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Playing the World From a Basement
Albanach writes "Singer songwriter Sandi Thom is one of a growing band of new musicians using the internet to circumvent the traditional and traditionally expensive tour circuit. Thom described her free online concerts as a Web Tour, saying 'A web tour is basically what you do when you have a lack of money and no car.' Services such as The Streaming Tank have grown to satisfy the need for broadcast services and the figures are impressive. Just 74 people watched Thom's first concert on February 24th. The concert on March 2nd drew 62,138 viewers."
I was thinking the same thing. The new business model should be to give away the recordings because they were always a loss leader anyway, and make your money on live shows and merch. I would guess that she's generating a lot more buzz than she really should, just because she's doing something "new." Once this becomes the norm, it won't be viable.
Bite the hand.
The assumption is that every artist is a live performer. While live performance is one talent, recording, remixing, songwriting, arranging, and many other musical skills don't lend themselves well to the stage. But music would be much poorer without them.
There will always be a place for live bands. But I hope we as a society don't lose the ability to reward those who create music in other ways.She probably will, but that's just because the RIAA still has more marketing muscle than anyone else. However, there is no question that the balance of power is shifting in favor of the artists. The primary reason that the RIAA is so powerful is that historically the RIAA controlled the primary means of marketing music. Unless you signed a deal with a major record label you couldn't get your song played on the radio, you couldn't get yourself professionally recorded, your CDs didn't end up in record stores, and you couldn't play the larger venues.
These days creating, publishing, and distributing your own CDs is ridiculously simple, and it is possible to play in front of thousands of fans over the Internet. If the record labels continue to pretend that they have all of the leverage then we will undoubtedly see a shift towards more popular bands that choose to remain self-produced.
I'm a resident of real life.
Very different from a make-believe world, we meet together every weekend and play music, build things, socialize etc etc. Even in our real worlld, we own the copyrights to the things we create.
For example, just last week, we built a bed for my apartment which I own. All of this has led to some really creative and clever objects, such as lego beer dispensers.
Anyway, more to the point, music has really taken hold in our real lives. Me and my friends go to concerts, and we even play in a local band! There are several bars (Hofbrauhaus and Beer Sellar are two I can think of) where real musicians play in real bars with real beer and real women with real boobs. Okay, maybe not the last one. Sadly, not all of us are a cultured people, but it has however taught us such things as tolerance. For those of us do like tolerance, we go to these things called musicals, orchestras and theatre plays.
I also know of these music festivals like the Celtic and Renaissance music festivals that have been happening for a couple of hundred years, where once again you get to meet real *shudder* people. Those that like this can actually go to the websites (virtual, virtual!) and look up cool stuff.
More important to the point, doing this has taught me and my friends some good social skills, gotten us free beer and live music - and sex.
But go ahead, though. I'm sure a virtual life is infinitely more enjoyable. I mean, we sure as hell can't do all that stuff in real life, right? Right?