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In Reply to: RE: Hmmm posted by E-Stat on September 30, 2014 at 14:43:24
Unsigned artists could play Indie music, or major label style pop.The "industry" just doesn't invest in artists in the same way that they used to. You just don't see new, creative, bands anymore. There is not going to be an artist like Sigur Ros coming out anymore, signed to a label, as a band, putting out 7 or more full length, 15 song, recordings. You will see up coming individuals who do homemade videos on youtube that sound exactly like Justin Timberlake who himself copied Michael Jackson.
Apple is a music distributor. But they are not a label. Artists who are older, and have been around, are in the old paradigm. They MAY have released 3 or 4 CDs originally, now, - they build MP3s, - lots of times, without bothering to do a full 10 to 15 tracks. Why would they? When the whole system is designed to buy 1 or 2 songs per artist, for $.99. With this new world of the artist is the label, the artist has to "sell" themselves on the basis not of a long term several album high volume sales career, but as a 1 or 2, big hit oriented novelty that lands one big tours.
There's no record company to hire a producer, no need for an engineer, they can't afford to pay for any artwork, they can't afford to even adequately monitor their sales. The best that an "indie" artist can hope for, is to be picked up for tour support on the basis of one or two decently sold songs on Itunes.
Six Degrees Records gives their artists lots of points per full recording. They use the old model. They are a dinosaur, and they don't have much time left.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
Edits: 09/30/14Follow Ups:
The villain is The Industry . Their greed based upon old models and a lack of vision as to the future. Apple accommodates what works. So does Amazon.
The new model is clearly streaming.
.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
I was referring to the recording industry.
I'm not aware of any assets Apple has in terms of recording studios, labels and mastering labs. Would you care to enlighten us to what they are?
In the past, labels owned the stores and sold their products on consignment.The bathroom in the basement is the recording studio. The recorder is the computer. The producer is the band.
Now, the artists, are the labels.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
Edits: 09/30/14
Ok, makes sense. What again were you saying about Apple?
On one hand, Apple is slowing the death of the labels, and overall industry.
On the other hand, they're actively participating in the death of the old industry.
-A big part of the industry is manufacture and distribution.
-CD/Vinyl stamping plants worked under the direction of the labels
-In the past, a label could afford to pay for large runs of CDs/Vinyl units if they had a product that had a fair number of songs, artwork, popular artists, etc etc.
-now that the band is the label, they don't have the resources available to record a lot of songs, record them with quality, with a pro producer, they don't have the resources to negotiate with the manufacturing plants, they can't afford to do pro artwork, They can't even afford to form bands as we knew them.
-for these reasons and others, the DISTRIBUTION NETWORK, (APPLE, AMAZON), etc. has the power now to dictate to the artists, (and what's left of the labels); what format, quality, amount, and even "style" of music produced.
It is a huge paradigm shift, from Label/Artist/radio to distribution network/content provider. People/Apple could make the argument that Apple is just giving the people what they want: but IMO, - it's not people like us, and it's not older people who are "used" to the old model of higher quality, professionally produced, physical products, more than 1 song, with artwork, and more importantly to the artist and label, - artists making a livable wage off of their art.
The record business, is no longer the record business. As a songwriter, who has been pretty successful comparatively: (and through the basis of friendships, research, and analysis of the industry), - i've seen a great deal of artist exploitation under the old paradigm: which I've railed against alongside many others much more famous, articulate, wiser, and expressive, than myself. (Frank Zappa, stands out most notably). The old model sucked, and I cry no tears for the old industry's self destruction.
However, - this new model is decidedly NOT better, and it causes creativity, variety, content, overall art, and sustainability to not only suffer, - but die. Essentially, Apple's distribution, playback method, and in turn, content "style" dictation is a PHILOSOPHICAL shift into an American Idol world: which does not constitute songwriting as I define it.
Cheers,
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
That is the underlying issue.
What worked years ago no longer works.
Millennials don't buy like we bought.
The evolving distribution model is not uniquely Apple's - nor will that model be the dominant one in the near future.
Consumption evolution: Specific album (be it vinyl, tape, CD, SACD, etc.)--> "Song" --> Streaming license of "everything" to any kind of device.
Those who don't adapt will be left behind.
Over and out. :)
"Those who don't adapt will be left behind."
Creative Destruction.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
vs what is good.
I am philosophically incapable of disassociating creativity and variety from the good.
Never again will we ever see another artist like Frank Zappa, Mozart, Brian Eno, Miles Davis, or John Coltrane gain enough popularity to realize a modicum of success, defined as the ability to produce a decent body of work.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
Sordid.
This is just baloney: "Never again will we ever see another artist like Frank Zappa, Mozart, Brian Eno, Miles Davis, or John Coltrane gain enough popularity to realize a modicum of success, defined as the ability to produce a decent body of work."
I don't know about other kinds of music, but there are at least a hundred jazz musicians whom I have repeatedly heard live in New York, who are producing more than decent bodies of work. There young players, a surprising number of them women (Ingrid Laubrock, Mary Halvorson, Chris Davis), and more veteran players (Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Charles Gayle). Every night of the week there are great musicians playing in New York (and no doubt other major cities around the world). Music is not about the record business. Success is not about popularity. It is true that these people are not making enough money (almost no one is). The best jazz viola player in New York--who is producing a decent body of recorded work--works in a coffee shop in Brooklyn.
If you would trust your ears and find out who these people are, rather than depending upon the music industry to find them for you, they might be able to make the kind of money that is made by a competent dental hygienist.
Of course I know that there are many different definitions of success. And, - there are certainly many different types and degrees of creativity.
Of course there are plenty of very creative people working in obscurity.
So far, what we've seen, and what we'll continue to see, (I predict), is more of the same. The "good" is different than the "popular," - and at least one definition of success is/used-to-be album/CD/MP3 sales: like it or not.
Creed/Nickleback/stonetemplepilots/PearlJam were all the same band: or were they?
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
Sordid--I am writer too.
There are two or three different questions being muddled with one another in this thread, one having to do with the economics of the music industry, one having to do with social snobbery directed toward users of portable music players, one having to do with the nature of creativity.
In one sense the musicians that I mentioned in my previous post are working in obscurity in that they do not sell many CDs (they all make CDs sold on Amazon, by the way), but as musicians playing a kind of music that is demanding for both the player and listener, they have the chance to play live for many of the most discerning listeners in the world for their kind of music. The music of Charles Gayle, who is the living person who carries on the work of Albert Ayler and John Coltrane, requires attention, immense, focused attention. Now in his 70s, he spent a chunk of his life homeless in New York. It is not good music to play at a party or while you are cooking a complex meal; it is not bedroom music. Late Coltrane is not good music in these settings either.
It is probably fairly rare for people to become committed to this kind of music by way of recordings. You have to hear it, really hear it, and move out into the place where it happens. I retired in New York in part at least because it allows me to regularly hear these people.
These are great times for people who love gear or all kinds (audio, photographic, whatever). There are many people whose art is buying gear. These forums are full of them. They know every thing about the best cables but they know almost nothing about music. They listen to Miles' Kind of Blue not because it is great music, which it is, but because it is beautifully recorded and often used as benchmark music. They know nothing about the dozen other great trumpet players, who in musical conversation with Miles, created this incredible period of music. It is hard to judge the quality of Miles' music. If you really listen to the music of the period you will hear Kind of Blue so often that it begins to be a cliche. There were at least a dozen other jazz trumpet players playing in the 1950s and 1960s that one needs to know if you are going to get a sense of how good Miles Davis was. He was very good. There were two or three others, who were quite different, so different they are hard to compare, but at least as good. Of that dozen of players, a couple never recorded a record as a leader, but they contributed important stuff to the music that goes on. The great trumpet player Roy Campbell died last January (never a name in the music industry). I think most of the living trumpet players would have agreed that he was one of the best, as an innovator of music in New York, one of the greatest . At a memorial concert for him in February or March seven or eight of the great living trumpet players turned up to play. People who have a hundred thousand invest in audio gear listen to Kind of Blue trying to discern the difference between two cables.
It is a hard time for all of the arts, including the art of listening, except the art of consumption, which is the most highly sophisticated art of our time.
I do not know how to create a musical culture, but one cannot hope that the leeches of the music business, whether they make their money from software or audio hardware are going to make one.
The only reason to buy audio gear is to hear the music. I rarely hear anyone of these forums say anything to indicate that they know much or care much about music.
There is enough great music for a many lifetimes and more is being produced everyday. One can learn about the music of the seventeenth century and its performers. One can spend years trying to hear and understand Beethoven's late quartets. For all of the people who have large Zappa collections, how many ever heard of Spike Jones, John Cage, Johnny Otis, and Eric Dolphy--all of whom influenced Zappa. For all of the people who collect Dylan Albums, how many dug up the Porter Waggoner version of "Satisfied Mind." If we are going to have a musical culture and a business that will supply it, it is necessary for listeners to know what is important as music. The reason the music industry promotes trash is because it is cheap, readily available, and people will buy it. It is much easier to sell music that requires minimum attention because people will get quickly bored and want something else. If the music industry used to do a better job supplying music, it was because they were bad businesses. At least some of the people in the music business before the 1960s cared about music. It made them bad business people. They could have made more money.
Well, I ranting. Sorry. Let me say quickly, the reason to buy audiogear is to hear the music, to let the musical information come through. For me, it comes through Pure Music on Mini Mac, through an Empirical OFf-ramp, a Berkeley Alpha, a Leben CS-300 to Rosinante Signatures or a Sennheiser HD800, and it comes through (adequately) an Ipod classic, a Ray Samuels P-51 amp about the size of an old-fashioned pocket match box, and Westone W4r. Ounce for ounce and dollar for dollar, my home rig won't come close to the portable, and it lets me walk and listen to music. Walking is about the only thing one can do while listening to serious music.
Agree that two issues may be muddled.
Personally, - it's not about the playback equipment. From my experience, - it is not about playback gear: (I have 5 different systems at various levels of SQ. I endeavor to/don't have any expectations that my car system, or my IPhone has any kind of parity with my main rig, or my bedroom system. I enjoy music on all, and have expectations of what I'm listening to accordingly).
The issue to me is that the death of the AOR industry and it's subsequent distribution network has forced a listening format change that prevents songwriters and musicians from:
1. Earning the living that they deserve.
2. forces a change in their writing of content: on the basis of the above.
I hear you about Jazz, and the wonderful NYC jazz clubs, and the interesting things that people are playing/writing. However, that "scene" and genre are outside the scope of the music industry as I mean it, and although I think that it's wonderful: in reality, - it has always been. Great things are happening "under the radar."
But it is completely unsustainable: and it's such a small, drop in the bucket. That genre too lends itself to that paradigm. And that paradigm isn't a model that extends to other genre, and earns one a living comfortable enough to live, and continue making art for years to come.
But in the (past) world, (pop-rock) where all of the money was made for the label, then trickled down to the artist: has and will only get worse. If Elvis Costello gets dropped by his label, you know that there's a major bloody problem.
It used to be that touring lost money. Touring was advertizing for record sales. Now that there are no 10+ song records, it's not worth it to make investments in artists and their development. Labels must make $ on the basis of assisting with tours, (if there's a label at all). And, - they cannot afford to take a chance on originality. They must invest their precious and scarce dollars on one song, that will be assured to be downloaded from ITunes more than 100 million times & sound like every other song. And no one is available to invest in a band.
Thievery Corporation has at least 9 people on stage at any given moment. The costs of sending that band on tour are likely astronomical. Yet, they must tour in order to make money. And, - they're an old band, still making CDs, under the old Paradigm. They can make, and sell CDs, knowing that they will likely lose money: but still have to cut corners, (like not using a producer, using Pro-Tools a lot, using their own recording gear, etc).
This new distribution network is forcing us into an MP3 world where we're just not going to get good quality media to purchase, and that's going to affect our experiences on our costly high-end systems. It's also affecting the content, as we're likely going to get just a singer, singing someone else's song, over top of some cheap pro-tools music.
Cheers,
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
Sordid--I mostly agree with you, but music of all kinds ihas proven to be sustainable only in live venues. From the great ballrooms of 1920s and the juke joints of the Delta to the clubs in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, music has been created, renewed, and appreciated. The formats of recording have been totally come and go. When I recently retired and downsized I had collections of 78s, 45s, LPs, three different tape formats, and CDs. The CDs that I have on hard drives are now in a closet, and I got rid of everything else.
The collector value of all of the formats seem to have dropped precipitously. Music, like reading, is probably disappearing from the entertainment world. Increasingly, people who listen to music and read probably no longer belong to the popular culture. Of course, people who make their living turning industrial "product" will be hurt, but music will not be hurt. Music has little to do with that.
And their will be new artistic forms--video games or what comes after video games--in which the sound component of the art will depend upon high-quality reproduction. It will be a totally different thing with new values.
Thank you.
In many ways, - (as you seem to be implying): as less quality recordings get made, and less new music too, - the value of gear and listening shrinks even more.
Certainly, people do not listen in the same way, and they listen less. The days of 1 person, or a group of people sitting down and listening to music for it's own sake, doing nothing else, are very few indeed.
Especially in the rock world, - live music just sounds bad: although, - I've heard some really, really, horrible sound at the Opera as well. As things begin to change, and artists now have to make their money by playing live, and thereby, - working a ton harder, - it is another factor in changing what is written. No longer does one have all of the different instruments, effects generators, pool of studio musicians: and in general, the resources available to make the song "better" and/or more unique. (Perhaps a song calls for a clarinet, or a 450lb Hammond B3, or to record breaking bottles out in the hallway)?
In short there are some new opportunities, - like the Darryl's House TV show, - but in general, - until or unless something new takes off on a "viral" scale, - new, creative, music is shrinking and suffering.
Cheers,
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
Sordidman: I see you are a philosophy student. Many things are "shrinking and suffering": both the cultural environment and the natural environment. The ideas that the Greeks produced have prevailed for twenty-five centuries. For most of that time, not much was happening. The Greeks produce really new stuff for three centuries. The Romans were great administrators, but they didn't really create much, and after them things, nothing, for a millennium. Beginning about five hundred years ago, things really started popping: in music, science, mathematics, philosophy, art, poetry. From the perspective of new creative impulse, it started coming apart, however, as soon as the 19th century. Beethoven's late quatets are some of the greatest music, not so much because they were new but because the exhaustion and completion of modern musical ideas was very damned exciting. After WW I, things began seriously to come apart. It was exciting, and I love all of that stuff, but it was the signal of the end, not the beginning. The great period of recorded music, beginning in the late fifties, was when the whole of what was left became popular. The entire culture that had been the preserve of an extreme elite was pumped out in paperback books and LPs, and became available to hicks like me, growing in the hill country of Missouri. Happily because of the high-quality of vinyl recordings we have a record of much of that music. But that time, when the elite culture was packaged and sold to the masses, lasted only 30-40 years. Like all of the other available resources--cultural and natural--it was used up. I bought volumes of the Greek philosophers, the nineteenth century English and Russian novellists, and great collections of poetry for 75 cents from the paperback rack in the drug store. It was a weird time. There was some genuinely new stuff after WW II--abstraction expressionist painting, free jazz--but no one has known where to go with it. If this weird, little Earthly experiment in the evolution of complex intelligence is to continue to the end of this century and beyond, it is going to require a lot of people, producing a lot of entirely new stuff, about the meaning and value of sound, graphic shapes and colors, moving images, and so forth. It is not just the media for music reproduction that is changing. Reading and writing are genuinely dead ducks. We already communicate very little with the sguiggly marks that represent sounds that represent words that are strung together as sentences and paragraphs. Whole other forms of communicating meaning and value are required, and this is very damned exciting. Everyone's ass is on the line, but everyone is going to have to get serious about music and everything else.
Wow, how depressing your world must be.
What are you trying to say?Are you happy with the state of the music industry? Are you finding a lot of great new artists (and/or recordings) that you find better than in the past, when you were younger?
The state of the music industry does not rule my world: is it possible that happiness can lie outside the current state of 2014s music industry?
And have I said anything substantially different than Estat or Tony who've also been on this thread?
What lies behind your comment? (It's pretty unfair of you to make two short, cavalier, accusations in this thread without explaining, or backing them up).
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
Edits: 10/03/14 10/03/14 10/03/14
Are you happy with the state of the music industry?
I have no complaints.
Audio and music are a hobby for me, not something that depresses me or has me concerned in any way. I enjoy it. I embrace it. And I really don't care what direction the industry takes. I'm just a consumer enjoying the hobby.
I have plenty of music to keep me happily occupied for years to come and I continue to discover new artists and old ones that didn't catch my attention in the past. I find many on streaming services like Spotify.
I have similar feelings for the 'state of the audio hobby'. I don't care that younger listeners enjoy earbuds and MP3s. I feel no obligation or motivation to evangelize the 'high end' experience.
But I do feel the compulsion to promote the high end, especially since (in my case), I enjoy the experience more: and that is corroborated by others who have done so as well. Not to mention how vociferously it is denigrated and attacked by the naysayers and inexperienced here.
Still, - it's rare, - if ever, - that I place unreasonable expectations on different levels of systems. (I do not expect my squeezebox radio in the kitchen to sound as good as bedroom system, or main system).
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
Edits: 10/06/14
I'm not a fan of the cloud model for software (my line of work) nor music deployment. I am, however, an observer of how the market is changing.
While I don't have tens of thousands of albums like some inmates, I have collected a suitable library of the music I enjoy across many genres. Fortunately, I am not dependent upon the whims of the industry. :)
there.....
You are dead on: I am sad for the future of what the predicted consequences are of these truths.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
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