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A conversation I had with my jazz piano teacher, who is an accomplished recoding jazz musician and arranger, made me wonder whether audiophiles are the musician's last chance at making a profit from recorded music. From what I understand, the reality is that today, a jazz musician stands little chance of making any meaningful profit from an album release. Many small jazz labels that catered to the jazz musician are gone. An accopmlished musician can make a living teaching or performing live but not from selling an album. But if an album is released on vinyl or a hi resolution format, it at least stands the chance of getting picked up by audiophiles. Just a thought. Wondering what the critics think?
Follow Ups:
Since Audiophiles are really a small minority if musicians depend on us they will all starve to death
Alan
The first and last Audiophile records I purchased were all Audioquest recordings of Robert Lucas. And I bought them solely for music, not sound.
The female jazz singers heavily rotated at the hifi shows aren't for me. Sorry.
"Somebody was always controlling who got a chance and who didn't. - Charles Bukowski
Social media helps. I use XM radio to find new content since some of my tastes are a bit unusual. Recently, I discovered Kaki King and signed up for her newsletter.
Today, I got an email that she released a new album. I went to the Bandcamp website and minutes later, I had it downloaded (already in FLAC) and was listening via my music server.
Music lovers are the answer. So be it if the music lover is also an audiophile.
bald, overweight, white guys who hang out alone with the lights out can't even save themselves. Touring is what is saving musicians.
It does seem like many of the more successful artists do a lot of touring and concert dates, which may allow them to keep more of the profits from their work, certainly much more than the record labels allow them. As a soloist that might be easier to manage than a group, but how one goes about making that work is hard.
I don't know if it is feasible to market your own original composition off your website and kick start that with a concert tour to promote it. When I see a number of excellent musicians working on Cruise ships it make me wonder just how hard it must be.
Jim Tavegia
That stopped around 1958.
... but it's lunch time.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
It's in the movies. Based on fact, apparently.
The are quite a few different versions. Very effective, haunting, touching.
1958? Screw ocean liners, TV shows and soundtracks beckoned, especially variety shows.
No sea sickness, but then no great buffet to graze either!
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
Absolutely excellent.
And he's a hell of a jazz bassist, too.
I guess that means that when the words great and musician are used together. IF Sinatra was still with us he might have his own Theater somewhere.
Jim Tavegia
If I paid $57 000-103 000 (1912 prices adjusted for inflation to '06 dollars) to travel from London to New York 1st class I would expect some quality entertainment.
Much better than live or audiophile reproduction :)
If audiophiles are your last chance for anything, then your not long for this world.......
Meat; It's the right thing to do. Romans 14:2
Amen to that...
A lot of people get into vinyl because it's cool and the albums are pretty and a collection vinyl does look admittedly cool in the living room - I suspect SQ is not high on the list and I wonder if some new vinyl fans even realize that vinyl actually sounds good. The Crosley junk that a lot of people use makes vinyl sound like shit.
Maybe they will upgrade their gear to hear what the hype is about. Maybe they will *get it* and then get into acquiring decent sound quality. Then maybe they will appreciate format, mastering, bit rate and everything that goes with it. Then, finally, maybe, they will see the value of spending money for music rather than streaming it on youtube or Spotify.
Lots of maybes.
(nt)
as much as I love vinyl, the slow death of CDs are the worst thing to ever happen to audio.
The decline of cds meant the end of the deep catalog music store and with that went away an entire way of buying and listening to music. The last holdout deep catalog cd store in NYC was J&R. Now gone. How we take things for granted until they are gone. I hear the last great big CD store is Tower Records in Tokyo.
Who gigs in the KC area...alternative Smashing Pumpkins, Failure type stuff...all original material...
He flew a producer into KC to record in his basement his next CD...very lo-fi...everything was tracked in 4 days...
He will press redbooks, BUT his audience is ear buds and desk tops...they don't care...
He just sent me the first track, MP3 of course, I put on my ear buds, listen to it about a dozen times in a row and just type my thoughts as I listen...we have been doing this for years...we share a very similar sonic vocabulary...I really enjoy this...I ran live sound for years...he likes good sound, but I love good sound...my big rig cannot play MP3...so I typically do not get a CD until it is 100% complete...
All that being said, there is NO money in it...he has a good day job, no vices and he is fine financially...so this is his passion and hobby...
The CD's he sells after gigs are Redbook Basement recorded and Mastered out of house, but he gets far more downloads from his website...all MP3's...
"We", Audiophiles are not his crowd...
lesserhasbeens is the name of his band if you are in KC in March, quite a few gigs...They were voted by a local rag as the band of month for February...big stuff in his world...
We are not going to save the music business...not even close...very very few to pass the torch to...just my $.02...
Thanks
Mark
I doubt seriously we have much affect in the music industry either way.
Cd's are just ads for gigs nowadays, and there ain't many gigs that pay good money unless you're in the tiny % that are international jazz "stars" a la Joe Lovano, Wayne Shorter etc. or you're in their groups. Guess you'd be surprised at the *extremely small* sales numbers for the vast majority of jazz cd's.
Re: the comments by John Marks........
There may be isolated examples such as JM mentioned, but it sure as hell is not the norm. Record/mix/master well and it'll sound good for those who are interested in downloading mp3's as well as people who buy the cd's. I spent quite a bit of money on my own recordings for quality recording/mixing/mastering and sure as hell wouldn't spend more for an extra dumbed down master for mp3. My recordings were self-produced, but small jazz labels have very limited budgets and ain't gonna do that either. IMO the guy JM mentioned is a fool.
I own hundreds of jazz cd's, and most have pretty good sound.
........ in Calgary (40+ years in business) "what percentage of your customer base would you say are audiophiles?".
He answered directly with no pause, "Hopefully it's less than 1%. If I had to rely on fucking audiophiles to make a living, I would be long ago bankrupt and in an insane asylum!".
"...made me wonder whether audiophiles are the musician's last chance at making a profit from recorded music."LOL Seriously, no. Not the first, "Many small jazz labels that catered to the jazz musician [and audiophiles] are gone.", nor the last.
Edits: 02/27/15 02/27/15
I gotta big beef with some of the CDs that some jazz musicians peddle after gigs --
-- namely that they sound like MP3 files burned to disc.
Still, an audiophile following is the kiss of death as far as music is concerned.
I know a lotta jazz musicians who have cd's out and none of 'em "peddle" mmp3's masquerading as RCD's. So exactly who are you talking about?
(nt)
nt
... at the point of sale.
A placard or two would help. This is why our CDs sound better than MP3s.
A little squib on the back about how the CD was recorded wouldn't hurt, either.
Since you don't even know my name, have never heard my recordings, and haven't read the liner notes for my cd's it would have been sensible to ask me a question or two before providing unneeded advice.
Tom, I read/enjoyed your column for decades. But your posts about this subject are needlessly harmful. You shouldn't be making blanket negative comments about jazz musicians' cd's offered for sale at gigs - especially since you refuse to back up what you say.
I repeat -- none of the MANY jazz musicians I know sell mp3's at gigs. They sell exactly what fans of their music can buy at vendors like Amazon - burned or pressed Redbook cd's.
I can't remember where you live, so maybe you're referring to some group of young local musicians you heard at a small town club that in fact doesn't have real cd's released. But it is definitely NOT representative of the norm. Patrons of jazz clubs/concerts who go out to hear professional musicians have no reason to worry that if they purchase cd's at gigs they'll be getting inferior mp3's pawned off as cd quality recordings.
I remember jamming with a local reggae band at a Jamaican resort where they were part of the night's entertainment and I was a guest who was very ... much in a party mood. Ahem. For some reason they wanted to rehearse with me -- repeatedly -- our song, Jamaica Farewell (which they referred to as "De Island Song, Mon") before letting me go on stage with them.
After our performance, they offered me the opportunity to buy a homemade CD from them which they played for me with a boom box. Even in my impaired state I could tell it sounded like sh#t, and I didn't buy it.
Sam/Tom is likely thinking about something like that, certainly not your work or that of musicians on your level.
nt
The sad part of those MP3-CDs is that with today's technology - we aught to be able to get a red-book - at least- recording of the concert. That would be far more enticing - many of the studio tracks are a bit too polished to let the magic out...
Happy Listening
Most of those cds sold at shows do sound awful. In the not too distatnt past, musicians did not have to compromise on recording quality. There were record lablels like DMP dedicated to music and recorded sound quality. This was before the piracy became the most common method of music distribution.
consider it a good deed to support them.
I know a woman who is comfortably well off and one of her adult kids is a working jazz musician, arranger, and music director, and he made three recordings in the same time frame and he talked his mother into contributing $2500 to have the CD masters "processed so that they will sound better when made into MP3s, etc."
Assuming that that was a pre-set on some engineer's Digital Audio Workstation, that was more than $800 per button-push.
I shrugged and kept quiet. But even she knew that the CDs were not as good as his earlier ones.
Had she asked me before the deed had been done, I would have said that how an MP3 sounds is not his problem because the people who BUY his CDs after gigs are going to listen to them on car stereos and Bose Wave Radios, as CDs.
But we live in a Tyranny of the New, and we live in Terror of Not Being Up-to-Date.
JM
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