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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."
They have given us terrible artists for years, maybe they will finally go away...
Professional recording artists sell fuck-all these days. In the UK: in 1983, Red Guitars got to #8 in the indie charts with 60,000 sales of "Good Technology". In 2013, Rihanna has a mainstream number one album with under 10,000 sales.
The important thing to remember is that "pop music" is not actually all that popular. It's mostly a way to get publicity for your live shows and yourself as a celebrity - buy yourself onto the iTunes top 40. You've never heard of half these people because they are not actually popular.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
A beautiful and raw original idea kicks the ass of a flawlessly executed banality.
Who cares if the music industry deflates? The "Rock Stars" are a study in decadence and greed and the "Music Industry" is a study in ruthlessness and greed.
Cubase, ProTools, Ableton . . .. The kids of today are going to lead us away from "computer music" into very new territory. Just imagine what Mozart could create if he had a decent music workstation!
The music industry (as it has been) would have us listening to stuff that was fresh forty years ago.
Sooner or later the kids are going to learn how to market themselves, just like they're mastering the new music creation tools.
I'll give up production values for originality any day.
Totally agree.
And add to that a previous article by a professional producer talking about how new bands get financially screwed by the industry and routinely make less than at a 711 on their first few tours...
What exactly are we supposed to be protecting here??
Exploitation? Slavery? Cult of personality? The needs of the few super stars to be filthy rich at the expense of the rest?
Please...
This is AWESOME and I have personally been wishing for it to happen for over a decade now.
Let the revolution begin. Only good will come of this.
Next step: KILL ITUNES!!