "you're posting from an open proxy" sign again. Didn't that tactic fail with Microsoft and DR-DOS, and more recent Opera?
I'm in the DC/Baltimore area, and there's a radio station ofut of Baltimore (97.9FM / WIYY / 98 Rock), which, although owned by the Hearst Corporation, does play some good music mixed in with today's bubblegum crap.
See the bottom of their Noise in the Basement page for a list of local Baltimore band links. (I know Jimmie's Chicken Shack got some national play a few years back, but I prefer stuff like Laughing Colors and Mary Prankster)
Check around -- odds are there's some college radio station in your area, that isn't interested in selling out, and just wants to play music. WSOU in New Jersey comes to mind as a great station, if you're in the area, but if you're near any sort of city, odds are there's something out there, even if it's just for 30min a week that plays non-commercialized music.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
...drug busts/firearms/dope/peace movement? that's PRECISELY the sort of reputation i want my rock heroes to have!
Ahhh... CSN.
/. bet the MTV/VH1 of IT?
The memories come flooding back. Far better than any video.
I wonder? will
For problems, seek only the simplest solution, complexity brings with it more problems.
We'll slashdot your server then, too! You cannot escape us.
What's sad is that I had a good friend who worked for a Clearchannel station and was FORCED, forced mind you to always play a certain Eminem song at a rate of 2-3 times per HOUR!
I am sure that there are other percentages that must be met for certain artists... for example, Eminem would have to be played 30% of the time during an hour, Maroon 5 another 20%, etc... It's just sad that music is shoved down our throats these days and we are TOLD what to like.
Hmmm.
Here in Europe, it is truly heartbreaking. As I travel around, I find out how every european country has some great hits. But these are, at best, exported to a few neighbouring countries, e.g. inside scandinavia, or Germany-Austria etc. Instead, we get Bronx-rapper 'hits' shoveled down our throats with which we have absolutely NO cultural link. The chinese probably have great musicians, but if I forced you to listen to chinese music all day long... It just shows how the big labels put all their money on a few big cannons, and everything else just gets pushed aside. Listening on the net is great and all, but not everybody has time to do research and until I get ADSL in my car....
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Why are people always mad cause musicians try to make a little money? Not every musician can span his or her career 40-50 years. I do agree that corporate America has changed music and made it into something that can be profitable for them. People run around calling artists money-grubbers. What do you expect them to do? That's their occupation. I would think you'd want to be successful at your career too. If you don't like what you hear on the radio, at the store or on TV there are alternatives http://www.myglobalsound.com/ . There are artists that try to make it with the record labels but they can't do it if they don't get the support of their fans or if people that complain about it don't make an effort to seek out an alternative.
I tried to watch this show last night, but after 10 minutes of watching smug, self-satisfied muscians prattling on about how wonderful they are, I had to shut it off before I puked.
practically only acoustic instruments (gilmour uses an electric guitar and his multi effect two or three times. sounds great.
or the pulse concert... sounds perfect live, although gilmour's voice wasn't that good anymore.
okay maybe several species couldn't be played live, but most of their songs surely could.
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
Huh, I like it. "Merchants of Cool" was the only other Frontline episode I have seen (that was what, 3-4 years ago?) and now will eagerly watch it again.
I found it interesting how in MoC (acronyms rule) they followed the careers of the Insane Clown Posse as a fringe-indy band that did claimed to do it for the music. Afetr they got signed to a major label, their tune quickly changed to, "It's all about the cash."
Not that I had any emotional stock in the Insane Clown Possey, but the sudden shift in attitude was funny to see.
at first i think, the whole music business suffers at the moment also a lot from the 2000 internet boom: due all the rubbish that was spoken then joe sixpack is still waiting for The Big Revolution.
but this will never come. there was some change, and mobile music became more popular, but this way the business goes since sony came up with the walkman.
but the RIAA still talks this rotten rubbish, just in order to a) sell stupid so called "concepts" to the customer and b) to make everyone believe you need the music industry to enjoy all the new comforts and live a happy life.
but you don't. the best thing they could do is to free their content from all this drm shit (you may only copy this cd 3 times) and sell standard cds as they used to do 6 years ago. and if you like, yeah, run some online shops for downloading. but leave it there. let them share, this will not ruin your business. and if you have to fight sharing, do it the way you (hopefully) learned at business school: make the content they buy from you more attractive than the content they get from kazaa. ie, insert coupons in your cds that enables the customer to get a concert ticket at a cheaper price. something like this. man, think!
all the money you put into lobbying and law suits will never come back. uh, and don't lie in your cinema spots. i was in berlin for some time and saw a spot that says: illegal copying music, including illegal downloads, will be punished with jail. that is a fuckin lie. when you're in the bootleg business you may get problems, but downloading a file from kazaa is not a crime in germany (they haven't figured out if that would be a "private copy" cause they can't identify the other one. oh, and in case someone's got filed, just buy the cd and burn the case).
beer as in "free beer"
While I despise the RIAA I do have to agree with their argument about the price of CD's.
The first CD I bought, way back in 1984 cost $15. It was a Deutsche Grammophone import so it cost a few dollars more than most CD's on the shelf at the time. The most recent CD I bought (last week) cost $13.
Put CD pricing into an inflation adjusted historical context and $13 for a CD today doesn't seem like such a big deal. Granted I would prefer that CD's were less expensive but I'm not going to whine about it. I used to buy 10-20 CD's a month (my CD collection is above 1200 now plus about 1000 vinyl lp's) but in recent years I usually buy just 1-2/month - not because of pricing issues (or P2P which I don't participate in) but mainly because most contemporary music doesn't interest me much and more of my money goes towards other entertainment diversion such as video games/dvd's/geek gear/etc.
Same thing goes for gas prices - I am tired of hearing people whine about the high price of gas when the simple fact is that if gas prices had kept in line with inflation we would normally be paying close to $3/gallon. So everyone just chill...
There are lots of good reasons to loath RIAA/MPAA/BIG OIL but the current pricing of their products shouldn't be the main reason.
You got it. On the head. Last night i downloaded two full length albums, legally, in ogg vobis format, for nearly half the price of what amazon was selling the CD's for. Definately worth it.
The thing is, I think, people these days don't want to go and FIND innovation. They want it fed to them. They want to turn on the radio, tune it to whatever radio station is most convenient, and hear good, intersting, complex music. That's not going to happen, though. People's tastes are way too varied and eclectic to all enjoy the same kind of interesting music. I happen to like hardcore and klezmer/persian/greek music the best. A lot of my friends can't stand hardcore, and find the latter boring as all get-out. This is why bad music is so pervasive in our culture. It's not interesting, complex, or even musical by any means (since so much of it is canned in the case of pop superstars, or just down right simple in the case of blink 182 and all their sound alikes) because interesting and musically complex doesn't appeal to a wide audience.
Unfortunately, though, when the indy revolution hit hard a few years ago, the "Big 5" picked that up and repackaged it under spiffy new subsidiaries to stave off the perception of a monolithic record company. Now the term "Indy" is starting to apply to a particular sound, not as whiney as emo, but just as annoying, and with the same volumetric crap content.
If you ask me, the only answer to the music problem is a decentralized means of producing music, like ardour or, for the not-so-hungry college student, protools, and a centralized means of conveyance like CD Baby or audiolunchbox. Artists know how they want their music to sound. Record company hired slag producers do not.
The bottom line - in this day and age you can't be lazy when it comes to music. You have to be pro-active, seek out new genres and sounds, listen, enjoy, repeat. And support organizations that are trying to break out of the recording industry's mold. Buy from independent artists, and refuse to buy from major labels. Buy from local, family owned-and-operated record stores. OK, i'm done. I gotta gets to school.
cheese.
Often when I see things like this I feel a real sorrow for people that are so caught up in the system they deride that they are caught completely unawares.
Recording didn't killed music as it existed, recording allowed music to expand into whole new horizons. Because you have chosen to limit yourself to "easily packaged" music your experience with all that is out there is solely lacking. While I dislike analogies this is very much akin to eating fast food all the time and complaining that there is no great food out there anymore. There is a ton of amazing, inspiring music out there with more if it being made everyday. Is it all handed to you? No. Of course not it requires the same amount of effort it does to find a new author you click with or a new favourite show, or strange meal that makes you mouth water.
You are kidding yourself if you think there ever was a culture of performers in any higher percentages than what exists today. Stop living in overly romanticized versions of the past.
--- I do not moderate.
One word: TRL
Global saturation of crappy music making it extremly hard for any 'good' or 'innovative' music to bleed its way out into the airwaves through the recycled trash that pollutes and hogs all playlists that many monoplolistic companies, *cough* clear channel *cough*, like promoting over and over attempting to make profits of those annoying songs they force into our heads by playing them so much we start to think we like it.
Back when the music business was NOT run like a business, back when the owners did it because they loved music, it was MORE successful.
Selling art as widgets simply doesn't work.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
That is so wrong that it hurts.
Fine dining is not "dead" because there is no culinary innovation. Fine dining is "dead" because, for the average slob, McBurger is good enough. Music is not "dead" because there is no musical innovation, it is just that people accept McMusic as good enough. People these days are generally lazy and will accept whatever sort of crap is mass-marketed at them by corporations that have a mass-production, lowest-manufacturing-cost, "if one is good, a thousand just like it must be great", profit over all quality mentality.
I have found dozens of incredibly talented artists by searching the Internet. But I had to work at it and look for them. Just turning on the McRadio or expecting them to show up at my door doesn't do it.
Put effort into your searches and you'll probably be delighted in what you find and amazed that talent and creativity still exit.
(I'd like to polish this post and give some links, and have much more to say, but I'm quite late for work ...)
Sigs are bad for your health.
What, it was overrated at 0? Jeez, don't mod it down because it wasn't *as* insightful as other comments!
Hurricane Ivan: A 17th century prison collapsed. All of the inmates escaped.
Provide nothing of any real value? Compared to what? What is remembered throughout history? Art and music. Everything else is forgettable. And comparatively without value. Did you ever wonder, for instance, why music is played at EVERY SINGLE IMPORTANT LIFE EVENT IN EVERY SINGLE CULTURE? Weddings, funerals, coronations, etc. Because it is one of the most important things of all to humanity, perhaps?
should read WITHOUT of course! stupid typo sorry. i rely on soulseek, emule and other free networks where people from all over the world can come together and browse each other's music. and it just seems so right to do that for your own pleasure. no paid service can offer anything like this. damn i need sleep :/. i've actually tried to buy some of this music and failed to find the albums i love in shops... i should try harder or complain to the industry or something..
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
I found it interesting that they did NOT mention the Internet or P2P file sharing as a cause for poor music sales.
Actually, Jeff Leeds--the guy from the LA Times--said, "This great boom almost turned inside out, because the very thing that led to it -- which was the idea that you could take music and turn it into a digital file and put it on a plastic disc -- that became really the unraveling of the business. Because those exact same digital files became something that you could take off of that disc, send to a friend or a million friends through the Internet. And that's why the business has the problem that it does right now."
He was immediately followed, however, by the manager for OutKast, Michael "Blue" Williams, who said, "In my opinion it's not downloading that's killing us, it's [that] we stopped putting out quality music. We stopped giving the public something to believe in. We started just giving them, 'Here take this, take this, take this.' And the public caught up to us and was like, 'Hey, we don't want to take it no more, and we get it someplace else.'"
I found it interesting that the show also attempted to contrast the creation of two new music acts: the young singer/songwriter; and the old-school "super group" formed by putting together the refugees from two formerly-great bands. But at the end of the show, while the "super group" was clearly a corporate creation, I didn't think the young singer/songwriter's songs were all that great, either. Sarah Hudson's songs clearly had been produced into the Avril Lavigne/Michelle Branch sort of sound. By contrast, Velvet Revolver's songs at least didn't sound like everything else on Clear Channel.
Star Académie.
Here in Québec, it saturated the market. It's a kind of American Idols in bigger. It comes from a french concept. It should have stayed a french concept.
There's nothing else on the radio than songs from the Star Académie album, the Star Académie tour, songs from former académitiens and the season 2 will bring its lot, too. God I hate that generation of cool-aid artists, just poor water in and you've got a hit.
The concept is financed by Québecor, who own almost all the medias in Québec, and produced by the CEO's wife, Julie Schnyder. In all the newpapers, web sites, tv stations, radios owned by Québecor, there is so much publicity... I'm gonna puke, as the auditions for season 3 are starting and the season 2 tour has just begun...
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance." Isaac Asimov
$16 !!!!!!!
What the hell are you complaining about?
Over here in Ireland it's 25-35 for a CD. Thats about $27-$38 (US).
Every-one I know gets stuff off the internet, bearshare etc, because to get, say 100 songs(a minor collection) could well cost over 100. If CDs were 5 I'd buy one a day!!! Well, I certainly wouldn't spend 2 hours downloading one!
Consider DVDs. I buy a 3 for 30 deal almost every week. DVDs are usually cheaper than CDs over here, even the new ones. I consider them better value for money as well. The DVD companies are obviously better run than the CD ones.
Count yourself lucky.
Go to your local bars at about 9pm-11pm (and today is Friday -- Friday is great for this) and see some bands. (Obviously, not all bars have live music, so ask around if you don't know.) Some of them are pretty lame, but overall, they tend to be better than you'd expect, if you haven't done it before. They're almost always better than radio stuff.
Are they dying? I don't think so. Attendence does vary (at least here in ABQ). Sometimes a show will get flyered and well-publicized and there will be a couple hundred people there and the fire marshall will make the bar turn people away. And sometimes on a Tuesday night, once you exclude the band members and their girlfriends and the bartender, you'll see there's only three extra people there to drink and see the band. Most the time, it's somewhere in between.
Most of them are not making money, and they know it. They're doing it for fun. I've seen a few bands come and go, and the breakups seem to never be about, "Well, our marketing just wasn't successful." When I ask 'em why they broke up, it tends to be about the personal relationships. I get answers like, "Because Heather [the guitarist] has her head up her ass!" Okaaay.
There's a lot of variety (at least in my town). I still have just barely scratched the surface. I tend to just concentrate on one genre (metal) but even I sometimes get distracted. There's this one band I saw, that at first thought was a Rolling Stones tribute band. Then I realized the songs were original, so I decided they were a Rolling Stones parody. I snickered with amusement. Then I realized they were serious. About the third time I saw them, the true horror of the situation dawned on me: I was starting to get into 'em. D'oh! ;-)
Music will always be around, because some people enjoy making music and they don't care if they make money at it. They would like to, sure, but they have their day jobs. You can't kill something like that. It can be defeated in a market, but that doesn't really stop it. Just ask Microsoft about GNU/Linux developers...
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Looks rather like a work in progress, where's the "done this" part come in?
Music is dead for EXACTLY the same reason so many other industries that require thought and creativity (engineering, software, TV shows...) are dying, corporate greed. Plain and simple. Nobody and nothing good comes from a profit first mind set. How many good products (or good anything for that matter) came from a group of people that said "OK, firstly, how do we make as much money as possible, then lets make our product."
We're grossly greedy and it shows. Quality is just something you do to get sales back up. Once you've got the sales you get rid of those damned expensive innovative, creative thinkers and hire the lowest cost workers possible. If you want to do good work that may not be the most profitable work, GOOD LUCK around here bub.
Comes from letting accountants and lawyers run the world (consumers) rather than producers.
I watched this last night. It was kinda interesting, but mostly old news and not very insightful. Most of the show was about two new artists trying to make it big: Sarah Hudson (kind of a generic poppy singer with glitzy production values) and Velvet Revolver (Stone Temple Pilots / Guns 'n Roses mix-up band). All the points about becoming successful in music are interesting, but they aren't new. These threads were tossed in with a occasional comments about the consolidation of the recording industry and the domination of Wal-Mart, but these were not the primary focus of the show. The previews blurb talked about file sharing, but this was only briefly mentioned once in the show.
All-in-all I didn't get much out of it, especially not anything about why the music industry is much different than it was in the 1960s.
What a load of revisionist history!
If he is right, then The Coasters, The Moonlighters, Mary Wells and every other artist before his time would be millionaires (at least when they were alive, sorry Mary) living off the royalties of their songs, right?
Wrong, these people signed contracts and signed away the rights to their music long before the present. The same tactics that were being done on hip hop artists in the 90's were being done in the 50's and 60's only this time instead of Phil Spector screwing them over, it is Puff Daddy or Biggie Idiot or whoever is the mobster of the week is.
Crosby used to be in a band called The Byrds which had a song which preceded Woodstock by several years who had a song called "So You Want to be a Rock n Roll Star?" which had a line which goes:
Sell your soul to the company
Who are waiting there to sell plastic ware
Remember that Mr. Crosby? Of did you take to much blow up your nose and forget the past and decided to make some up?
Sheesh.
Just turn the fucking thing off, and music becomes enjoyable.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Live Nirvana performances sound like crap.
And I was a fan before I even saw an image of the band - I guess I like the studio version.
By the way, what does it matter that a performer took a million takes for the final draft? I'd rather have that to listen to than a single take (live fits in the set of single takes).
Live performances are meant to either show direct support for the artist(s) or experience the event.
If the live version is better than the studio version (wrt audio ONLY), then something was seriously wrong when recording.
Music innovation is a two way street. The cultural process of making music has reached the point where the centralization of talent and distribution of recordings can no longer sustain musical culture.
In other words, if you love music, the time has come to start learning how to make it yourself. In the 20th century, the paridigm arose that people would listen to the radio to hear what was new. The best musicians would play on the radio to get known. People would buy musical recordings that they heard on the radio and musicians would copy the musical styles and add their own improvements. People would go to hear musicians play what they heard on radio and then a little bit more. As the bands improved and surpassed the radio performers, they would record, have their recordings played on the radio, and the cycle would begin again.
The various economic and technological developments covered in the PBS series have caused this model to fall apart.
The 21st century solution requires more input for the music community. If you love music, you need to learn to play an instrument and get involved in the music creation process. Not to the extent of the 20th century musicians, but more than the 20th century audience.
Start with music that you already like. Get a notation program that displays MIDI files in sheet music form and plays the notes through the sound card. It's not 'music', but that's not the point. The point is to learn about the music itself: the chords, the harmonies, the arrangements. Almost all popular songs from the past thirty years have MIDI files available on the web. It's an incredable resource, if you can use it.
Learn a little about written music. It's always the first program cut in public schools so there is a good possiblity that you have had no exposure to it in high school if you graduated within the past ten years. If you can learn C++, you can learn anything. Learning to read music is one path to independence from the RIAA, so it is worth the time and effort. Again the music notation programs like MIDISOFT studio v4.0 that play MIDI files are a big help.
Get instruments that match the ones used on your favorite recordings. Ebay is a great source. For example, you can now buy the same synthesizers used for 70s,80s, and 90s music at a tiny fraction of the original retail music store prices. Often you can buy a synthesizer or tone module (a synth without a keyboard that plays through the computer's MIDI port on the joystick connector) for $80, use it for several months, and resell it on Ebay for a different type for the same price that youo paid for it. You get a long term rental of a complicated musical instrument for the cost of shipping it to you from the previous owner. Sometimes you can get the instruments directly from the musicians who make the original pop hits and have been driven into bankruptcy after they pissed away their advance on SUVs, partys, and entourages.
You can also get schematics of many of the stomp box guitar effects on the web, including all those used to make the classical rock songs of the 60s and 70s. You can get files that explain note by note how to play the great guitar solos from that period as well. Beatles, Stones, Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, Santana, ect... All the great classic rock songs have been documented and are on-line. It doesn't matter if you don't really like the original music, it matters that you are learning to be a musician and as such you are breaking the deep psycological bonds that tie you to RIAA product.
Then you can start creating your own music and start trading it on specialized sites (such as the Yahoo Groups dedicated to a particular instrument or band). You can collaborate with other people engaged in the same process and who are at the same point as you. If you're stuck you can get help from others.
All this is completely beneath the radar of the RIAA, but will go a long way to meet your basic human need for music without being a passive disgrunted endless consumer of RIAA product.
Anyway it is a real alternative to the RIAA.
Instrumental Rock
Shilock Rock
Rockabilly
Pop Rock
Vocal Group Rock
Rock and Blues
Ballad Rock
Uptown R&B
Surf
British Invasion
Bubblegum
Folk Rock
Hard Rock
Acid Rock
Country Rock
Soft Rock
Produced Soul
Soft Soul
Pop Soul
Progressive Soul
Heavy Metal
Glitter
I got these from a chart in Edward R. Tufte's "Visual Explanations", and he got it from Steve Chapple and Reebee Garofalo's "Rock'N'Roll is Here to Pay: The History and Politics of the Music Industry". To someone who grew up in the 1960's, there has never existed innovation in any meaningful sense in music ever after.
I remember having tapes and LPs and they would just plain wear out: many not lasting more than a year or two. It was like tolet paper. When you wore out your tapes or LPs you were often forced to buy them again. I would try to copy them off of friends, when my tapes would get recked, but quality of copies even with high speed dubbing just was awful. I only have about 5% of the total cassets I have purchased now and I no longer have any LPs. With a computer or when you buy a CD there is no replacement problem. In an industry that was 40 billion dollars, I would not be suprised if 20% of that was people replacing "old" tapes that stretched or broke. It mirrored toilet paper, when you ran out you bought more. Digital Media has killed the record business. -Ron
``what garbage can it produce in other areas ... like government, or ethics?''
The answer is: lots. You just can't trust the public at large to make the right choice about any one thing; it will be outside most people's expertise and they won't even care to learn about it. This is why openness, freedom of speech, etc. are so important: there is no one size that fits all, and the way to keep most people happy is through diversity. This is what the Internet shines at, and likely will shine at for years to come.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Britney Spears sells because of how she looks? How insightful! Thanks for explaining that to everyone, Mr. Crosby.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
When were jammin' in our old garage
The girls come over and it sure gets hot
We don't wanna be watered down
Takin' orders from record company clowns.
That's why we don't wanna be good
That's why we don't wanna be good
We're prisoners of rock and roll.
Prisoners of rock 'n roll. Neil Young
What's in sig?
What's in a sig?
The people who sell prints of Sunflowers or table mats with The Hay Wain on them are no different form the reocred labels. They sell an unchallenging mass product to people with a mild interest in maybe having something no one can object to. Publishers whi sell airport novels and TV novelisations are doing the same thing. Productions of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals or yet another bloody LaBoheme are doing the same.
Yet there are still people writing books worth reading, still artists, still people putting on new plays etc. etc.
If the recorded music industry has reached the point where the people producing the latest Briteny-a-like or the latest yet-another-emperor-concerto can go off and do what they do best, then that is probably healthy.
If Crossby is so upset about being screwed by the record labels, why isn't he happy that the only people being screwed now are the talentless bimboes?
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
If everyone here believes that the Music Conglomerates can manipulate the public's perception of which type of music they should buy (ie mainstream music), then is it so hard to believe that the Media Conglomerates can manipulate the public's perception of which type of policitian they should vote for (ie democrat, republican).
If that is the case, than bias in the media amounts to corruption of the democratic process whereby the media conglomerates control who gets elected (votes from sheeple) and what they vote on (campaign contributions).
So why have a democracy when NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CBS, and CNN are just going to hype you into voting for whomever they favor?
You could do what I do - throw out the TV. Though if too many people start doing that, I suppose they'll make it illegal.
His company (OD2) is bought and paid for by MS.
Their only reason to exist is to push WMA.
Seriously. He is at the front line of the not getting it crowd.
Free trumps any price
A few mouse clicks trumps trooping down to the store
Individual tracks you actually want trumps a CD with 80% filler.
Your price point happens to be $11.95. Other people are different.
A few artists got their big breaks on mega-corp stations. This is mostly because successful shows are given a lot of leeway in what they do and play.
Norah Jones got a lot of airplay here on one of the most popular stations and she catapulted from there.
I think that where the megacorps kill variety are in cities that are not large enough to support their own personalities. That isn't much different from those cities that cannot support major concerts.
Another thing to remember, there is one beneficial side effect of CC. In Atlanta they changed the format of a few of their stations to avoid duplication resulting a stations playing formats rarely served.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The music scene is diluted, yes, and big music is releasing more crap than they ever have (greed), but there's an independent music scene out there that provides concerts on a local level all over the world (at least in my town), and as far as big names are concerned, how about artists like Dave Matthews, The Pixies, Massive Attack, eclectic bands like Femi Kuti, how about whole new genres like electronic music and hip-hop that didn't seem to exist in the times that you are referring to? How about Talking Heads and R.E.M (OK, those are '70s and '80s bands), The White Stripes, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Belle and Sebastien, Jeff Buckley, Ben Harper, etc., etc. I've heard your arguments a hundred times, and frankly, I laugh at it, because I do not believe, unlike you, that 1968 was the greatest year in music history, and no, the world hasn't gone to hell, yet. And, while we're at it, I can't stand the Pink Floyd.
My wife is obsessed with American Idol and watches it every time it's on.
Every time someone sings and manages to hold a note for 5 seconds, the crowd goes wild! That seems to be the key to being a popular artist. Not whether they can harmonize or have timing.
The thing that cracked me up this season is that the teenagers vote and they actually voted off the people that actually had the most talent.
What does that tell you? Teenagers shouldn't be in charge of the music industry!
Why not let bands and artists develop their music, so that we may appreciate it down the road, rather than making music to match the current trend that will be tired at this time next year?
I got nothing...
Roll your own...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Keep in mind that the general public is all apathy.
In that sense they don't question the schlock that pours down from MTV, from the 1 massive set of radio stations under clear channel. From a young age they are just fed this stuff, and told to buy something that they don't need, etc etc.
It reminds me of the matrix a little bit, the only way to free a mind is to take a friend out to see an indy show, play indy music around you. As a culture we need to wake up and tune out of this stuff, until we do we are slaves to it.
Anyone with me or am I the only one that likes music that would be difficult for a computer program to generate autonomously?
...the "recording industry" is pretty sure it doesn't sell. Therefore it will never get air time on Clearchannel, MTV, VH1, etc so chances are you won't hear about it. Unless you are active in your local music scene you'll never see the innovative music today.
One of the interesting things pointed out by Frontline in the program was that the last major evolution in music was Rap/Hip Hop. How did this happen? It was because many realitively small (and poor) music companies where producing by many small time (and poor) artists. DJ Soandso went to the basement studio of some guy and cut a tape to be played on the street corner. The guy who produced it loved the music or he wouldn't give you studio time.
The important point is that the music was made because they loved the music. For years the "record industry" shunned this type of music because they didn't think it was marketable. A correlary is that competition was a good thing. Although they weren't getting paid bazillions of dollars artists were getting a big cut than what they get signing on a label. And if they weren't happy with the deal at one small studio they would go to another.
But all good things must end: It started to get mucked up by going mainstream. When the industry sensed a market they bought up the small companies and hired on the small time producers. Now you have the same rap music over and over featuring more or less the same music with the same scantly dressed girls all over the video. Instead of finishing an album when you are finished, you have to cut an entire album by Date A so that the marketing and videos can be shot and played in the right markets for maximum effect. As said in the program: its all about how the music looks not about how it sounds.
All hope is not lost. The industry will die because its fighting the consumer. The more energy they spend on not selling things to potential customers the farther they will sink.
So where is the innovative music at the moment? It seems like its coming from the clubs and raves. You have many small DJs all over making their own music to suite their needs. Just don't tell the "record industry" some of this stuff is good or they'll ruin that too.
There are still unexplored ways to sell digital music.
First one: from musicians directly to people, no distributors, no vampires.
Second: "Personalizing", I want MY copy of this song, made by the artist for ME, nothing more, nothing less.
Third: Because my money goes directly to the artist, i want-it to be "Cheap", and I want the artist to go rich, no feed to vampires.
What's in a sig?
What's in a sig?
This is /. Right? So the Majors = Micro$oft right? So let's get one thing straight.
I listen to music by April Lasagne. She is similar to someone on one of the majors but she is not quite as pretty and not quite as radio friendly. Still, she releases all her records as MP3 downloads and it makes us feel a bit of a rebel to listen to her.
Trouble is, every couple of records or so, rather than changing direction she forks off a new image and splits her fan base in two.
Of course she has had her troubles. She was sued by the supergroup SCO for copyright infringement and she has two teams of make up assistants who can't decide what she should look like.
I'm 40 but listen to much of the same music as my 15yo son, but that doesn't mean that music hasn't changed.
From a musical stand point, there is quite a bit diffent between "any other song on the radio today" and the music that was being produced in the early '70s.
In the early '70s it was eay to start a very heated debate about who was the best guitarist. And there were 3-5 names that would come up. It wasn't just somebody hammering away on power chords for 3 minutes at a crack.
I play bass, and there is a huge difference between playing Led Zeppelin, and Blink182. Not there aren't good musicians out there today, just that they don't get the air play they used to.
In terms of chart music however, there seems to be a trend for the age of "the kids" to be going even lower (8 or 9 yrs is about my guess. Presumably these are the people who still buy singles.
sclub7 (a music industry do it yourself band) did a series of ads for some product (probably fizzy drink, can't recall) where the winners would get to go to a sclub party... the potential winner actors were pre-teen kids. Can you imagine The Doors doing that, or even The Beatles? (shudder)
In the immortal words of Bill Hicks "... I want my rockstars dead!"
Even if its only your 4 friends playing in your living room, its a show.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
BIG BIG sticking point - SALARIED Musicians. The only salaried musicians I've known perform in orchestras or teach professionally. Most band-type musicians I know are paid by the gig, including house bands (e.g. wage). Actually, I've never known a rock or hip-hop musician/singer/rapper that earns a salary.
I've said it before, but fees against artists from record companies require a huge volume of album sales to make the artist money. Every expense is skimmed off the top of artist salaries, including the $75000-100000 required to pay independent promoters to play an album on the airwaves.
There are a collection of articles on How Stuff Works that explains how performing artists get screwed.
Read about royalties.
The "Who Gets What" section has a great quote -
"If we're not songwriters, and not hugely successful commercially (as in platinum-plus), we [recording artists] don't make a dime off our recordings." - Janis Ian
Here's one on Recording contracts
Best of all Top 40 radio - especially see the section on Independent Promoters and Radio play. I sure wish I'd learned all that from How Stuff Works, rather than the school of hard knocks.
And Keanu was Ted. Bill would be the other guy.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Jimi Hendrix only had 1 hit. But look at how history remembers him.
you might kill a hipster.
Why knock on Heidegger? The man has some interesting ideas. I know he is a little overrated, but you can blame that on Sartre. If he wasn't Heidegger's student, and didn't right those bullshit plays, we wouldn't have this problem.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Anyone who's tired of overhyped, overplayed cookie cutter music should try listening to KCRW. Even though they are an NPR affliate, you'd only know it because of the news at the top of the hour. They play many different kinds of music and things you probably haven't heard. There are so many new artists to discover and new music to hear, and KCRW is one of the few places where you can do just that. It's good music.
now _there's_ a blast from the past;-) great tunes, even scandalous: "i got a brand new pair of rollerskates, u got a brand new key" shocked a guy i worked with @ the time...seems so quaint now;-} and i remember seeing her @ the syria mosque in pgh...a buncha kids got up on the stage & sat around her while she was playing, so into it she didn't notice, and when she did, she did a double-take;-)
For all those who scream the death of copyrights means thousands of little artists getting screwed - I think this article says it all. When you have a copyright system, the information that gets the most attention has the most value, and the information that provides the best service is marginalized, long behold, if that isn't exactly what happened here.
It's interesting that the complaints people are voicing here - corporate control, "only the shallow survive" artists, etc. are echoes of the complaints that were happening in the late 1950's and early 1960's, when a relative few record companies controlled most pop music. "Tin Pan Alley" in NYC spewed out buckets of pablum for the masses. FM radio was nothing but classical music, and the industry owned AM radio.
A relative few independent souls (on the west coast) listened to Wolfman Jack after midnight on XERB, a 50,000 watt station out of Tijuana - the equivalent of a pirate radio station - and/or black stations playing R&B, Soul, etc. As late as 1965 or thereabout I saw James Brown in a club that held a total of under 100 people, packed to the gills - I was the only white guy in there.
When the new stereo FM standard came out, a pioneering group of music lovers started pure music-oriented stations playing the acid rock, blues, etc. Often they were, like 100 watt stations that couldn't be heard more than a few miles away. They were the original venue for the whole San Francisco music scene - Airplane, the Dead, the Byrds, Charlie Musselwhite, the Blues Project, Buffalo Springfield, etc. Some of these bands also had AM radio play but many of these bands were never heard outside these independent stations. Without those stations, it's quite possible these bands would never have made it to the 'big time'. Many of these bands never got a big record deal, but made their money touring.
Their success encouraged new business-oriented folks, who invested in automated playing systems (new at the time), and combined the new "Rock" format with tech efficiency, leading to the modern "classic rock" format. And now, here we are, back where we were back then. This time, the FCC has worked to effectively block any avenues for independent artists to 'make it' via the new tech, the internet.
The solution will be a new "network effect" - a way for independent musicians and bands (and even poets!) to 'make it' via the new internet filesharing model. Perhaps a music rating system for indie artists who are depending on internet file sharing would help the better bands get more publicity and ear time, generating live gigs. Success will require musicians who have something new to say, and an audience who want to hear it. Somehow, people on the net need to provide concentrated support for one target after another to build some momentum.
Probably, some form of 'new music form for a new culture' synergy between artist and audience will have to occur to energize the path. So if you're really tired of Britney (nice girl, but gone 'way wrong), are you prepared to hear something newer and deeper? What might that be?
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
They were bad mouthing the record industry back in 1975-- before it was cool "Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar. You're gonna go far, You're gonna fly high, You're never gonna die, You're gonna make it if you try; They're gonna love you. Well I've always had a deep respect, And I mean that most sincerely. The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think. Oh by the way, which one's Pink? And did we tell you the name of the game, boy, We call it Riding the Gravy Train. We're just knocked out. We heard about the sell out. You gotta get an album out. You owe it to the people. We're so happy we can hardly count. Everybody else is just green, Have you seen the chart? It's a helluva start, It could be made into a monster If we all pull together as a team. And did we tell you the name of the game, boy, We call it Riding the Gravy Train."
Music today is like any economy of scale. The economy of scale itself allows a disproportionate amount of potential in relation to the physical size of the market. There's a magic line you cross where the infrastructure (stores, distributors, tours, advertising) allows a whole raft of opportunities for 3rd parties to slot into the system and make money from it. It's the same of the telephone network, or the internet. The fact is that the major labels over the years invested into the network, they largely own the network and now the network is shrinking because the money is less and some of the infrastructure is being dismantled. You can debate the reasons for this forever but the end result is the same- the network is being eroded.
Rapidly the industry is approaching the stage where they are no longer an economy of scale. Stores are going out of business, so are distributors, middle men etc. This impacts many, many 3rd party people who aren't evil and could only make a livelihood because of the sheer size of the system.
Digital downloads as an alternative to the current system lock out all intermediaries and in the short term, the switchover is going to be like when the asteroid hit and the dinosaurs were vaporized (to quote a recent slashdot story). The simple fact is that you're not going to have anything new coming out because everything that could support it is wiped out. The pockets of independent music producers will be there as everyone argues, but the distribution will suffer immensely if you don't have distributors or independent stores to sell the music. File sharing will not help the spread of this type of music alone because while it's convenient to get stuff you know about, It's just not a good way to advertise stuff you've never heard about. The soon to be extinct intermediaries, (i.e. the distributors, stores, music press, concert promoters, etc.) used to provide these personalized "recommendation" services and it's going to be a huge lag before their equivalents can be recreated online.
In the history of the world, singers have been poor. Crosby says that when he started, nobody was rich in the music business. Records got started in the 20s then depression and war and not until the 50s did they really start making money for people. So rich musicians, making money from something other than the actual performance is a new phenomenon. They benefited at the start. Then the money people moved in. The 90s benefited from a re-purchase for new tech. Well the wheel has turned. The tech is making the recording just an advertisement for the live show. Good bands "Greatful Dead" can make a good living off of touring. They encourage song swapping. The BIG 5 have painted themselves into a corner. Focus on a few profitable acts, suck the money out of them, you lose the other ones. There is a lot of good music being made right now. They do not get the big 5 and Clearchannel seal of approval. But the internet gives them more traction. The few independent stations out there give them hope. Plugs for Disturbed, AudioSlave, Saliva, Godsmack, Jet, Hoobastank, Limp Bizkit, Korn. Yes they are like the music from the 60s and 70s but they are good.
I'm not going to cry for the Record Labels. BIG MUSIC has been ripping off the artists from the get go. They've been feeding us mostly pre-packaged pollution for 50 years now. It's common knowledge that the average artist makes very little from the sales of their cds. It's all used up by BIG MUSIC in costs to package their larger acts (marketing, production, touring, profits, &c.). The little guy makes his dough (if he makes anything) on the road.
What I'm thinking is if the little average artist is getting the shaft anyway...what is the allure of being "signed" by BIG MUSIC? Distribution?! Well, eventually the internet makes distribution a NON-ISSUE. Eventually, you will have record companies looking more like booking agents. The Producer and Artist will be King! The music you get will be better and the true artists will reap the benefits.
No...it's okay...I wasn't using my Civil Liberties anyway
Technological shifts have a profound impact on what and how we communicate. Radio killed the recording star. Video killed the radio star. Internet killed the video star. And so it goes.
Peace and love, y'all
Two riffs per song.
Catchy and repetitive chorus.
No guitar solos.
A few ballads.
It's a template nu-metal song, nothing complicated about it, zero innovation. Replace Amy Lee with [random pissed off looking dude] and you get a template nu-metal band like Disturbed, POD or Linkin Park.
I hereby demand the return of 45 minute keyboard solos and poodle cut hair
*looks around*
stiiill waiting...
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
levy: the imposition or collection of an assessment
levee: an embankment for preventing flooding
Anal-retentiveness (retention?) aside (almost wrote 'asside'), the frontline article is pretty good. I wish the site were a little faster with the Realplayer streams, though.
> No.. I got the point, but an easier way of
> putting it is that the majority will always go
> to the label. And their idea is that they put
> up all the money and put themselves at risk
This would be great but for one thing.. the labels CREATE the majority of the risk as well.
Why is it risky? Because advertising, payola, TV coverage, etc.. all cost money. But why do they cost so much money? Because the SAME group of big labels is prepared to pay a lot for them.
All that needs to be done is for ALL the labels to refuse to pay high rates for these, and the prices (and thus the risk) will come down. They would be perfectly capable of doing that, given that they could still compete with each other.
The only reason they don't is that the high prices on these things have another effect that's to their benefit - they freeze new competitors out of the market. That's fine, but the companies shouldn't complain about risk after that.
> promote this artist, therefore, they should
> get most of the cut until the artist can sign
> a more compelling contract for themselves.
Sure. But the problem is, they *don't* just "get most of the cut". They also take back their money from the ARTIST'S CUT.
Let's clarify this. I say, I'll fund your album $250000, if you'll pay me back by giving me 80% of the value of the sales. So if 80% is more than $250000, I've made my money back. Your album sells $1m worth of copies, so you get $200000 and I get $800000. Sounds fair enough? Yep, sure. But that's NOT what the labels do.
What the labels do is this: I'll fund your album $250000, if you'll give me 80% of the sales. But that 80% of the sales does *not* count towards giving me back my $250000. Even if the 80% of the sales comes to over a million dollars, I'm still not going to count it against the $250000 you owe me. No, YOU have to pay that to me, with YOUR money - which comes from the 20% you got.
So, suppose your album gets $1m of sales. I get 80%, which is $800000. You get 20%, which is $200000. But then you have to pay me back my $250000. So in spite of that $800000 you've just made me, you now *OWE* me $50000.
How is that in any way even a reasonable sensible deal?
There's bucket loads of innovation. However, the cartel that is the music industry prevents it from being played or distributed where you can hear it.
Check out:
http://www.oemradio.com
http://www.somafm.com
or (at the risk of a personal plug
http://www.groovetronica.com
mms://video.pbs.org/general/windows/media4/frontli ne/2214/windows/ch1_hi.wmv
Just change the chapter number for the next segment.
the preview keeps putting a (space) in "frontline"...
It's hard to feel all sorry for musicians when all that's happened to them is that they've entered the industrial age. Welcome to how the rest of the world's been earning a living for a century now.
Every now and then a company is founded and succeeds upon the fervor of the founders, but success insures that when these businesses become corporations, the visions, cultures and interests of the founders are all subverted. The bigger question this topic begs, is why is society rewarding the mediocre over the exceptional and how could this be reversed?
Politicus
Wanting to put food on the table and a roof over their heads using their talents makes them money-grubbing motherfuckers? Should they all go out and get day jobs so you can have music for free? Would that make them nice people again?
Grow the hell up and stop being such a selfish little turd.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
The album that pundits claim really established Metal as a genre and provided the roots for later changes was Deep Purple's Machine Head, released in 1972. Even so, metal itself has spawned many sub-genres since then. Prog metal, death metal, etc.
There are nearly as many variants of metal as there are of electronic music. All of which have evolved outside of your given timeframe.
Sorry to post as Anonymous Coward...can't remember my login and don't have the time to retrieve it.
First, please stop talking about the music. The music has nothing to do with it. There will always be artists making music that some people like and some people don't. That's what makes it art, even if you think it's crap.
This is about how to support yourself making music and how to find distribution to do so. The problem is that the record companies used to have a delivery mechanism that no one else could produce. As such, they could control access to the music and charge consumers to hear it. That time, as we know, is past, but the record companies refuse to accept it. Why?
Because they'll be cut out of the profit in the new model. Once musicians accept that they can't control distribution of the music in recorded form due to piracy/sharing/whatever you want to call it, they will be ready to take the next step. That step is to recognize that recorded music acts as a free marketing device to sell tickets and merchandise at live performances. That is where the money is for musicians and always has been - even now they only get $1 out of every CD sold and that's only if they have a good contract with the label.
A performer can make a boatload of money just off of concerts (see Dave Matthews, Phish, et al.) and the merchandise sold there. The more the recorded music gets distributed via file sharing and word of mouth, the more likely they are to sell out concerts and in more venues. I realize this works out terribly for acts that don't perform well live, particularly some of the electronic musicians that aren't good at improvising, but those guys aren't making loot anyway.
Chuck D and the other supporters of free music have figured this out. The only people who oppose it are either (A) not good enough to make money without record companies spending millions to market them or (B) too lazy and greedy to accept a good living doing something they love for a live audience. No matter, though. You can't stop it or contain it. The good stuff will flow to those who crave it and, eventually, the mass-marketed crap will fade.
Or so I hope.
The best way to avoid all this mess is to only listen to independant music. And by "independant," I don't mean "indie." Indie is a genre, not a fiscal model. Any band on an independant label is bound to be superior to "for-money" bands. For example, I'm into hardcore, a subgenre of punk rock. All real hardcore bands typically don't make any money whatsoever. In fact, some do it on the side of their day jobs, such as snapcase. Members of snapcase are software engineers and jet engine technicians, and the band has been around for well over ten years, with four full-length albums and legions of rabid fans. The shows they (and other hardcore bands) play are typically in tiny clubs, for tiny cover charges. Their merchandise (thirts, etc) is also cheap (roughly $10 for a shirt, compare that to Britney Spears, [or even the mall]).
Everything they do, they do for themselves and for the love of music, not for money.
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori
From the conclusion of 'The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis' "the financial incentive for creating recorded music are quite weak. Few of the artists who create one of the roughly 30,000 albums released each year in the US will make a living from their sales because only a few albums are ever profitable. In fact, only a small number of established acts recieve contracts with royalty rates ensuring financial suffieciency while the remaining artists must rely on other sources of income like touring or other jobs." Indies exist because the music is there to be listened to - it's a labour of love for all involved. Music production and distribution requires pretty massive sacrifice and compromise in one's life - even those who are able to eak a living out of their record label or musical offerings have given up a great deal in terms of financial stability and life choices, like having a family, or building a retirement fund. The majors aren't the only reason for this - not all music is of value to anyone but it's creator ( :>) but they are the reason that the selection of music on your radio is limited and sounds the same, and that the chain stores only sell their trite crap.
get the hell out of your house and go to some live music clubs.
An American teen who tries to leave Britney Spears and *NSUCK behind for live music clubs will typically be turned away at the door because he or she isn't 21.
Crosby is frankly full of it. His whine is that the big bad record companies are making money by promoting shallow musicians. Whereas he is "all about the music dude." Apparently he doesn't care about the money, he only cares about the music. If so, why is he whining about the music companies? His only real beef is that the present system doesn't allow "real artists" to make Britney Bucks, but he allegedly claims that "real artists" don't care about that!
As usual with artists, they don't realize that the ability to rhyme or sing in tune rarely coincides with the ability to say anything of value. Music is not philosophy, music is the dancing bear to entertain us, so please stop whining and start dancing David.
Music sales are ultimately driven by quality. The music "industry" is heading down the road of destruction if they think they can promote themselves out of the abyss.
I've recently started teaching my son to play the guitar. He's had 6 years of experience and lessons and still couldn't play a decent lead. After looking through his music books (all popular rock bands) I figured it out.
Train Song by Phish - 10 chords
Last train Home by The Lost Prophets - 7 chords
Would by Alice in Chains - 7 chords
Cold Hard Bitch by Jet - 7 chords
Strong Enough by Sheryl Crow - 6 chords
No wonder they sounded the same (and boring) to me. On top of that the rock bands were over compressing the signal, great sustain but no musical dynamics. It was all stomp box distortion.
I started off by teaching him a few decent songs (although we had to work on technique, he had never had to do a string bend, hammer on, or pull off).
Dust in the Wind by KANSAS - (to learn to play clean)
Desperado by The Eagles - (to learn to play with feeling)
Stairway to Heaven - 23 chords
Roundabout by YES, 40-43 chords (its how you play it)
Clap by YES - 56 chords, and fast tempo
When I was learning to play you'd be laughed at for playing chord progressions and calling them songs, now people play big bucks to hear what oughta be an improved lead.
"C" was right, but he didn't take it far enough. I see the major labels limping along as the smaller companies with TALENTED MUSICIANS like GOTEE keep making a killing off each record they release because IT'S WORTH HEARING!
It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs
sweet! now that I have the signature of Peter Gabriel I'm going to make some pretty cool memo's here at work...
If there hasn't been any innovation in music in 40 years, will someone please list for me their favorite rapper, turntablist/DJ, or electronica artist* from the 60s. While these may not be the music everyone listens to on the radio(except rap), they have started a 'genetic drift' in music. And we've already seen the drift in some genres: Country sounds a lot more like rock/pop than it used to, and modern rock sounds a lot more like rap... Listen to more than just plain vanilla pop rock (mmm.. pop rocks) and you will find plenty of changes happening...
Random recommendations - for those seeking a good rock webstream, I recommend radioio's eclectic and accoustic streams. And for those looking for a unique album and not just a collection of songs, check out the Flaming Lips Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.
(*Please refrain from nitpicking about these too much... I'm declaring my open assumption that what became modern electronic music starts with Kraftwerk.)
put out low-quality full-length songs (56K mono should be good enough quality that the listener can enjoy the song without being distracted by compression artifacts.)
I have got decent results for a few types of music with 22050 Hz Ogg Vorbis at quality 0.00, which produces a stream that varies mostly in the range 32 to 40 kbps.
The internet killed the Video Star... see it here. Just be sure you have a decent macromedia flash player. This is quite old... an oldie, but a goodie.
Yep! Mickey Dolenz was a good singer! No coincidence he sung lead on their biggies. The Boyce and Hart professionalism on Last Train to Clarksville... the Neil Diamond compo I'm a Believer... Good shit!!
Maybe they only play in bars
If bands play only in venues that serve a lot of alcoholic beverages, they leave the all-important sub-21 crowd to the record companies, which are more willing to produce and sell pedo-pop crap.
As a performing musician and someone who's worked in the business managing bands and promoting shows and running web sites for major label acts, I can't honestly say I feel the industry has fundamentally changed in the last 10-20 years. It has changed, but this industry has *always been based on exploitation*. The nature of that exploitation has traditionally revolved around institutions exploiting artists. The only thing that's different nowadays is that the labels and the media have merged into one and are working as a single unit, whereas in the past, they were more disparate.
What's wrong with the business can be summed up in three words:
Clear Channel
Ticketmaster
These two entities have almost single-handedly tied up the lion's share of performance and marketing of music. There's not any more exploitation or screwing over of musicians than they're used to be, but now the companies wield so much power & influence they can shut down popular acts that don't jive with their operating plan, and now they're more actively in the business of actually manufacturing formulaic product to foist on consumers.
Some things have changed in the business. Artists tend to make even less money proportionally and they have a harder time trying to find venues to play and promote their music. Monsters like Clear Channel won't put any controversial art in rotation, opting for shallow, characterless "boy bands" and "cute chicks". It appears your average person seems to eat the gruel they're feeding 'em but this undoubtedly is having an effect on music sales. People aren't excited about the art like they used to because there's very little art to it any more.
But there are still a lot of great bands out there. The problem is nobody knows about them because they have no radio stations to play their music and no decent clubs to book them. Without any means to promote their music, it's very hard to get started.
One equalizer to this problem could be the Internet, but as of yet, it hasn't matured as a competitive medium to the traditional music outlets. I'm one of those who really thinks that iTunes is overrated and a sham. Why pay the same price for more restrictive, lower-quality music? This is the same old business model that's been dumped on consumers: we'll give you what we think you want, not what you really want.
One good thing that's come out of all this is that in the last decade artists have come to accept that it's a necessity for them to control their own marketing and product distribution. The more artists that bypass traditional outlets, the more likely there can be some alternative to the totally boring product that corporate America is trying to force feed consumers.
But what's going on is just a symptom of a much larger sociological issue of art and creativity being considered unimportant, or secondary to the financial value of practicing such art.
Case in point: the other day CNN did a story on Madonna's new tour. The topic wasn't about her work. It was about how much money it's estimated she'll net from her tour and how powerful she is as a woman. The mainstream media seems to measure everything in dollars and this is undermining the basis of what art is really about. Even if you don't like Madonna, you have to cringe when you see the major media qualify artists exclusively in terms of their ability to make money.
Now there was garbage for you! Well, Steve Howe's classical technique had a few moments, Alex Leifson's too, but Kansas...
Doesn't Frontline have an Assitant Producer capable of establishing its current or forthcoming availability and post a hyperlink? Am I the only one that picked up C/N had created new music of which they were extremely proud and was interested in finding out more? Sure, I might be disappointed ala "Good lookin Boy" recently released by the Who (and I have really liked the Who, but this song is the pits, sorry Pete), but it would be nice if they put a little effort into providing background info about topics of this nature with their interview transcript.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
its jsut a matter of scale
notice its almost always megacorporations that do all the souless shit, that's because no one person is responsible and they all hide behind the company name to front their own agendas of power lust and money hunger
there was a time where american individualism didn't mean fucking your brother over, ask the ww2 vets what they think of america now.
and yet it is the baby boomer culture dominated by greed and Mine that they created, their spoiled 2.5 children who grew up in perfect cookie cutter houses, who were taught that equality has to mean everyone acts/thinks/is the same way when in fact that is the exact opposite of everything america was/is supposed to stand for. our monoculture is japanese in its ruthless oppression of dissenting views from the norm, and they are enforced through our "justice" system which is nothing more htan people trying inflict their own "morality" on others. notice that what is right and wrong changes with teh times (it was socially acceptable to burn witches/homosexuals/blacks all at one time or another here) but the fact the gov't holds a gun to your head to tell you waht's right and wrong does not.
(/rant)
If I could download music for a low cost (like iTunes) with no DRM, I would gladly pay for it!
Download from iTunes, stick in a CD-R, hit burn. Voila- no DRM.
Yes, I know it's an extra step, but I want a backup of my downloaded stuff anyway. (I just lost my HD, along with my library of ~2300 songs. Took a while to reimport everything...)
I'd like it if I didn't have DRM on iTunes stuff at all, but with RIAA around that's not going to happen. Apple's done a good job making it as transparent and easily removeable as it is.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Bluegrass will save the world, unplug yourself start playing the Mandolin!
This talk about how the labels are 'risking' so much is pure bunk. If they aren't 99.9999% sure of recouping their costs *plus* a nice chunk, they won't sign you. Many artists who get signed end up *owing* the labels money, for production/promotion etc. If anyone wants an idea of how the labels really work, check out this paper written by someone on the inside:
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
I'm a musician myself, and can attest to what Mr. Albini is saying, and that it's *not* just a diatribe by a 'disgruntled former employee' or an isolated/rare situation. If anyone out there has dreams of getting signed, I *highly* recommend this as *mandatory* reading. P.S.: I'm a blues guitarist, 46 years old, been playing since I was 14, professionally since I was about 21.
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Well, I didn't see this posted already, so here you go: MusicPlasma
Search for an artist you enjoy and find others linked to him/her/them. You're guaranteed to find something new. Now even finding new groups is all but handed to you. No more complaining.
Quick quiz.
What's wrong with this statement?
It doesn't matter that Britney Spears has nothing to say and is about as deep as a birdbath. It matters that she has cute tits, and that's all that matters.
-David Crosby
It's not the sentiment. He's absolutely correct about that.
He's also dead-on about Britney's meaning to the universe.
But he's wrong about her body. She's a pudgy skank with sagging triangular knobs who wouldn't make a dollar ever again if she showed those things outside of a pre-stressed support device.
Which wouldn't be an issue if, as he got absolutely correct, she were deeper than a cumshot.
AudioGalaxy came out right after Napster became huge. It provided a p2p music sharing scheme with 2 odd twists.
- The first, and lesser, of the two is that to browse songs, you opened up your browser and went directly to Audiogalaxy.com and started browsing. When you found the song you wanted to download, you'd click a link. Very simple and easy to use. This centralized the process, and eventually led to the RIAA-induced downfall of the p2p part of Audio Galaxy.
- The second, and very important, is the way the music was organized. It actually let you browse through music based on your taste. Songs didn't have a "rating" like Schon suggests, but rather a "grouping." Audio Galaxy grouped like songs together. For example, clicking on Elf Power would bring up Neutral Milk Hotel and clicking on The Who would bring up Yes. It didn't have anythign to do with genre, just what people liked. It was based entirely on how people shared their songs. The system would see that 30% (my guess, I don't really know) of the people sharing Beck songs would also be sharing Poe songs, and the link would be made on the site. I found almost all of the bands I listen to today using this method on Audio Galaxy.
><));>
I just posted a blog entry about this show.
wordclock records
I will respond to this entirely in Ani Difranco quotes (an independent artist who formed her own label, not because she couldn't get signed, but because she was an artist, not an employee) - perhaps the best songwriter since Joni. She sings about her own life, and much of her life applies the issue of conflict at the root of this discussion. She has approached the problem as an artist should, fighting as a poet can, with words, and eloquence. The point is well taken by anyone with open ears and open mind.
--
you are what you do, in order to
prevent becoming what you're busy not doing
and if you do do it truly and you arrive at it duly
then in the end you are absolved
and the problem of living, is solved
and they can call me crazy if i fail
all the chance that i need
is one-in-a-million
and they can call me brilliant
if i succeed
gravity is nothing to me
moving at the speed of sound
I'm just gonna get my feet wet
until i drown...
she said 'would you prefer the easy way?
no, well ok then, don't cry'
science chases money
and money chases its tail
and the best minds of my generation
can't make bail
but in the garden of simple
where all of us are nameless
you were never anything but beautiful to me
and, you know, they never really owned you
you just carried them around you
and then one day you put 'em down
and found your hands were free
Lying awake intent at tuning in on you
If I was young it didn't stop you coming through
Oh-a oh
They took the credit for your second symphony ,
Rewritten by machine and new technology
and now I understand the problems you can see
Oh-a oh
I met your children
Oh-a oh
What did you tell them?
Video killed the radio star
Video killed the radio star
Pictures came and broke your heart
Oh-a-a-a oh
And now we meet in an abandoned studio
We hear the playback and it seems so long ago
And you remember the jingles used to go
Crosby has a face made for radio. That doesn't make a star any more.
I find it highly ironic that PBS, which is related to NPR by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is presenting a documentary about how music is dying. The article mentions radio consolidation and they're part of the problem. NPR lobbied against low-power FM stations. Just something to remember when they start the next pledge drive...
No, it's "dabadaba" - truly meaningful music.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
You've got to be joking.
How can you compare something like Clapton's "Cocaine" to something coming out of oh, let say Britany Spears? How about Creedence Clearwater -vs- Justin Timberlake?
It's not an issue of no, I don't like them, it's an issue of quality. You consider Ms. Spears in the same league as an Eric Clapton??
David Crosby said it best in his interview: "Greed . Greed..". Ms. Spears is about making as much money as possible. I don't think Clapton (at the time of "Cocaine") would have thought "oh, this is going to be a million seller", he just had a story to tell.
I must comment on the "music video is bad" part of the interview.
I started to hate "music videos" about 6 weeks after the MTV craze started.
When the whole MTV phenomenon started all my friends would spend hours in front of it, so I watched too.
After 6 weeks, I realized that some groups I used to hate for their stupid lyrics and insipid musical talents, now appealed to me. They made me laugh with clownish numbers or better yet, showed me beautiful women with huge knockers (I was about 14 when MTV started, these things where recently very appealing for me).
On the other hands, some groups I used to love for their musical originality and lyrics that made me think about my social surroundings and life in general where showed to me as long haired, drinking, smoking, dirty bums sitting down playing the guitar or drums. I started to hate them.
That was it, I did not understand what all this was about, why I reacted like that, but I stopped watching music videos from that point on. About 20 years later, I feel good about it, and generally know more than "Average Joe" how bad music is today, and why!
It often makes me realize how easy it is to "manipulate the masses" from 1 hour everyday at mass (or 5 prayers a day), or worst constant political pitch or violence showed every night on the news.
"So you can't just look at what was on the *charts* in 1968 or 1975, because it wasn't like now when looking at the charts tells you basically what you're going to listen to."
Sorry, Billboard charts go back to the '50s. It's very easy to compare.
The original poster is also wrong, CSN&Y along with a lot of other groups *were* in the top 10 of the charts, sometimes for lengthy periods of time. They may not have been #1, but they were top 10.
If you ask me, the only answer to the music problem is a decentralized means of producing music, like ardour or, for the not-so-hungry college student, protools, and a centralized means of conveyance like CD Baby or audiolunchbox. Artists know how they want their music to sound. Record company hired slag producers do not.
I listen to Folk music. (http://www.wumb.org for a live stream). During the 60's Folk was popular w/ Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Janis Ian and a host of others. Enough that record companies picked up many Folk artists.
In the 80's, the big companies dropped Folk for the most part. It's all small potatoes nowadays as the fad has passed. But the artists went to smaller labels. Some started to self produce. In the end, most of the folk scene barely missed the big label's influences.
CD-R has done alot for the singer songwriters. Probably more then cassette tapes did for the previous generation. It's easy to make an album & put it on CDs to sell at concerts w/o any label being involved. And you can make a living at it.
Said it so well and so completely, there's little that can be added here without being redundant or trying to sound like some great philosopher. Thanks David...Right on! You made good use of that new liver. If you ever need another one, call. I'll be happy to give you a chunk of mine, if it's not all loaded up with too much THC :-)
What?
This is darned insightful.
That is one of the most emotionally intense albums I have ever listened to. Brilliant and passionate.
I had picked it up on a lark, because the record store (Zia's in Phx AZ) was playing her first album which I hadn't heard in a while.
When I played Haunted for the first time, I was futzing around on my computer. I heard it, but I wasn't really listening. But it struck me that there was something special there.
The second time, pow! I went down stairs, kicked back in the recliner and fired up the Infinity's and I listened to it. Really listened to it.
That is one hell of a ride. She wasn't "running with the wolves", she was leading the pack. She should have gotten a grammy for it.
Moekandu
"Don't you mess with a little girl's dreams,
'Cause she's liable to grow up mean!" - Poe "Control"
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Begin the day with a friendly voice...
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
There are many reasons the recording 'industry' is failing. Not the least of which is cost. Even at iTunes prices of $1/song, it would cost $1300 (assuming 3MB/song) to fill it. A fully loaded iPod with a 40 GB disk would be $13,000! So that's about 5 PCs, 1/2 a car, almost the cost of 1 year room/board/tuition for in state residents at UMass. That's not sane.
But look at it from the record company's perspective. Sell 1 million 40GB iPods, assume they are 1/2 full. That translates to $6.5 billion, gross.
It's all about the $$$. They can't see past that.
r
There was way too much focus on Velvet Revolver and Sarah Hudson, at times it seemed like an adumentary. Sad part is that I actually remember the Hudson Brothers TV show.
Frank Zappa and others were pointing out the problems of the music industry in the late 70's. In a nutshell: most labels had no clue what they were getting into when they signed "rock" acts and they let the market decide what sold; then they hired guys with the same (long) hair as the kids as A&R types because they would know what was good; the A&R long hairs moved up the corporate food chain, determining what was good and what sucked and they knew because they had the same hair as the kids; somebody realised that you can't have a new type of music unless there were new clothing styles to go with it; to show the audience which clothes to wear required videos; videos needed a place to play, a clearing house for coolness; MTV was born.
Unfortuately, most people have never "discovered" music without the influence of corporate force feeding: does anybody seriously beleive that the concept of "alternative" music wasn't cooked up in a record execs office? The history of the record industry isn't that glorious: failing to pay artists for their work, failing to account for missing runs of albums, failing to maintain complete financial records and other devious machinations. That was just the Doo-Wop era! The musician as artist has always had to fight the record companies, but the "musician" as media rarely cares. It is easier to convince folks to look and act a certain way if the music is vapid and derivative but the "musician" is flashy and dresses cool. Remember Samantha Fox from the 80's? A page 3 girl (topless model) that a producer bet he could make into the musical flavour du jour with the right promotion. Unfortunately he was right.
Listen to the music that you enjoy, but be aware of the way music has been used as the thin edge of the wedge for all manner of consumer identification.
Just like customer service and tech support, radio stations are looking for music that is just slightly better than the most watered-down commerciality you'll listen to. It's a lowest common denominator. Sure, the Backstreet Boys were annoying, but I have to admit the sound of actual harmony was nice - the first few times I heard their songs. They were only annoying because they were mass-marketed and sold as something everyone will tolerate but nobody loves. (Even the pre-teen girls bought them because they were cute, their friends had the CDs, etc. - not for the music. And look how loyal they are to the Backstreet Boys now.)
If you want good music, go out on a limb and search for it, becase the more centralized the music industry becomes, the fewer choices we'll have. (Just like software, cellphone companies, board games, or anything else.)
The good news is that home music studios are becoming much cheaper ($1000-$3000 for enough equipment to make your own CD-quality recordings) and it's entirely possible to record an Enya-like musical texture all by yourself. It takes time, but it is possible - and getting easier. I predict withing twenty years, official recording studios will be obsolete.
"Today, one of the Spice Girls' backup singers...wait, backup singers? They don't play instruments. They don't write their songs. There are five of them. And they have backup singers."
Member of Orkut? Annoyed with spam?
I'd recommend you these:
Jazzanova
St. Germain
Koop
Trüby Trio
also the labels Compost and Sonar Kollektiv are known for their high quality nu-jazz releases.
I think that right about now would be a good time to have some "new" thing. The new new wave, or whatever. The industry goes in cycles. Things get really dull, really boring, and then something happens, something new, exciting, and cool.
The new thing that happens really has to be new, exciting, and cool, not just marketed to be that way or whatever.
I think the difference today, as opposed to previously, is that not only does the new thing need to have a style, an approach to life, an attitude, etc..., not only does it have to be creative, exciting, innovative, and so forth, it also has to be innovative, creative, and "thinking outside the box" when it comes to how to get itself out to large numbers of people.
The old way of going through the record labels, finding that one "cool" person who is willing to give something different a try, finding that one cool label, or whatever - that isn't going to work anymore, most of those folks have probably been laid off.
So the media (or methods), the way you get the music out needs as much innovation as the music and genre itself. Perhaps iTunes has what it takes to do this; but until everyone owns an mp3 player or an Ipod, this might make it difficult.
And then there is the question of whether or not there really is such a thing as "talent". Is there any ONE person, whose "talent" is so far above and beyond all of the other hard-working, struggling artists that this person deserves to be placed on a pedestal like that?
It would probably take a 300-page book to explain everything I am going at here, but the relevant part to this discussion is that there needs to be "talent" at navigating this uncertain present and future with regards to "media" (i.e. CD, DVD, download, etc...). Without competent talent to navigate that, we are not going to see any more Hendrixes. But then again, that's another 300 page book.
The long and the short of it is that being an artist is very difficult if that's what you want to do. Maybe we won't have any more pop artists like we did in the past; maybe those times are over. Hendrix didn't need to die; Bon Scott didn't need to die; all of these folks didn't really need to do all of that cocaine and heroin and everything else; we know better now. We now know that cigarettes aren't all that cool anymore.
It's over. And judging from how the artists have been treated, and how "talent" is essentially being "punished" for being so talented, this might very well be a good thing. It's disturbing to see how talented people are treated by the record labels. You would think that in a free society such as America, this kind of nonsense would not be taking place. First and foremost is to respect yourself and those around you, and it seems to me that if one were to spread any message to millions and millions of people around the world it would be exactly that message - repect yourself and those around you.
Maybe the message that the world needs now is not one of style and popularity, but of self-respect and respect for other fellow human beings. Diversity and equality, education, not ignorance. So in a way, the shallowness of the nonsense is not altogether a bad thing, provided there is something else to occupy people's attention; something intelligent and interesting for people to absorb their minds in once they realize how shallow their "idols" really are.
There are a few individuals in the world, who are "talented". Then there are a few more individuals who understand talent enough to realize that it is a rare thing, and they respect this rare thing. (might I add that they also think that they are incredibly cool for realizing something that they think that only they themselves have the capacity to see...) But for the most part, a lot of the consumers don't really get this. There is so much "boilerplate" (i.e. dancing women, teenage heartbreak, fancy cars, spiky hair and guitars) that you will present a similar image to the world whether or not you are talented or not. The talent has
Why you disrespecting Heidegger? Heidegger was a great philosopher :)
> just about no one nowadays ever listens to New Kids on the Block
I'm trying to learn how to play keyboards on my own. Most of the printed music for keyboards is boring stuff like "The Blue Danube Waltz" and "The Moonlight Sonata". (OTOH, beginning guitarists have a great selection of rock music songbooks and tablature sites like OLGA.)
Well, I came across a NKOTB songbook at a thrift store. I got the CDs for the songs for next to nothing at a used CD store. Their songs are simple and memorable, I can practice them for hours. If I get burned out on them, so what?
asked [Neil Young] how he felt about Bob Dylan licensing one of his songs to a Canadian bank
Betsy Powell, Canadian Press
gewg_
You sir, are most enlightened indeed!
:-)
Aside from your Sony/Europe comments....I've been reading this thread for a while and you are the first one who noticed that MANY OF US LISTEN TO MUSIC IN OUR CARS. While I appreciate a good hour's worth of "new" music research every now and again, I just don't have the time to sit and "surf" for new music, much less to do it in my car. Also, if I did have that kind of time, something tells me that I'd spend more time FINDING the music than actually LISTENING to the music. Sorry, not my cup of tea. Before you go off on my lack of effort, let me also say that I *would* find the time if the "payoff" (ie: success ratio) were better. Unfortunately, we aren't at that point quite yet...
Almost every other post on this thread seems to assume a few things:
a) if I don't listen to (insert obscure band or indy label here), then I don't know anything about music.
b) that I have all day to sit around and "sample" new music, which obviously will lead me to the promised land of great music
c) that I actually enjoy a "success" ratio of around 10%. Yep - I go to the same websites everyone else does and yes, there is an occasional good artist that I find. However, that's usually AFTER I've spend a good 55 minutes listening to shit band record/song after shit band record/song.
So there you have it. That pretty much sums up why I'm jaded. How about you?
Go to your local bars
If a minor is trying to kick the Britney/*NSYNC habit, where can he or she turn? Most bars in my area that have live music either do not have a family room or do not have live music in the family room.
Maybe this is what the RIAA and their allies are going for, if they shut down P2P file-sharing, then the smaller artist's and smaller companies will lose one their most powerful means of exposure. I too have discovered lots of great music through means such as these. Without things like P2P and the internet I never would have found the music I love. I don't listen to the radio or watch mtv/muchmusic anymore, I just don't enjoy the music played. My MCD is filled with stuff that will never see mainstream media, even though in my opinion it's something that the mainstream would like. The big record companies seem to be trying to indirectly destroy their competition by making P2P etc. illegal. Luckily, I'm a Canadian, file-sharing is allowed here by law.
Good Tips,
Also check out Sole Records,
Bugz in the Attic
Seiji
Beady Belle
Greyboy
Nigel Hayes
Intuit
Quantic Soul Orchestra / Quantic
AtJazz
Ptaah
Crazy Penis
Afronaught
Fertile Ground
Bah Samba
Amp Fiddler
Vikter Duplaix
Afro Mystic
Funkstorung
Nu Sound Helsinki
New Jazz Hustlers
Plej
Rednose Distrikt
ursula rucker
The Phuture Sole compilation is an excellent starting point.
www.juno.co.uk has mp3 samples of current releases
satellite records has a good colleciton of nu jazz titles
www.satelliterecords.com
music lover since 1969
Most common denominator . . . says it all.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
That was Lowest common denominator, I believe . . . my bad.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
I suspect if he were alive today Bill would be declared an enemy of the state.
Jerry died but the bootlegs live on FOREVER. Can listen on the web at GD Radio or download using Furthur
And the other guys are still putting out some cool tunes. So I really don't see the problem. The Dead got music as close to perfect as humanly possible, so there really isn't much room for innovation.
One mistake that is made is when the radio stations indulge the people who call in and want to hear that new song again. When a song is played over and over and over again 10 times a day the people who are constantly listening to the radio get sick of it very quickly. These conglomerates claim to be so skillful at marketting, yet they don't realize that their practices decrease the time it takes for a popular song to reach the musical satiation point. The faster listeners are satiated with a song, the faster new songs must be produced, otherwise people will no longer listen to the radio. I quickly got bored with "My Heart Will Go On" (remember Titanic?) and avoided listening to the radio until it had left the airwaves.
And who has ever hated a particular song from the very first time they heard it?
I think that the big music companies would find their stars' popularity lasted a whole lot longer if they didn't throw all their money and attention at so few musicians. Firstly, they should be "seeding" many more musicians with small amounts of money, letting them make mistakes until they figure out the sound that works. Secondly, the radio stations should be rarely repeating anything for MONTHS so that everybodies stuff gets airtime. Instead, they should have websites that offer a days' worth of songs in one big long file available to Mr or Miss I'll-Die-If-I-Don't-Get-To-Hear-That-New-Song-Over -And-Over-Today.
Thirdly, conglomerates could offer unknown artists' music for download for free, and count the number of times the same computer accesses that song or that artist, and once it reaches a certain threshold, the artist could be considered popular enough to charge for his music to be downloaded. Just a few ideas...
Today its a patent law, industrial monopoly, intellectual property and other bullshit discussion board. It's dead...
Garage Band.com
They ask artists to listen to and rate music in order for the artist/band to upload their own stuff. I've come across some really good music thanks to this system, and in turn, got some exposure for our band.
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
This is from an insider...nuff said.
...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
No, what he meant was: what was on the charts back then was indicative "only" of what was being played in LA, Nashville, and NY. Throughout the rest of the US, there were many local stations that played music that wasn't on the national charts, whereas today, whatever is in the Top-10 to Top-40 is ALL you are going to hear on the radio, no matter what city your in. With the extremely rare exceptions of independant, public radio, and college radio stations.
If it weren't for my local college radio station, i'd never hear music like: punk, death metal, hip-hop(real hip-hop not pop-hop like Usher), and spanish rap & rock. I listen to the radio for 2-3 hours at night before going to sleep, If I tune into one Rock station and hear some god awful pop-crap like Matchbox20, change the station to some other rock station, I hear the same damn song only 5 to 10 seconds behind/ahead of the other station. This was how I first learned that there was a clueless evil-corporation wasting the public airwaves.
My experience here stems from black metal and old school industrial. Seems that the past 10-15 years have produced little in such burgeoning genres.
Many people in the underground seem to believe that you can create truly awesome / creative music through:
1. hybridization. Just take two related genres (rock and jazz to fusion,
2. randomly hybridizing unrelated genres in an alchemic fashion with some artistic sense. Few succeed here (mainly Mr. Bungle, Ulver,
They seem to forget that sometimes you just need to do something that, while based upon earlier material, takes a wholly different approach that distinguishes it from the influences - a mutation. Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were both groundbreaking acts that could be linked to their forefathers, but there was something truly "special." We could say the same for Glenn Miller and his generation. So many people hated it from the classical community, but then it caught on with others. Darkthrone's first album was considered totally awful by the label and they were horrified at the production, but it clicked and Darkthrone clones have been spewed out for over 10 years now. Kraftwerk was hated and considered "musically vacuous" by many established music critics back then. Then came Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, and eventually Skinny Puppy. Has anyone seriously taken industrial to a new level (as opposed to simplification like NIN or Razed in Black) in the past 10 years? Nah, not really.
Nobody comes up with a BRAND NEW genre or subgenre like that so much anymore it seems. What has been "new" in the underground for the past 10 years? Oh wow, emo, screamo, grindcore? There's still a handful of truly innovative bands and everyone copies there.
So we need completely new genres for the real innovation it seems. And this is where real musicians will always shine and appreciated by those who still listen to music, not "audio entertainment" like the industry has done.
My point is that it doesn't matter if it's an "industry" - the underground can suffer from clones, lack of imagination, and commoditization just as much as mainstream. Real artists that innovate, are inspired, and have no need to "please" anyone but themselves will continue to do far more than those who simply follow in the shadow of others.
The fact that a music "industry" exists at all is enough to tell what's wrong. Music should not be an industry.
I believe musicians should be compensated for their work, but the way we're going about it is all wrong. Just listen to what the "industry approach" has produced. And every year that goes by it gets worse.
Yes, every once in a while good music makes it out, but that is in spite of the industry, not because of it.
I had no idea that other people listened to Merzbow.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
RIAA A Boy Named Sue
RIAA Named Sue
For anyone who loves music as an artform, you should listen to drum corps. They are like marching bands, but just with brass, a color guard, and a drumline. They evolved from the musical units in the military. They are living proof that music is not dead. It is quite possibly the most deep and intense musical experience that is availible, and it has only gotten better since it was initiated in the early 1970s. Its purely about the music and competition, and there is no money involved. They do it for just the audience and for the respect of their peers. Each corps has their own style. The Blue Devils play jazz, Phantom Regiment plays classical, they are all unique, and they are all teenagers. Drum corps is the definition of excellent music as an artform, and will always continue to do so.
http://www.dci.org
If you would like to hear the best of drum corps:
The Cavaliers 2000 - Niagra Falls
The Cavaliers 2002 - Frameworks (the highest scoring DCI show to date)
The Blue Devils 2000 - Methods of Madness
The Blue Devils 2002
The Blue Devils 1997 - As Time Goes By
Santa Clara Vanguard 2000, 2002, 2003
The Cavaliers 1995 - The Planets
The Cavaliers 1997 - The Firebird
The Cadets 2000, 2003
Phantom Regiment 1986, 2000, 2003
"On the other hand, if I steal a piece of music I cannot truly see the value of it. Sure manhours were spent writing, rehearsing, recording, producing, refining, mixing, and distributing 'the music'. But hey, I played a little guitar in college and it doesn't seem that tough. I've got a neighbor who plays at the coffee shop on weekends for tips. And I enjoy music on the radio and I don't have to pay for it. So there are numerous cultural indicators that tell me that music isn't really worth that much. (Until I get sticker shock at Virgin Megastore)"
Oh I don't know about that. Just look at what happens every time "/." has a story about the RIAA or MPAA crackdowns, or some technological "lock" is introduced. Everyone starts talking about Freenet, or how they're going to crack this or crack that. Do you think that people are really putting that much effort towards something they don't realize the value of (especially movies, books, and TV)? I would submit that they know full well what it's worth and they just don't want to pay it, but they do want to enjoy it's benifits (just say no didn't work for drugs. what makes people think it'll work for movies, and music?).
"I am also suggesting that people who think musicians should only expect to make money in live venues are woefully misguided in their perception of how the world works."
I have the better question. Why should the artist (any artist?) adjust their lives to conform to what the "uninformed" feels is the way it should be? Think about it. If the roles were reversed, I bet that all those people giving advice would fall silent. It's OK to tell other people how they should conduct their affairs (especially if the "dictator" benifits) while ignoring how it will affect the "dictated to".
you may enjoy searching the playlists of wfmu.org
The light at the end of the tunnel is a train.
The word is related to finish, not finash. If you know one, you can learn the other.
Agreed, "Haunted" is one of the best albums to have come out at that time, especially considering that it's a "full concept" album, not just a bunch of disconnected songs screaming "Single me!"
;)
Granted, the "plot" (such as it is) makes more sense if you've read her brother's book. Then again, I don't know many people who understood the book
Poe certainly deserved more coverage for that album than she got - I guess imagination also isn't a selling point for the record corps. The high point for that album's "publicity" was prolly opening for The Cure on tour.
Of course, that's how Cranes got started as well...
"That's one small step for a man..."
I wonder if anybody will get the reference...
The name of that prefab sixties' band was the Monkees, not Monkeys.
They want to turn on the radio, tune it to whatever radio station is most convenient, and hear good, intersting, complex music. That's not going to happen, though.
Sigh. Unfortunately, you're right.
Up until about a year ago we had a wonderful local station that played music like that.
And I listened to it.
It was great.
But, somehow, financially they weren't able to keep afloat. To this day, I have to wonder which factors contributed to that insolvency:
Anyway, I had no idea the station was about to go under. Instead, one day I just started hearing Yet Still Even Another Damn Adult Oriented Dino Rock Station with The Same Damn Songs.
But I am lazy; I like to listen to new and interesting stuff and am willing to listen to some songs that I don't find as good. It's a bigger time and money investment to go to a concert that turns out to suck.
"Provided by the management for your protection."