This is just more proof of the reducing costs of producing professional quality audio, and more evidence of price fixing and extortion of the major record labels.
Definitely. I've been using a laptop and/or desktop PC to do recording for over a year now. It's cheap, easy, and I get good results without having to spend a lot of money. Aside from the computers (which I already had), my only hardware investment was a firewire card for each machine, a firewire drive, and a firewire-capable audio device, in this case, a MOTU 828. I'm able to either have friends come over and record or take my laptop and small rack over to their places. Since the projects are stored on the firewire drive I can move from machine to machine easily or even use their machines if they have firewire. Since the firewire drive uses a fairly fast drive, I can juggle over 50 tracks simultaneously with no problem whether I'm on my 850MHz laptop or my SUPAR LEAT Athlon worstation.
And I'm not the only one. The practice space where my band plays constantly features musicians who show up and record at 2am when everyone else has gone home. I see more laptops out there than I do in the IT department of the company I work for. A lot of them will borrow the hardware to record drums and vocals, and then use something like a Line6 POD and a bass preamp to do everything else. And it sounds good. Here in Kansas City, I would be hard pressed to find an independant release that happened in a "real studio".
If this stuff is happening as much as it is in Kansas City, imagine how much it's happening out on the coasts. No wonder the recording industry is losing money.
You would, however, imagine that anyone would employ a lawyer when asked to sign a record contract.
Another poster said something about how artists see situations involving contracts as "either I sign my contract or I lose my job." Hope combined with ignorance can be a powerful driving force. To someone who has had to make their own luck and hopes to go from playing to a crowd of 50 people at a local bar to playing stadiums and not having to have a day job, what's in the contract isn't such a big deal. Especially if they just got off of their 7-11 job and are digesting a label-supplied 20oz steak while discussing the contract over label-supplied drinks. I'm sure that to a lot of excitable aspirants, if you said "You can stay at this 7-11 and play to small local crowds or make the same amount of money touring the world with the guitar rig of your dreams and by the way, blowjobs now grow on trees," the choice would be a no brainer. Hey, we'll get rich someday, right?
What are their alternatives to doing things this way? (The artists, I mean)
Quoth the record label to the artist: If you need us, we don't need you.
If labels care about the artist, they're already on their way, especially now with the Internet and cheap decent quality recording studios all over the place. They may not be playing Soldier Field next year, but they aren't going to starve if they aren't greedy and they're smart about the business they're running. It's just like programming: Nobody starts coding and graduates to getting patches submitted to OpenBSD's kernel within a year.
If that were the case, you'd think that the RIAA would have a hard time finding bands willing to sign contracts, and 7-Elevens would be inundated with job applications from band members who didn't make any money.
You'd think so, but that would require that everyone who is an aspiring artist knows about what happens to people who sign record contracts. And as an aspiring artist who knows several other aspiring artists, I can tell you that there is no shortage of people who have no idea whatsoever what happens, and they don't want to know. All they see is Avril coming from small town Canada and making it big with tons of nubile fans and money coming their way. That is the dream they pursue.
Not everyone reads Slashdot and sees this stuff multiple times per week. And one doesn't learn it by sitting around writing music and occasionally tuning in to MTV or Fox News.
That argument, if valid at all, is for a short-term only.
For certain values of "short-term" of course. The music business is in a fairly severe state of flux right now, which is why this conversation is going on. You can't have a conversation about the state of the music industry and what's "right" without considering this.
If you're talking soley about a technical limitation, sure, it's going to get to the point that someone can click and drag and soon there will be a shiny good-quality CD. In fact, it's already to that point. It's ridiculously easy for someone non computer savvy (someone's parents, for instance) to do this right now. It's quite another matter for someone to be bothered to take the time to do it or to want to go buy blank CDs and sit at their computer long enough to put in that little bit of work, which I think is a bit more germane.
That's not to say that this won't change. But that's the future.
They aren't selling the "act", except as a way to promote other moneymaking opportunities. Those opportunities are sales of recorded music (which the aforementioned pattern may destroy) and tickets to live performances.
I think this boils down to point of view. You can't argue that the "act" isn't a major selling point (ie without the "act", the group would make a lot less money) but sure, you could call it marketing I guess. It's still a major component of why your hypothetical 13 year old sister is buying No Doubt's records.
It is somewhat valid to claim that musicians could survive if all recorded music was freely traded and considered advertising for their live shows. This viewpoint however cuts off the sizable number of muscians who, for technical, stylistic, or charismatic reasons, are unable to play before an audience.
Isn't this a bit like saying that people with only one finger should be able to be Windows sysadmins despite being unable to Ctrl-Alt-Del into a box or use a mouse and keyboard simultaneously?
There's a certain set of roadblocks involved with being a professional musician. If you can't overcome the limitations, then you do what everyone else does and play your acoustic at home. Sure, that's a bitter pill to swallow, but no performer/songwriter who is worth your time and money as a music consumer is inflexible enough that they can't overcome something like this. I mean, what would you tell someone if they only knew how to code in FORTRAN? "Let me lobby to make FORTRAN the standard"?
The charisma thing isn't valid, by the way. Geddy Lee proved almost 30 years ago that you don't have to look good to sell records.:) I don't think that recorded music is going to turn into an advertising-only deal, or at least I don't think it should. But if you're trying to tell me that a mid-level artist who never quite goes "gold" in record sales and tours a lot is going to have problems because of file trading, you're misinformed.
You poked 2 holes in your own point. It used to take MORE work to make the copies, and the quality was LESS. (The average modern listener cannot detect anything wrong with a 128K MP3, and faster networks will soon handle less-compressed data easily)
The average listener can't detect anything wrong with cassette tape either. Semantics aside, I realize that there's a difference in quality between CDs and cassettes that is greater than that of CDs and mp3s. I think it's the same idea though. At the moment it's still a matter of "download, burn to CD, put in the car". Just like it was a matter of "record to tape, put in the car" back in the day.
Your argument, such as it is, comes back to the assumption that artists make money through touring.
Not necessarily. There are several ways to make money as a musician. Giving 95% of what's rightfully yours to a label and associated companies is not one of them. Touring is, although unless you're DMB you're not making money directly from it (in fact you're lucky to break even). It's just another form of marketing.
It's a commonly held truism in the music world that labels have a saying, "If you need us, we don't need you". What does that tell you about the validity of the current music business and why it should/should not be supported?
Wow. Tell you what, next time I write a book, how about I give it away online to market myself, and make my living through appearing at conventions and opening bookshops?
Books aren't music. The whole process, from creation to the end user buying the product, is quite different.
So the next guy will download another copy where the artist doesn't get a penny for. And then two of his friends will download, for which the artist will not get a penny for...
See a pattern?
The pattern, fortunately, doesn't repeat ad infinitum from that point.
What you're describing is roughly analogous to the whole radio airplay concept. A record label (er, an artist) pays large amounts of money to stations to get a song played on the radio, then when the radio plays the song the artist (er, ASCAP) gets money back. So what is the point? Marketing. Enough people get the song stuck in their head and it makes them want to go out and see a show or buy an album.
In the mp3 world, it's the same deal but a lot more cut and dried. The end result is that 100 (or 1000 or 30,000) people have heard your song and "the seed is planted". I should note here that if your song isn't good enough for someone to seek out more of your music after hearing that one song, you have either not hit your target market or you need to start writing better songs. There is a certain darwinism about the "new music economy" that shouldn't be ignored given the amount of crap in the contemporary pop music world.
When you imply the end result of "everyone gets the music and nobody gets paid", you're forgetting some things. The first is that normal people aren't motivated or tech savvy in the same ways that geeks are. It's true that you or I can easily throw an mp3 onto a disc and then have it to play any time, but the number of people I run into weekly who don't know about this or can't be bothered to do this is astounding. "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" and all that. Make sure you include laziness in there as well.
The second is that bands aren't just selling a tune, they're also selling an act. There's a mystique involved which maybe you or I don't care about but plenty of people do. Do you think MTV would be around if a whole lot of people didn't care either way what an artist's look/story was? Britney/Justin/etc are obvious hardcore examples of this, but acts like Aimee Mann are able to do interviews and have photos on websites and so on because people are interested in more than the chorus to "Voices Carry".
The third is that this happened already with cassette tapes in the '80s. People could easily record music off of the radio with a cheap tape recorder. The end result was that they got music that didn't sound quite as good as the real thing and they didn't pay a dime for it. Just like mp3 downloaders are doing now. All it took was a little bit of work (less than it generally does now for mp3s IMO). The artists didn't starve, everyone was fine.
If you were actually a pro musician you wouldn't. When someone downloads your music for $nothing, you aren't getting nothing out of it. You're getting free marketing. Good exposure is priceless.
Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to keep up the experience. After about a minute, the rhythms stopped, replaced by a metallic, toneless hum.
Actually that's not uncommon even when the site isn't getting its ass handed to it. I've hit up the stream a few times before and I always get the toneless hum.
Being lazy and not voting should result in an instant STFU award for the rest of the term. If you don't vote then I sure as hell don't want to hear you whining about the people running the government.
Yeah, great logic there. What about those who vote Democrat in Texas (for instance)?
SlashDot Transfer Protocol - Essentially, the way it works, is the information is posted on one single, easily crashed server. Then, this information is linked to by Slashdot. Then, said server is taken down. However, 1,000 other posters will have mirrored it by then, therby helping in the "transfer" of the information.
Don't forget to mention that using SDTP, the email in question is generally not read anyway (though it is commented on).
Which mower do you have? Going over my too-high grass two or three times sort of does the job, but not really. Maybe it's just the particular make and model.
4) Actually, you need a "push mower" like the old days. Save money and slim that fat ass of yours.
Actually, I have a "push mower" (it's called a reel mower) like the old days. It's actually lighter to push around than a regular gas mower since there's no engine, with the added benefit of getting to experience the "fresh cut grass smell" the entire time rather than only after you're finished. The only downside is that you can't let your lawn get out of control. You have to keep up with it because the mower won't cut grass that's longer than four inches or so.
"Captain's log. Commander Hoëk here, on a thirty-six year mission to the Crab Nebula. We've made this trip dozens of times. You know, they say sometimes people go CRAZY on these long trips. They get the, eh... SPACE MADNESS. Heh. Space madness."
I guess the point of this post is that for $495 you can get the industry standard but for $0 you can get the "free" and "almost function complete-similar" tool that you could contribute $500 worth of work into to make better... IMHO a better deal:)
...except that there aren't that many good sources for Linux-supported hardware for this kind of thing. You basically have the piss-poor SoundBlaster gear or the fairly pricey RME gear, which also necessitates a fairly pricey analog-to-ADAT converter. I'd love to use Free (as in balls) software but the hardware support isn't anywhere near ready.
Slashdot Mirror
I dunno.. some of the stuff that the Fark photoshop contests turn up is pretty cool looking. :)
But does it need to happen? Songwriting and playing talent is a lot more important than what mic you're using.
Definitely. I've been using a laptop and/or desktop PC to do recording for over a year now. It's cheap, easy, and I get good results without having to spend a lot of money. Aside from the computers (which I already had), my only hardware investment was a firewire card for each machine, a firewire drive, and a firewire-capable audio device, in this case, a MOTU 828. I'm able to either have friends come over and record or take my laptop and small rack over to their places. Since the projects are stored on the firewire drive I can move from machine to machine easily or even use their machines if they have firewire. Since the firewire drive uses a fairly fast drive, I can juggle over 50 tracks simultaneously with no problem whether I'm on my 850MHz laptop or my SUPAR LEAT Athlon worstation.
And I'm not the only one. The practice space where my band plays constantly features musicians who show up and record at 2am when everyone else has gone home. I see more laptops out there than I do in the IT department of the company I work for. A lot of them will borrow the hardware to record drums and vocals, and then use something like a Line6 POD and a bass preamp to do everything else. And it sounds good. Here in Kansas City, I would be hard pressed to find an independant release that happened in a "real studio".
If this stuff is happening as much as it is in Kansas City, imagine how much it's happening out on the coasts. No wonder the recording industry is losing money.
Another poster said something about how artists see situations involving contracts as "either I sign my contract or I lose my job." Hope combined with ignorance can be a powerful driving force. To someone who has had to make their own luck and hopes to go from playing to a crowd of 50 people at a local bar to playing stadiums and not having to have a day job, what's in the contract isn't such a big deal. Especially if they just got off of their 7-11 job and are digesting a label-supplied 20oz steak while discussing the contract over label-supplied drinks. I'm sure that to a lot of excitable aspirants, if you said "You can stay at this 7-11 and play to small local crowds or make the same amount of money touring the world with the guitar rig of your dreams and by the way, blowjobs now grow on trees," the choice would be a no brainer. Hey, we'll get rich someday, right?
What are their alternatives to doing things this way? (The artists, I mean)
Quoth the record label to the artist: If you need us, we don't need you.
If labels care about the artist, they're already on their way, especially now with the Internet and cheap decent quality recording studios all over the place. They may not be playing Soldier Field next year, but they aren't going to starve if they aren't greedy and they're smart about the business they're running. It's just like programming: Nobody starts coding and graduates to getting patches submitted to OpenBSD's kernel within a year.
You'd think so, but that would require that everyone who is an aspiring artist knows about what happens to people who sign record contracts. And as an aspiring artist who knows several other aspiring artists, I can tell you that there is no shortage of people who have no idea whatsoever what happens, and they don't want to know. All they see is Avril coming from small town Canada and making it big with tons of nubile fans and money coming their way. That is the dream they pursue.
Not everyone reads Slashdot and sees this stuff multiple times per week. And one doesn't learn it by sitting around writing music and occasionally tuning in to MTV or Fox News.
The US Department of Energy's comparison of different cars.
For certain values of "short-term" of course. The music business is in a fairly severe state of flux right now, which is why this conversation is going on. You can't have a conversation about the state of the music industry and what's "right" without considering this.
If you're talking soley about a technical limitation, sure, it's going to get to the point that someone can click and drag and soon there will be a shiny good-quality CD. In fact, it's already to that point. It's ridiculously easy for someone non computer savvy (someone's parents, for instance) to do this right now. It's quite another matter for someone to be bothered to take the time to do it or to want to go buy blank CDs and sit at their computer long enough to put in that little bit of work, which I think is a bit more germane.
That's not to say that this won't change. But that's the future.
They aren't selling the "act", except as a way to promote other moneymaking opportunities. Those opportunities are sales of recorded music (which the aforementioned pattern may destroy) and tickets to live performances.
I think this boils down to point of view. You can't argue that the "act" isn't a major selling point (ie without the "act", the group would make a lot less money) but sure, you could call it marketing I guess. It's still a major component of why your hypothetical 13 year old sister is buying No Doubt's records.
It is somewhat valid to claim that musicians could survive if all recorded music was freely traded and considered advertising for their live shows. This viewpoint however cuts off the sizable number of muscians who, for technical, stylistic, or charismatic reasons, are unable to play before an audience.
Isn't this a bit like saying that people with only one finger should be able to be Windows sysadmins despite being unable to Ctrl-Alt-Del into a box or use a mouse and keyboard simultaneously?
There's a certain set of roadblocks involved with being a professional musician. If you can't overcome the limitations, then you do what everyone else does and play your acoustic at home. Sure, that's a bitter pill to swallow, but no performer/songwriter who is worth your time and money as a music consumer is inflexible enough that they can't overcome something like this. I mean, what would you tell someone if they only knew how to code in FORTRAN? "Let me lobby to make FORTRAN the standard"?
The charisma thing isn't valid, by the way. Geddy Lee proved almost 30 years ago that you don't have to look good to sell records. :) I don't think that recorded music is going to turn into an advertising-only deal, or at least I don't think it should. But if you're trying to tell me that a mid-level artist who never quite goes "gold" in record sales and tours a lot is going to have problems because of file trading, you're misinformed.
You poked 2 holes in your own point. It used to take MORE work to make the copies, and the quality was LESS. (The average modern listener cannot detect anything wrong with a 128K MP3, and faster networks will soon handle less-compressed data easily)
The average listener can't detect anything wrong with cassette tape either. Semantics aside, I realize that there's a difference in quality between CDs and cassettes that is greater than that of CDs and mp3s. I think it's the same idea though. At the moment it's still a matter of "download, burn to CD, put in the car". Just like it was a matter of "record to tape, put in the car" back in the day.
Not necessarily. There are several ways to make money as a musician. Giving 95% of what's rightfully yours to a label and associated companies is not one of them. Touring is, although unless you're DMB you're not making money directly from it (in fact you're lucky to break even). It's just another form of marketing.
It's a commonly held truism in the music world that labels have a saying, "If you need us, we don't need you". What does that tell you about the validity of the current music business and why it should/should not be supported?
Wow. Tell you what, next time I write a book, how about I give it away online to market myself, and make my living through appearing at conventions and opening bookshops?
Books aren't music. The whole process, from creation to the end user buying the product, is quite different.
See a pattern?
The pattern, fortunately, doesn't repeat ad infinitum from that point.
What you're describing is roughly analogous to the whole radio airplay concept. A record label (er, an artist) pays large amounts of money to stations to get a song played on the radio, then when the radio plays the song the artist (er, ASCAP) gets money back. So what is the point? Marketing. Enough people get the song stuck in their head and it makes them want to go out and see a show or buy an album.
In the mp3 world, it's the same deal but a lot more cut and dried. The end result is that 100 (or 1000 or 30,000) people have heard your song and "the seed is planted". I should note here that if your song isn't good enough for someone to seek out more of your music after hearing that one song, you have either not hit your target market or you need to start writing better songs. There is a certain darwinism about the "new music economy" that shouldn't be ignored given the amount of crap in the contemporary pop music world.
When you imply the end result of "everyone gets the music and nobody gets paid", you're forgetting some things. The first is that normal people aren't motivated or tech savvy in the same ways that geeks are. It's true that you or I can easily throw an mp3 onto a disc and then have it to play any time, but the number of people I run into weekly who don't know about this or can't be bothered to do this is astounding. "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" and all that. Make sure you include laziness in there as well.
The second is that bands aren't just selling a tune, they're also selling an act. There's a mystique involved which maybe you or I don't care about but plenty of people do. Do you think MTV would be around if a whole lot of people didn't care either way what an artist's look/story was? Britney/Justin/etc are obvious hardcore examples of this, but acts like Aimee Mann are able to do interviews and have photos on websites and so on because people are interested in more than the chorus to "Voices Carry".
The third is that this happened already with cassette tapes in the '80s. People could easily record music off of the radio with a cheap tape recorder. The end result was that they got music that didn't sound quite as good as the real thing and they didn't pay a dime for it. Just like mp3 downloaders are doing now. All it took was a little bit of work (less than it generally does now for mp3s IMO). The artists didn't starve, everyone was fine.
If you were actually a pro musician you wouldn't. When someone downloads your music for $nothing, you aren't getting nothing out of it. You're getting free marketing. Good exposure is priceless.
Actually that's not uncommon even when the site isn't getting its ass handed to it. I've hit up the stream a few times before and I always get the toneless hum.
Haven't these Japanese engineers ever seen Roujin Z?
4) Profit!
Yeah, great logic there. What about those who vote Democrat in Texas (for instance)?
Don't forget to mention that using SDTP, the email in question is generally not read anyway (though it is commented on).
I am a skydiver with 900 jumps, and I have 60 jumps on the Birdman wingsuit, which is used in the movie.
Incidently, no one can verify that Jolie has ever made a jump, despite her claims.
Incidentally, the same could be said about you.
Which mower do you have? Going over my too-high grass two or three times sort of does the job, but not really. Maybe it's just the particular make and model.
4) Actually, you need a "push mower" like the old days. Save money and slim that fat ass of yours.
Actually, I have a "push mower" (it's called a reel mower) like the old days. It's actually lighter to push around than a regular gas mower since there's no engine, with the added benefit of getting to experience the "fresh cut grass smell" the entire time rather than only after you're finished. The only downside is that you can't let your lawn get out of control. You have to keep up with it because the mower won't cut grass that's longer than four inches or so.
"Captain's log. Commander Hoëk here, on a thirty-six year mission to the Crab Nebula. We've made this trip dozens of times. You know, they say sometimes people go CRAZY on these long trips. They get the, eh... SPACE MADNESS. Heh. Space madness."
You didn't know how to read or count until after you turned five?
The US isn't a democracy. It's a republic.
"Shiney"? What is this, the second grade?
Yet Another Star Wars Asciimation Mirror