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How Amateurs Destroyed the Professional Music Business

David Gerard writes "Here in the future, musicians and record companies complain they can't make a living any more. The problem isn't piracy — it's competition. There is too much music and too many musicians, and the amateurs are often good enough for the public. This is healthy for culture, not so much for aesthetics, and terrible for musicians. There are bands who would have trouble playing a police siren in tune, who download a cracked copy of Cubase — you know how much musicians pirate their software, VSTs and sample packs, right? — and tap in every note. There are people like me who do this. A two-hundred-quid laptop with LMMS and I suddenly have better studio equipment than I could have hired for $100/hour thirty years ago. You can do better with a proper engineer in a proper studio, but you don’t have to. And whenever quality competes with convenience, convenience wins every time. You can protest that your music is a finely-prepared steak cooked by sheer genius, and be quite correct in this, and you have trouble paying for your kitchen, your restaurant, your cow."

2 of 617 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Also... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Sorry.. I forgot my sig was our facebook page now. The album is at: http://www.cdbaby.com/areasound2/

    Just listened to every sample, and it's all crap.

  2. Re:How is this news? by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Remember the scene with the "blue" belt?

    No, but then again I don't have a vagina either.