When you spend more than, say, $10,000 on a recording:
1. You are paying for the producer/engineer's time. Odds are, if it costs this much, he also recorded Hendrix, Beatles, Dylan or some other larger-than-large act, or has some other sort of whacked-out, expensive credentials.
2. You are paying for 'studio tricks.' For example, one thing that indie music is good for is raw, unedited, undressed recordings (mostly). They aren't laden with punch-ins, vocal assistance, drum triggers, samples, etc, etc. Grab any song from mainstream (major label) radio and listen hard enough, and you'll know what I'm talking about.
I am by no means a professional engineer, but I've had a home-built studio in my house long enough to know that major-label recordings (the really expensive ones) usually sound like shit to me, if for no other reason than because I can hear all the unnatural crap that they saturate the recordings with to make it digestable for the mainstream.
It's almost as if, in the music industry's naive youth, a standard was set or a rule was defined that said that for a recording to be good, it had to be saturated in large hall reverb, have dynamic delay on the 4 simultaneous vocal tracks, use amp simulation on the 44 guitar tracks and use pre-sampled drum triggers for the drums to pass off as legit. Do you ever just want to hear what the musicians really SOUND like? Me too! Hopefully this bullshit ideal will die with the music industry.
I'm really not trying to be a troll or something...I'm just trying to illustrate that it REALLY doesn't cost that much to make a recording. It's actually very cheap. I said $10,000 at the top of this post, but even that is WAY more than I'd ever spend for "perfection."
If we really want to win the war against a Microsoft-dominated society, we should start at a low level and start big.
All schools henceforth should be equipped with linux powered PCs, and teachers should preach Open Source instead of Microsoft Office.
It's almost like a "chicken or the egg" thing...something HAS to come first. Odds are, big business wont change the way they do things unless they absolutely have to. Once we flood the workforce wtih kids who graduate from highschool as linux users, big business is bound to change.
Microsoft only pushes everyone around because they can. Take away that ability, and what do they have?
hyphz, I think you are forgetting some important points.
One is that the only people who sign to a major label are people who want to be either:
a) Famous b) Rich c) both <-- (I'm betting on this one)
Now I understand where people are coming from when they claim "ripoff" by the majors, but let's think about it.
Just exactly how are they getting ripped off? How many musicians do you know of that actually read the contract and found some line that said "You will be rich and famous for the rest of your life." and then did not get what they were promised?
Nobody.
Why? Becuase record labels only promise you something they are willing to give, and unfortunately lifelong fame and fortune is usually not one of those things. Sadly, this is what most people (especially musicians) expect from the record industry, and even though just about every major label act since the dawn of recorded music has proven quite the contrary time and time again, bands STILL think they are going to be the next Gunz n' Roses or Nirvana or Smashing Pumpkins or whoever that slips through the teeth of the ripoff comb.
Well I'm sorry. It just won't happen.
Now, after listening to reason, don't you feel a little less sorry for these guys? I mean, is it the record companies fault that these people are myopic?
Another point is that it is entirely feasible to make a living in the business of music without the help of major labels. People do it all the time. It all comes down to what YOU want out of your contract. People that sign with majors want something different that people who sign with indies and the like.
Artits don't HAVE to sign those stupid contracts, or even have their music sold in Blockbuster Music or appear on MTV or on the radio to succeed. They just THINK they do, because this is what the record companies, MTV, radio and major music retailers around the globe have raised us.
If you were an artists, would you REALLY want your grandma to be able to pick up your album at wal-mart? Would you REALLY want your girlfriend to hear your song sandwiched between Creed and Kid Rock on some lame mainstream <deep voice> RADIO RADIO RADIO </deep voice> station?
It really pisses me off when I hear artists like Courtney Love bitch about getting ripped off.
She knew exactly how things worked. She made the choice to go major when being famous was more important to her than dignity and self-respect. Now that the opposite is true, she wants to put out a fire that she helped start, but it's blazing out of control, and I am nestled comfortably in my flame-retardant suit, laughing my ass off.
One year, Courtney and Kurt spent one million dollars. That's $1,000,000.00.
In one year.
Still feel sorry for her? I don't know about you, but I want to strangle her when I read this. It's like Bill Gates bitching about a $1.50 ATM fee. Sure he's getting ripped off (to an extent), but once you break the $1 million mark, doesn't it just not matter anymore?
Get with it people. Courtney Love spent years developing a high profile lifestyle. Now that her music is unpopular, she can't afford to maintain the lifestyle, and is now trying to battle the record labels, claiming victim.
These artists sold their souls to the major label industry and are now paying the price. Sure, it sucks, but at the same time, what makes them so special? The major label industry has been like this for years, and personally, I think it should stay that way.
People should have to pay some kind of price for supporting and being a part of the marketing juggernaut which is the mainstrem music industry. Being famous should not come without it's consquences, especially considering that each and every one of these artists make music that is so low-brow and dumbed down for the mainstream listener that it almost causes the bile in my stomach to rise up and escape.
The listeners are equally as stupid for buying the crap, because they just perpetuate the problem. Keep in mind, music is an artform. Imagine if visual art worked the way music did... if the situation were on par with the current mainstream music scene, it would be a joke.
I would liken a music store that sold all these artists to a museum with a bunch of paintings of "dog" and "house" and "tree" and "car," etc.
It's not like you are limited only to what you see on TV. It is perfectly ok to hear Linkin Park and Britney Spears and Limp Bizkit and Eminem and Destiny's Child and whatever bullshit gimmick is hot right now and just not like it.
When this happens to you, don't try to choose the lesser of 100 evils and latch onto the "best of the worst" as if you have no other options. Instead, go to a record store or a website, and listen. Just walk around, if the cover looks cool, grab it. If the name sounds familiar, grab it. Get some reading material. Read about bands that are coming up. These are oft much more entertaining than established "comfortable" bands who have lost the raw passion for achievement that the younger bands still posess. See one on the shelf? Grab it. Listen. Eventually, you will find something that you totally dig and it will be all yours, because YOU found it.
And the best part?
You didn't have some billionaire coolhunter in a $4000 suit convince you to buy it and help him make the next payment on his Diablo.
Look people: if you want the music industry to shape up, stop buying the shitty music. Get up off your ass and go LOOK for some good music instead of waiting for it to fall into your lap. If you keep suckling from the MTV nipple, then the rich, overdressed, social elitists like the ones listed above will continue to be your only source of music. Isn't that defeating the whole purpose?
I have had different experiences with Win2k as far as hardware goes. One experience I had was the install puking to a stop screen because it didn't know what to do with a Buslogic scsi card. Another experience I had was that it couldn't run on a machine with it's hdd plugged into the ata100 port instead of the ide. This may be uncommon, but those are two experiences already that have put an other-than-good taste in my mouth with W2k. I must admit though, when it works, it works pretty well. A welcome step up from the 95/98 days. Linux is still my favorite though.:)
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When you spend more than, say, $10,000 on a recording:
1. You are paying for the producer/engineer's time. Odds are, if it costs this much, he also recorded Hendrix, Beatles, Dylan or some other larger-than-large act, or has some other sort of whacked-out, expensive credentials.
2. You are paying for 'studio tricks.' For example, one thing that indie music is good for is raw, unedited, undressed recordings (mostly). They aren't laden with punch-ins, vocal assistance, drum triggers, samples, etc, etc. Grab any song from mainstream (major label) radio and listen hard enough, and you'll know what I'm talking about.
I am by no means a professional engineer, but I've had a home-built studio in my house long enough to know that major-label recordings (the really expensive ones) usually sound like shit to me, if for no other reason than because I can hear all the unnatural crap that they saturate the recordings with to make it digestable for the mainstream.
It's almost as if, in the music industry's naive youth, a standard was set or a rule was defined that said that for a recording to be good, it had to be saturated in large hall reverb, have dynamic delay on the 4 simultaneous vocal tracks, use amp simulation on the 44 guitar tracks and use pre-sampled drum triggers for the drums to pass off as legit. Do you ever just want to hear what the musicians really SOUND like? Me too! Hopefully this bullshit ideal will die with the music industry.
I'm really not trying to be a troll or something...I'm just trying to illustrate that it REALLY doesn't cost that much to make a recording. It's actually very cheap. I said $10,000 at the top of this post, but even that is WAY more than I'd ever spend for "perfection."
--
z
Maybe this is what we need.
If we really want to win the war against a Microsoft-dominated society, we should start at a low level and start big.
All schools henceforth should be equipped with linux powered PCs, and teachers should preach Open Source instead of Microsoft Office.
It's almost like a "chicken or the egg" thing...something HAS to come first. Odds are, big business wont change the way they do things unless they absolutely have to. Once we flood the workforce wtih kids who graduate from highschool as linux users, big business is bound to change.
Microsoft only pushes everyone around because they can. Take away that ability, and what do they have?
hyphz, I think you are forgetting some important points.
One is that the only people who sign to a major label are people who want to be either:
a) Famous
b) Rich
c) both <-- (I'm betting on this one)
Now I understand where people are coming from when they claim "ripoff" by the majors, but let's think about it.
Just exactly how are they getting ripped off? How many musicians do you know of that actually read the contract and found some line that said "You will be rich and famous for the rest of your life." and then did not get what they were promised?
Nobody.
Why? Becuase record labels only promise you something they are willing to give, and unfortunately lifelong fame and fortune is usually not one of those things. Sadly, this is what most people (especially musicians) expect from the record industry, and even though just about every major label act since the dawn of recorded music has proven quite the contrary time and time again, bands STILL think they are going to be the next Gunz n' Roses or Nirvana or Smashing Pumpkins or whoever that slips through the teeth of the ripoff comb.
Well I'm sorry. It just won't happen.
Now, after listening to reason, don't you feel a little less sorry for these guys? I mean, is it the record companies fault that these people are myopic?
Another point is that it is entirely feasible to make a living in the business of music without the help of major labels. People do it all the time. It all comes down to what YOU want out of your contract. People that sign with majors want something different that people who sign with indies and the like.
Artits don't HAVE to sign those stupid contracts, or even have their music sold in Blockbuster Music or appear on MTV or on the radio to succeed. They just THINK they do, because this is what the record companies, MTV, radio and major music retailers around the globe have raised us.
If you were an artists, would you REALLY want your grandma to be able to pick up your album at wal-mart? Would you REALLY want your girlfriend to hear your song sandwiched between Creed and Kid Rock on some lame mainstream <deep voice> RADIO RADIO RADIO </deep voice> station?
That they are ripping off artists who suck?
They can't be all bad.
That's funny, because I feel quite the opposite.
Ebert is usually right on as far as I'm concerned.
No offense, but come on - Gladiator borrowed heavily from Braveheart in between scenes of Bruckheimer-esque Hollywood filler.
It really pisses me off when I hear artists like Courtney Love bitch about getting ripped off.
She knew exactly how things worked. She made the choice to go major when being famous was more important to her than dignity and self-respect. Now that the opposite is true, she wants to put out a fire that she helped start, but it's blazing out of control, and I am nestled comfortably in my flame-retardant suit, laughing my ass off.
One year, Courtney and Kurt spent one million dollars. That's $1,000,000.00.
In one year.
Still feel sorry for her? I don't know about you, but I want to strangle her when I read this. It's like Bill Gates bitching about a $1.50 ATM fee. Sure he's getting ripped off (to an extent), but once you break the $1 million mark, doesn't it just not matter anymore?
Get with it people. Courtney Love spent years developing a high profile lifestyle. Now that her music is unpopular, she can't afford to maintain the lifestyle, and is now trying to battle the record labels, claiming victim.
Two words:
Oh please.
--
z
These artists sold their souls to the major label industry and are now paying the price. Sure, it sucks, but at the same time, what makes them so special? The major label industry has been like this for years, and personally, I think it should stay that way.
People should have to pay some kind of price for supporting and being a part of the marketing juggernaut which is the mainstrem music industry. Being famous should not come without it's consquences, especially considering that each and every one of these artists make music that is so low-brow and dumbed down for the mainstream listener that it almost causes the bile in my stomach to rise up and escape.
The listeners are equally as stupid for buying the crap, because they just perpetuate the problem. Keep in mind, music is an artform. Imagine if visual art worked the way music did... if the situation were on par with the current mainstream music scene, it would be a joke.
I would liken a music store that sold all these artists to a museum with a bunch of paintings of "dog" and "house" and "tree" and "car," etc.
It's not like you are limited only to what you see on TV. It is perfectly ok to hear Linkin Park and Britney Spears and Limp Bizkit and Eminem and Destiny's Child and whatever bullshit gimmick is hot right now and just not like it.
When this happens to you, don't try to choose the lesser of 100 evils and latch onto the "best of the worst" as if you have no other options. Instead, go to a record store or a website, and listen. Just walk around, if the cover looks cool, grab it. If the name sounds familiar, grab it. Get some reading material. Read about bands that are coming up. These are oft much more entertaining than established "comfortable" bands who have lost the raw passion for achievement that the younger bands still posess. See one on the shelf? Grab it. Listen. Eventually, you will find something that you totally dig and it will be all yours, because YOU found it.
And the best part?
You didn't have some billionaire coolhunter in a $4000 suit convince you to buy it and help him make the next payment on his Diablo.
Look people: if you want the music industry to shape up, stop buying the shitty music. Get up off your ass and go LOOK for some good music instead of waiting for it to fall into your lap. If you keep suckling from the MTV nipple, then the rich, overdressed, social elitists like the ones listed above will continue to be your only source of music. Isn't that defeating the whole purpose?
Wise up, Earth.
There is a reason why John Carmack drives an F40 and you drive a Dodge Duster. -- z Straight Outta' Comdex
I have had different experiences with Win2k as far as hardware goes. One experience I had was the install puking to a stop screen because it didn't know what to do with a Buslogic scsi card. Another experience I had was that it couldn't run on a machine with it's hdd plugged into the ata100 port instead of the ide. This may be uncommon, but those are two experiences already that have put an other-than-good taste in my mouth with W2k. I must admit though, when it works, it works pretty well. A welcome step up from the 95/98 days. Linux is still my favorite though. :)
--
z