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Recording Music Without the Recording Industry
hephaist0s writes "The 2008 RPM Challenge — to write and record an original album in February, just because you can — is about to begin. Hundreds of musicians from around the world have already signed up. Last year, more than 850 albums were recorded as part of the challenge, a testament to what can be done by independent musicians without a label, without the RIAA, and often without a professional studio. The efforts ranged from an album made entirely on a Nintendo Game Boy to a Speed Racer rock opera, produced by both experienced bands and novice musicians, often in continent-spanning online collaborations. Last year's challenge generated one of the largest free jukeboxes of original music available online, built to stream on-demand all 8500-plus original, artist-owned songs. Imagine if grassroots, independent systems like this foretold the future of recorded music and its distribution."
Stick it to the RIAA I say. They're not needed anymore!
'Number-memorizing Chinese people.'-Anon
YRO, huh? Won't someone think of the artists? Anyway the issue isn't "can you make music"? But "can you make a living from music" in this day and age?
The CB App. What's your 20?
All of them are thieves and pirates, stealing money from the poor recording companies.
> "Imagine if grassroots, independent systems like this foretold the future of recorded music and its distribution."
<goes to site>
"Alternate HTML content should be placed here. This content requires the Adobe Flash Player. Get Flash."
Are you fucking kidding me? The future where independent music is only available to people willing to sacrifice security, interoperability and access for the imparied, for worthless bling?
Hell I'm going to start looking through them to look to see if any of them are being sold. If they are decent, I'll buy them...
Now if only I had something more interesting to say. Well, It's a great thing and I think we should all support anything that is independent of the big labels...
Your Moon, Your Mission, Get involved! http://www.openluna.org
Using characters from speed racer in a rock opera is parody!
I'm sorry but a "claim random things infringe on IP and are thus theft" post uses IP from the companies who own everything. It doesn't how much work you're doing, what you're doing isn't parody and it is stealing.
> "The 2008 RPM Challenge -- to write and record an original album in February, just because you can"
Nope. You don't have to write the material in the month of February, only record it in February.
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Using characters is not stealing or copyrightable! Trademark! A rock opera based on Speed Racer is not infringing on IP.
The RIAA and producers aren't about making music - they make celebrities. They broker fame to those who are bound to them by contract, allowing the producers and industry to profit from the success of musicians. They control what songs radio stations can play, determine what music makes it into movies and onto television, and even what gets heard while you're riding the elevator. They wield the ability to present the masses with specific songs of their choosing.
TV shows like American Idol reveal the fact that a substantial number of people can sing really, really well. They can find hundreds of talented people easily, so you can imagine how many more are out there that either don't try out, are not within the age range they are seeking, or are simply not shown on TV. If you figure one out of every 3000 people can sing really well, then that's 100,000 really good singers in the USA alone. The job of the recording industry is to pick out a handful that fits whatever mold they are currently using, and will agree to whatever contract they put in front of them.
Of course it is possible to record music without the industry. However no-one will know about your music (unless you happen to rise about the noise of the internet, like Esmee Denters did on YouTube with her home-made webcam videos).
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
After being part of the founding of 2 nonprofits, and working many years in offering free and near-free services, I've come to the following general conclusion:
"Free does not work long term".
What I mean is complex, and it includes many different factors. First off, living and existing requires money: for food, shelter, power, and security. There's no avoiding it. Getting great people to devote (significant) time onto projects requires that they be paid. If not, the great people go elsewhere. For short times, and for specific initiatives, one can get remarkable, free contributions: but it doesn't last very long. There needs to be a financial element to any project or organization that will create value and last long term.
The second thing to realize is that for the long-term services and groups that we do see that are both great and free to you (eg Linux, apache, public parks, etc. etc.) - someone is paying, but it's just not you. There is typically just some kind of cost shifting going on. It is either the programmer who voluntarily spending their time, the foundation donors giving money to pay the staff, EFF staff fighting to keep legal protections available, or taxation programs paying for public services.
There are increasing awareness now among people that there are several other forms of value getting passed around online that are not cash: for example (1) people's time and attention, and (2) social capital/connections and relationships, and others. When you incorporate these factors as ones of own value, then it becomes clear that absolutely nothing is "free". Someone does work to make and organize things, and they need to be paid back, or they will (eventually) move their efforts elsewhere. That payment back does not necessarily need to be only in cash: it can be in attention, credit, or other items or actions they find valuable. That said, for most artists and content creators making great work, they do need cash in order to continue to spend their time making high quality content.
So, the problem with this idea of going head-to-head with the recording industry is that the biggest challenge(nowadays) facing an artist is not recording, not production, and not distribution, it's advertising. Let's face it - most of us "find" new music by hearing it on the radio or in some other media (e.g. a movie), at a bar, or from a friend. All of those *except* the friend are pretty much the product of marketing (directly in the form of advertising or indirectly in the form of contacts and influence).
I remember hearing (no idea how accurate, but it makes sense) that something like 10 CDs are released every day in the US (never mind how much is released only digitally). The obstacle facing the indie artist is not how to make the music and not how to get it to a fan (paying or otherwise) but how to get people to pay attention. This is the biggest thing that MySpace (personally, I hate it and it's probably not necessary to link to) and outfits like CDBaby http://www.cdbaby.com/ have done for musicians: given fans an easy way to peruse music and find new artists in an enjoyable fashion.
Hopefully, this will have a similar effect. However, any meaningful discussion about kicking the recording industry in it's posterior side ought to focus on how this makes it easy for new fans to connect with an artist (mostly), and not just how easy or free it makes getting said music to said fan.
Part of what sells albums is the promotion of the material through radio play. What is the current frequency of independent works played on the mainstream media? Pretty low if at all depending on where you live. (That's what all that "payola" scandal is about... the labels are paying the radio stations to play their tunes to promote their sales.)
And what will it take to make a shift away from the already controlled "top-40" format? Convincing the independent radio stations to play something other than top-40 for their genre. Are there any independent radio stations left? Aren't they all owned by Clear Channel now? Possibly not ALL but clearly, Clear Channel is now such a major power that they will be hard to resist when they put up a fight.
So the reality is we have a kind of locked-in system such that "big media" has locked out the little and independent guys.
It will be a difficult road to travel trying to over-throw the current locked-in system, but it's win-able. Using current media will not do the trick though. It has to be fought where the playing field is still rather level. The public Internet.
So how can it be done? Get with the wide variety of Asian hardware makers to create a flood of internet-ready media players free of any DRM. Set up a wide variety of "pod-cast" programming sites (Internet Independent Stations) sourcing from the wide variety of independent media contributed to those sites by the artists and/or owners of the material. Then daily, people can "tune" into their favorite station(s) of the day or of the week to download their new play lists and listen to fresh new quality stuff every day instead of listening to the radio.
Radio is convenient, but the quality is low and everyone knows it. This is why satellite radio is still growing in popularity -- better content control and much more variety... something you're not going to get from the current locked-in system that exists on terrestrial radio.
These internet-based pod-stations will get by any restrictions or resistance people might have about satellite radio as the devices they select will be their own and have use in ways other than internet pod-cast downloads.
This is a very workable strategy considering how eager these Asian manufacturers are to sell their stuff. We have a tremendous demand for such gear in the US as well if the iPod's popularity is any indicator. Further, as I witness the popularity of "internet radio" in offices across the U.S., a system that behaves similarly would be rather popular as far as I can tell.
There's a huge, untapped area of media just waiting for the consumer public if some enterprising folks were willing to put the risk out there to give it a try. There's a lot of willingness on the consumer end and a lot of willingness for independent operators and independent artists as well. We just need a little unified interest to make it happen.
You can't because, when you do your independent production, whether you say so or not, you are *part* of the industry, even redefining it.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
http://www.jamendo.com/
Label-free production isn't a new thing -- we're probably at least a decade into the era where anybody could pick up the basic tools to produce an acceptable quality album for less than $3000, and really, that would have even bought you enough time in some conventional studios to have them do it. I've heard some good albums produced circa mid-90s this way.
And internet distribution isn't really that new anymore. That's also been happening to some degree since the late 90s, and it obviously had gathered considerable momentum by 3-4 years ago. We're not at the end of that trend, but once wireless data service becomes ubiquitous, it's pretty safe to say the old distribution channels (record stores & FM radio) will be outmatched.
But there's still going to be a significant distribution challenge, and that's marketing. If anything, I think it's possible it will get harder. I kindof wish I'd gotten myself together and produced something high quality about 3 years ago, because I think someday, people are going to look at 2000-2005 as the easiest period for an indie artist to get attention, just like 1997-2001 was the easiest period to get a start as a high profile blogger. The wide net of participants increasingly means greater competition for attention.
Some people will be willing and able to pay for people to help them get it. Something like a label will exist for that purpose for a long time.
Tweet, tweet.
"Last year, more than 850 albums were recorded as part of the challenge, a testament to what can be done by independent musicians without a label, without the RIAA, and often without a professional studio." People make music in their home studios all the time. Make some albums that have the quality and production values of the top selling commercial acts. At the moment, from what I have heard, the music does not compete with what the RIAA members offer.
I guess the RIAA has to get mentioned in any Slashdot story about music, but I don't really see this is about 'sticking it to the RIAA'.
It seems to me it's more about just giving people a goal and a deadline - a cure for procrastination and all the other stuff that gets in the way of finishing things.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
"Imagine if grassroots, independent systems like this foretold the future of Sarah Connor"
Great post. I recommend you read this.
But when I read this all I thought was "that'd be a cool turntable to see spin, 2008 rpms is insanely beyond standard".
You're thinking of the GNAA, not the RIAA. Common mistake -- both involving bending over and taking it up the ass.
I think people are focusing on RIAA and that too much. This is a great project and is a lot of fun. People should sign up for the creative challenge and rewarding experience. I have participated the last two years and have signed up again!
Anybody know if there's a torrent (or for that matter any centralized way to download) of the 2007 collection? I'm finding it pretty likeable, but that jukebox is really NOT doing it for me...I'd much rather have them stored locally and use iTunes (or WMP or xmms, point being I want them on my drive).
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
You're asking me to spend time and money to produce an album, and then give it away? I'm all about the spread of the arts and aesthetics, but producing a good album takes A LOT of money, and time.
I do a lot of music composition and production, myself. I spent $2500 this year on a new mac pro, upgrades to the latest versions of Digital Performer, Native Instruments Kontakt, EWQLSO Gold. I bought a bearbones Digidesign interface for $400, own a $1500 synthesizer, and two $100 microphones, and I'm NOWHERE NEAR capable of producing a rock/pop album. For that, I'd need to spend another $1000 on a 8-channel audio interface, $400 in decent overhead mics for drums, and probably a few more SM57s. On top of that, a good set of mixing plugins for my DAW (like Waves), is a good $800. To build a recording studio capable of providing even the most MINIMAL of recording environments is upwards $8000, and that's with cutting a lot of corners.
No, while I have the potential to record and produce keys, guitars, and vocals, I'm taking drums to a studio, where I'm going to pay a couple $100 an hour.
And then you ask me to give it away? Fuck you. That's not "free", that's negative. Even to do music for the joy of it, money's gotta come from somewhere.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
There is a chance that these musicians can end up making money from their recordings someday, a much GREATER chance than if they had tried their luck with the RIAA. Feeding all of the CEOs, lawyers, marketing, walmart, etc. is taking money out of the pockets of musicians themselves.
What MUSICIANS need is to be free of these commercial juggernauts so they can compete in the market without juggernaut approval.
And not one of the artist made any money...way to go...that's how you stick it to the record industry...work for free...that'll show 'em
Meanwhile the Debian community has announce their competing project, the 2008 DEB Challenge.
The cost of marketing relies on the existence of a limited number of huge and expensive pipes shoved down people's throats. As soon as the majority realizes there's a innumerable series of tubes out there in the interwebs, driven not by corporate greed but by interests of like-minded people (blogs) or by your own interests (collaborative filtering similar to last.fm), marketing will suddenly become free for any good stuff.
Good timing! I just launched alonetone which gives musicians hosting, distribution, sharing tools - for free - in a non-commercial environment (no company, no ads, no bullshit). Kind of like free album month, but as a way of life! If you are a musician, or know music makers who need a good online home, let them know about us! (for the interested, it is using ruby/rails and s3, which means I can deliver about 250 mp3s for around 18 cents. Not bad. And yes, it could scale huge and become too costly for me myself and I to maintain, but no, I won't worry about that till I get there!)
CDBaby has been great for me - my band has found some listeners we otherwise wouldn't have, and I've found a couple of great other groups. I'm a big fan of the "random walk" approach to trying music, and their interface lets you listen to 2 minutes of the songs for free before buying. Much awesomeness.
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
... I remember a time when the most insightful comments weren't score:2. Those were good times.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
"Everybody's in show biz, everyone's a star ..." We're all on stage looking at each other, the paid seats are getting emptier. (is that like the blogosphere?)
... you're letting down the lawyers man ...')
Increasingly all the people interested in music actually make and play music as opposed to being purely consumers. This is probably good, was inevitable, and makes it harder and harder to stand out. Technology has made music much easier to make: tuners, protools, midi whatever - this is the (middle of?) the age of sound sculpture. The sound of lab rats digitally manipulating sound with no deadlines.
The best way to monetize music in the future will be playing live and getting a piece of the door and beer. Hopefully there will be at least a few crews/bands/orchestras that can make enough of an event to work full time and also maintain an artistic impulse.
Without the industry there's no money for the lawyers:
('...choak
and radically less money for publicists, roadies, engineers, soundmen, (web)designers. There's some money for the players, but not compared to the seemingly infinite supply of singer songwriter indie rock rapper college jazz graduates.
It's gonna be like sports. Lots of people play basketball. Only the very best get paid much money for it.
While I shed no tears for the major labels, I roll my eyes in advance at the incoming 'if they made good music the sales wouldn't be down' posts. All art forms are a function of their time (with apologies to Camille Pissaro) - The popular music of the 20th century was very good and deep and is available for free or cheap forever. The popular music of the 21st century hasn't started yet and will probably stay in the background of the Zeitgeist.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
As a wanna-be artist who's recorded an album or two myself, there is an anxious excitement about the possibilities of self-recording, self-distribution, and self-promotion. When the internet was first taking off I thought it was going to crack the lid off of independent art, and soon listeners would have a wider variety of better quality stuff and more creative people would be able to find their audience.
To some degree, this is all true. There's a lot of stuff out there, and most artists can find some fans. But in the end it hasn't practially changed much: being in an internet band is about as important as being in a high-school band. The difference is that the 100 people that love you can now be spread across the world instead of just the town.
I think that most listeners really don't want better stuff (even by their own standards): they'd rather listen to stuff that their friends listen to. It's fun to be into popular music, and that's what most people do. They seek out popular music so that they can feel like they're part of something. I don't intend this as a put-down: they just want to enjoy life and I'll admit it's usually more fun to be into an okay-by-me-but-super-popular song than a more-to-your-liking-but-generally-unknown song. Because you can talk about it and play it at parties and people love it. Social interactions matter to music.
Even people like myself, who are drawn to listen to less popular music -- there's just so much stuff I don't feel I need any more. I get all the media I can handle already. So overall as an artist I'm sort of accepting that the way the world functions doesn't financially support all the musical artists who want to be. It doesn't even support all the musical artists who could qualify as great. There's a lot of great artists out there, and only enough opportunity for a tiny fraction of them.
It's kind of a let down, but I'm getting used to it. In the end, you can always make stuff you like, and probably find a few fans. You just won't be able to quit your day job.
Cheers.
PS - this is not based on lack of acceptance of my own musical endeavors, which are admittedly (and intentionally) dumb shit, but rather based on observing other artists
Your typical ./'r just doesn't get it, nor do they care. They just want to be able to download or rip whatever they want, whenever they want and do whatever they want with anyones work, no matter how hard the person had to work to create it, no matter how much time it took them and lets face it, time = money, or chicken, bread, soup, laundry detergent, orthodontist appointments, light & heating bills or whatever.
I think your estimate is a bit low though, I would say to come up with a decent ( very small ) recording studio is going to cost more in the neighborhood of 10-15K and the sky is the limit.
I think music without the recording industry is great, musicians just have to find a way to be able to "quit their day job" without them, and then figure out how to be in every music outlet in ever city at the same time while listening to every commercial on television & radio and...
Well you get the point.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
...no advertising, no making profits from the musicians:
http://alonetone.com/
(disclaimer: i made this app!)
No one signs any exclusive contracts to submit to RPM. Everyone is free to sell their RPM album or re-record it under better conditions later.
I know on at least three occasions in 2006 I saw bands when they were playing in Portsmouth or Dover NH because I saw a bill/poster and recognized the name from the RPM jukebox. (Of course in 2007 it was a lot bigger and less regional, but that's why the Jukebox sorts by city).
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
Well, you're full of shit there -- LucasArts/Lucasfilm don't prosecute over fan fiction, they actively encourage it and even have very lightweight guidelines for it. Which is why there's so damn much of it out there, including full-length film productions. Paramount/CBS very lightly police Star Trek, and understand very well that allowing such productions as New Frontiers to exist encourages sell-through on the official products. That you mention Vivendi is also telling. You mean Universal/NBC? Also very lightweight on fanfic -- and they're one of the tougher crews around when it comes to being pissy about downloading.
Livejournal harry potter slash fiction poster found! Did you notice you said "allowed". That means they gave some permission. You're just showing that fan fiction exists by either non-action by the owning party or by the allowance of the party. What you haven't shown is that people get forced to remove such content because it infringes. Oh wait. You just confirmed that. Good one.
If IT were rendered obsolete, sure. Personally, I regard programming as a skill as fundamental and trivial (in the original sense of the word) as reading, writing and arithmetic. All educated humans should be taught programming (NOT "Microsoft Office 101" - that is NOT computer literacy!). When that day comes, our jobs will be as obsolete as the scribe's, yes. But right now, we're in the dark ages of computing, with a priesthood (of Intellectual "Property") determined to keep us there for as long as possible, and SOME IT people allied with them.
Well fuck them, we will fight for a second enlightenment. People don't have a divine right to jobs, and the product of their labor is worth only what the market will bear, not the amount of work put into it. The Marxist communist fallacy is basically that labor determines value. Untrue! Artists who don't like our post-copyright regime can simply not produce - no skin off our noses.
For the most part it was just bad to mediocre.
Now I must confess there were some bright spots, but they were far and away the exception.
Mostly is was all badly mixed / mastered. The vocals were muddy and buried. When instruments took solos they tended to be either punched up WAY to much to the point that they were completely out of context, or not at all and the talent was lost in the background noise. Again this is bad recording engineering and thats why well recorded music that really represents what we hear live takes a damn good recording engineer and those cost money baby, especially when it comes time to master the tracks
Perhaps all of this can be sat at the feet of someone doing the encoding falling down on the job, but I kind of doubt it, since most encoding software, even at defaults, gives a pretty good representation of the original input. Something is going on there, your guess is as good as mine.
The best example I can give people to have a reference for truly GREAT recording engineering is Steely Dan. Say what you like about their talent ( which I think is HUGE ) or their VERY heavy reliance on the best studio musicians for both recorded and live performances, but the recording engineering on their work, always has been and always will be second to none. If you really want to know what great recording engineering is, listen to anything they have ever recorded, the work IS the art of studio recording.
The most fascinating part is that their recorded music usually survives the worst mauling by some idiot MP3 encoder to the point that it is still pleasant to listen to,Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
I have applied for a patent for combining sounds from musical instruments, voices, and electronic sources for the purpose of entertainment. So make music at your own risk.
is that there are too many good musicians. Right now I could go out to at least five different local bars which all have excellent musicians playing and I don't live in a big city. Sometimes when there's a decent amount of people over at my house there will be at least a half dozen talented musicians around. It's supply and demand. Music isn't worth what it once was because musical talent isn't rare, musical equipment isn't expensive, and because music is so prevalent and good no one wants to pay money for it. And let's face it, you get a better experience going to the bar and paying a $5 cover to watch an amazingly talented amateur than you do when you pay $50 to see a "rock star." Drinks are cheaper and the ride home is shorter, too. Good music is a commodity and is by no means profitable for record companies. Celebrity personalities are what the music industry deals with today. They need people who can sell t-shirts, posters, and appear in t.v. ads. They need people who can cameo in movies, people who have an interview presence. If you don't like the way the music industry is, then blame Kurt Cobain and Napster. Cobain proved that serious artists are more of a liability than an asset to the record companies. Ever since he blew his head off record companies have sought people who want to be famous first and an artist second. And really, who can blame them? It's just economics--if we had moral record companies then the industry would have gone bankrupt when Napster hit.
As a musician I'm not particularly happy about the state of the music industry but the only thing I can hope for is that the majority of guitarist in the U.S. keel over a die for no apparent reason. As long as there are guys playing at the bar who are better than me who can't become rock stars I'll have no great expectations. I'll have succeeded when I'm the bar star, when I get paid a couple hundred bucks to play a bar. As a musician, that hundred bucks for a night says more about my music than the millions a night I'd make if I played sold out arenas singing whiney music about my libido to teeny boppers. And really, there's nothing wrong with that. So I'll always have to have a day job, but in no way does that compromise my artistic integrity. Most rennaissance painters never became famous and the ones that did usually remained close to anonymous throughout their own lifetime. It's not like being famous validates the work; if any artist feels that way then their art has failed before even started. I guess it sucks that no one will pay me millions for playing music, but at the same time the whole rock star thing is a bit ridiculous. No one expects to get rich painting - artists who get paid make logos, storyboards, and marketing materials. That doesn't mean the canvas art "industry" is in a sorry state - it's just evolved past being special and is now commodity.
No worries, you can use alien to listen to the songs. They will just be scattered across your system in really weird directories.
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
--- Do you believe in the day?
Actually, the RPM challenge is to record an album in the month of February. There is nothing to say that the album should be written during that month.
There IS a web site that encourages writing an album in a month - and it FAWM.org (February Album Writing Month). The RPM challenge took this as inspiration and set up in the same month with slightly different criteria and has been better publicised. For it's first two years, RPMchallenge.com paid tribute to FAWM.org but now seems to be big enough and arrogant enough to have stopped paying tribute to the place it got its ideas from.
This is all fine in the world of capitalism but it still seems pretty uncool to me.
I guess in theory this democratization of the music biz is a Good Thing(tm). Instead of a limited number of artists and artistes that the three big conglomerates offer us, we now have an infinite number of monkeys, I mean musical acts to listen to at our leisure. But who the hell has time to sift through a bunch of bloody amateurs who can't keep a beat or tune to find that one gem gleaming in the turd? You'd pretty soon get bored and annoyed doing so, just as I did as I tried to find *anything* worth listening to in the song list at the RPM jukebox site.
What we need is a Google-type record label who has the clout and connections, but with the "no evil" philosophy they espouse (yes, I know the Goog is secretly plotting world domination and plans to send us to their moonbase as miner-slaves, but you get the point). The company would be run like in the old days, where the A&R people found truly talented artists and nurtured them for the long term. Nowadays they look for acts who can produce one or two novelty hits, then move onto the next new band.
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
I suppose it doesn't matter, with our society praising mediocrity in all areas.
The music business is hard enough, with everyone feeling entitled to free music; ostensibly because they're fighting an ideological battle with the RIAA.
I suppose it doesn't matter, with our society praising mediocrity in all areas.
You're missing a very important part of what they do: they control access to retail channels. Brick & mortar stores (heh, that dates me) still account for the majority of album sales.
Want to get your CD in Wal-Mart, Target, or any other large meatspace retailer? You've got to play ball with the RIAA content cartel.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Here is my RPM Profile.
All of my current music is Creative Commons-licensed. All the new material will be too.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
it will be fun.
It's true that most people will only work for money and I don't blame them. As you said they have lives to lead.
However there's an awful lot of long term volunteer work that goes on, and while you could argue recognition is a motivation, often the recognition is meagre. For example I belong to a model builders society which operates a large club for a wide variety of remote control vehicles. I'm involved with the model aircraft and the gentleman who's been the representative for that section of the club and given up countless Friday evenings in meetings etc has only just left the job after being outsted - he was in it for 20 years and should have quit long ago. Mostly for every bit of prestige he got he got 20 of grief. He was well known but only locally within the club.
There are also long standing organisations that don't pay or pay poorly. Even when volunteers don't stay a rolling group of volunteers keeps them going. Classic examples are charities but you can argue religions are a special case. However how about volunteer fire service or red cross etc. (Yes they either have or are complimented by paid for work, but they are long term and the do "work" long term).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Well a couple points.
1-Not all are obssesed with money. It's just a simple fact that you need money to survive.
2-An artists can either choose your way OR be fully supported by their music. Piracy however takes that decision away from the artist. It's either "starving artists" to an audiance who really don't respect you enough to let you make your own decisions, or chose some other career path that avoids the effects of piracy. For a forum that has a YRO section and talks big about "freedom" everyone here should understand.
""Free does not work long term"? Define "doesn't work". I'm an indie musician with over 130 songs and 5 albums, and they're all available free as high-quality MP3 downloads from my website. Because of this, I've had over a million MP3 downloads from my site alone, and iLike reports that I'm on one out of every 140 of the iPods they track."
You've proven one data point. Congradulations! Now try not only scaling but across diferent artistic endeavours. Weren't things much simplier when people could simply just walk away and didn't "borrow"? The YRO section would be a lot smaller.
You never know until you listen to it.
Because to many, money is the ultimate quantifier of success. "If you're rich," the common but tragically flawed logic goes, "you're doing something right." The more money you make from your endeavor, the more right it must be. Some of it is "keeping up with the Joneses" or "getting ahead" or "living in style," and some of it is "high score syndrome" and the belief that bigger numbers are better than smaller ones.
Money does have its uses. Better equipment, server costs, an upgraded home studio built in your basement, a shed, or a home office, etc. are all good things to have if you need them, but a lot of people don't care for subsistence. They want extremes to show they're doing better than "good enough."
And that's why some people scratch their heads at trying to make a go of it through something like the RPM Challenge instead of hitching your wagon to a siphon star like the RIAA, and why it's so important: "If it's free," the common but tragically flawed logic goes, "how good could it possibly be?" So they never try it, and they never find out. It's not just their loss, either; everyone they convince with that logic becomes a loss as well.
The RPM Challenge becomes not just the gathering of victims, but hopefully the refutation-by-example of that logic.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
That would be a rather apt title.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Thats okay, I do it for fun anyway. PS. I'm a kept man...
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
> The artist needs an audience and the audience needs an artist. Problem solved.
This is Slashdot. You forgot the last point:
?) Profit!
i.e., something of value has to be transferred from the audience to the artist. Or will all art be hobbyist in your future?
Music has no value but what will people are willing to pay for it to have the experience... if anything. Radiohead understands this. The 14th century troubadours understood this. Most people throughout human history have understood this. As long as ears and ideas are free, music will be free.
The Musico-Idolatry Complex is a perversion.
It's the artist's prerogative to go to great personal sacrifice, debt, and even bankruptcy to make a work of art. It's the artist's prerogative to do so knowing that no one wants to pay for it. It's the artist's understanding of what moves people that saves him or her from pretension and pays his or her bills.
What is happening to the Musico-Idolatry Complex is right. You can say "Fuck you" to people, but the fucking going on is you fucking yourself.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Does anybody else think the internet has become one big arts and crafts fair? I mean, everybody sets up their booth for free and we all wander around looking at their works and then buy a slightly irrregular looking vase that has a few lumps to make ourselves feel good about supporting the arts. I hate the lawsuits against downloaders as much as everybody else, but I would be sad to find all the record companies go away. I guess I don't see the value of getting rid of the old model. I think there is plenty of diversity in recorded music right now. Yeah, there is a lot of top 40 crap out there, but there are plenty of labels releasing really good, exciting new music. People who claim otherwise just aren't looking very hard. Take a look at labels like Drag City or if you're set on the Internet, look at Catbird Seat. Which is an interesting label because it emerged from the blogosphere.
The internet is great for getting noticed, and if anything I think it will replace the local club where bands get noticed. I don't think the industry is going anywhere, people need a filter. I know I don't have time to sort through all the crap that gets posted online right now. To be honest, I'm not even that busy. I'm a bit lazy and procrastinate a lot, and still I find that I don't have the time to listen to it all. I have over 4000 songs on my iPod, much of it downloaded from mp3blogs, and I haven't listened to most of it. The problem with letting everybody make music and post it online is that everybody will. Even with tools like Songbird there is still too much, so most people will skip it and wait for the recording industry to filter it for them.
My other problem with ideas about getting around the recording industry is that I'm afraid that artists will never mature. With label deals and the like you get an artist who is given a chance, but not just to sell a few records and get their current vision out there, but also to grow and develop their style. I don't think the RIAA and the record companies are obsolete, nor do I think they ever will be, or at least I hope they won't. I think if traditional record companies did collapse, they would be replaced by a new industry. The arts are always going to need a filter, even more so now that everybody is more connected. Direct distribution will work for some edge cases and will be essential for some artists to get noticed, but I doubt it will become the dominant model.
Seriously, amateur musicians are recording this much all the time. This motley collection just demonstrates how much and why they're amateurs.
"And if you like one particular form of art, or a particular artist, there's no "switching" the way there is for software."
I agree but we only have 24 hours in a day each. It may be possible to find enough that we like in the artistic dimension that we also like from a community point of view.
If we find enough to fill our time, it may make no practical difference. Time will tell.
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
> This is only going to make things tougher for those of us who are independent musicians, but who create and record professional-quality music. ... a bunch of people recording any nonsense will be grouped in with people doing what I'm doing, making it even harder for us to get any respect.
>
News flash - making music is something people enjoy doing, even as amateurs.
What are you suggesting, that only professional authors should write books?
Nobody should sew their own clothing unless they work for a fashion label?
Only professional filmmakers should pick up a camera?
RPM participants are going to "make things tougher" for you? Suck it up. Your job is in no danger - people are not going to buy up "any nonsense" just because someone recorded it. They'll buy music they like, that is to say, "quality" music.
You might also want to reconsider your presumption that just because there's a market for your music today, that you are somehow forever entitled to make a living from music, or entitled to "respect" as a professional. You're damned lucky to get either.
Sorry, I had to... when I saw 1 out of 140, the recent streak of autism commercials came into mind. Cheers to your success... its far better than my music efforts.
Yes, it's bad if the 'consumer base' ends up expecting all music to be free, no matter what. But in the past, tons of music was given away 'free' as part of promotional efforts, it was just that because each physical copy (CD, LP, whatever) had to be manufactured and paid for only funded acts could afford to do give aways on a large scale. Now indie artists have the option of doing the same giveaways of content IF THEY WANT. This can work well - I heard that Tim Curran was giving away his record (over here, if you're interested) so I grabbed a copy. I went to see his show two weeks later ($12) and was happy to be there - I probably wouldn't have gone if I didn't get the album, and I'm much more likely to pay for his future releases now that I have some of his music. I decided to put one (but not all) of my records up for free download in the same way (over here, if you're interested), and I've definitely expanded my listener base, had more cool interactions with folks who've downloaded the record, etc. The hope is that the new record I'm working on will land on more fertile ground, thanks to the donation of the previous work. We'll see. The whole free thing might just be a binary version of variable pricing - new released record costs $10, 1 year old record costs $5, 3 year old record is... ? Free? $.50?
My band just finished self-producing an album. We decided from the start that we wanted to stay independent for as long as possible (which is a smartassed way of avoiding the fact that we aren't getting any attention from the labels).
We want to make a career out of our music, so we aren't going to post everything we do for free. I love Radiohead's "pay-what-you-want" strategy, but we really can't justify it as we have no name recognition these days.
Instead we decided to offer a free EP of a couple tracks on our website, in exchange for a signup on our mailing list. That way, people get several tracks for free, and if they like it, we will let them know once it's up on the DRM-free stores.
In retrospect, I am kind of lukewarm about the independent production process. We had to pay for our own studio time and mastering, and couldn't afford the better studios or engineers. We have to work a lot harder to promote ourselves, but MySpace in all its noncompliant evils has actually been an amazing resource to make connections with local venues and promoters. Some of my buddies got signed to a label that recorded their album, strung them along for a year without releasing it, and caused the band to ultimately break up.
The local scene is easy to break into without the help of a label, but I ultimately think that (talent aside) our only chances of making it big are to either join a label or to get really lucky with the viral marketing online through YouTube, MySpace, or Facebook.
Aw, what the heck.... I'll try my hand at some "viral Slashdot success", help yourself to the EP, and if you like it, sign up on our mailing list :-)
Yes, because the Beatles were independent and recorded their best albums in a home studio.
Don't lie, you know you downloaded that software off bittorrent....
This is really what the music industry fears. Not P2P downloaders and sharing, it's the ability for the unknown musician to write and record songs that sound good, and distribute them to millions of people on the internet. I used to play in bands 20 years ago, and it was difficult to promote yourself, there was no internet and BBS's didn't have the traffic the net does. We didn't have money for recording equipment outside of my 4-track tape recorder which sounded horrible when bouncing tracks. Today, we have unlimited tracks, cheaper equipment, and free websites for promotion. I recorded a song not so long ago on my computer and put it on one website. It was a 2 hour job, not great sounding, but I received a lot of positive feedback from people I never could have reached outside the net. What happens if band X records several songs, pretty good quality, gets airplay on net radio, sells out their club gigs in their city (and surrounding cities) and can sell songs on their website? Kind of makes the recording industry seem unimportant. They may not become multi-millionaires but maybe they can make a living doing what they love. Few realize this, but when making an album, if it doesn't sell well, the artist still owes money to the record company. The band Rush didn't start selling well until 2112 came out, and I doubt they paid off their debt for several albums after. But what if 2112 didn't sell well? Those 3 guys would have had to pay all that money back. There's none of that if you self promote.