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Author Topic: If you think we're having it bad look at musicians ...  (Read 54065 times)

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Hobostocker

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« Reply #25 on: February 24, 2015, 01:56 »
+1
Excellent post by David Bryne.

He's right though. How will artists be compensated?

they won't.
the new paradigm is that producing music is just a hobby unless you're Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Britney Spears, etc

as much as fans claim that artists will survive with live gigs this is only true for the top 5% musicians, at best.
the Stones are now selling tickets for as much as 350$ bucks but the run of the mill bands are stuck with 20-30$ tickets or even getting paid in beers ...

i've a friend of mine who's a songwriter for Sony and other labels, do you think he's getting rich ? NO ! he's got a day job in a music store and plays some gigs with his own local band, the royalties he's earning from downloads/streaming/radio are a pittance since he's just the songwriter and he won't see a single dollar from the gigs and from merchandising while in the meantime the artists playing HIS songs are getting filthy rich.

and he's F ing pissed at that, rightfully so, so much that he wants to give up with songwriting.

on the other side another of our friends who played with me and with him in the past now runs a studio and is making a decent living recording and mastering local bands as there's no shortage of fools dreaming to become rich and famous playing music and willing to invest 1000s of dollars to produce a professional quality Demo, he also helps these bands with e-commerce sites, merchandising, and more ... that's more money coming in, and he said he often makes more money with merchandising that with the studio which says it all ...

so, a very dark sscenario from any perspective if you ask me.



Hobostocker

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« Reply #26 on: February 24, 2015, 02:04 »
0
as David Byrne point pointed out, there's soooo many artists who are not cut for live shows, and i can say there are also many genres of music that cannot be played live due to the high production costs involved, what's going to happen once the only way to earn money is from streaming and a bunch of digital downloads ?

i can tell you what, they'll all stop playing music and go flipping burgers as producing music is NOT CHEAP nowadays and the cost/benefits scenario is totally stacked against musicians.


Hobostocker

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« Reply #27 on: February 24, 2015, 02:13 »
+1
as for on-demand streaming :

it will kill the music industry itself because what's the difference between paying to download a few tracks and requiring 2-3 clicks to play back the music when i want compared to 2-3 click on Spotify to listen to the same tracks while paying 10$/month for unlimited access ?

it's exactly the same as long as i have a 3G connection but while the artist will get 0.50$ for each download he's barely earning 0.00001 dollar for each stream played on Spotify and that's a HUGE difference.

no wonder users LOVE streaming, it's a dream come true for them ... but it will kill music if the trend keeps going on and in particular it will kill Indie labels which are the ones actually scouting for talents before they later join the major record companies.

the only ones that will survive are the DJs as they don't play a musical instrument and they "play" somebody else music and have very small production costs ... even a cheap DJ asking 2-300$ per night can still be profitable but this is out of question for a live band or a single musician.

« Reply #28 on: February 24, 2015, 03:05 »
-1
Just for comparison:

I sold a file at alamy today. I received $60 for an editorial license for a maximum of 100,000 prints. So divide $60 with 100,000 prints that would be $0.0006 per print

You can also compare it with the shutterstock subscription royalties. I receive $0.38 for a subscription download. You can use this picture 250,000 times. Now divide $0.38 with 250,000 = $0.00000152 per use.

But Its for commercial use! Not for private use like the stream. A big difference!

And another point I can buy a license from a microstock superstar for just a few bucks for commercial use. Ask a music superstar if you can use his new song in your project for the same amount.
If I would receive $0.001 per view at shutterstock I would only need 380 views (streams) per image to receive the same amount I think this would be a really good deal!

If there will be a stream based offer in the microstock business I think we will receive about $0.00005 or less per view.

Generally I think its the same situation in the music industry and in the microstock business. You need to be really good and have your own style/sound to be a superstar both in the music industry and in the microstock business. There are also so much (copy-)amateurs in both businesses who will always complain that they cant make a comfortable living from their work. And you always have someone who earns good money but wants to have more or who live beyond his means.

Hobostocker

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« Reply #29 on: February 24, 2015, 06:21 »
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Just for comparison:


yours is an interesting analysis but it's comparing apples vs oranges as stock images are meant to be licenced and their raison d'etre is to be paired into an article, a billboard, a poster, a postcard, a book, whatever, while music is "consumed" in the moment it's being played :

users are willing to pay to play music, but nobody would pay to watch an image unless we talk of framed photos in museums.

as for Alamy : fully agree, and while they give you 60 bucks you can bet the advertising in the next page earned them 500 or 1000$ ...

on SS : yes, but then again it only shows that commercially speaking our RF images are worthless and it's a buyers market, this topic been discussed to death a million times.

however, i don't agree we can compare it with "streams" as a users streaming a whole song and paying 0.00001$ for it are actually "consuming" and enjoying the final product while this is not happening for stock buyers, they will always need their designer to edit the image or the layout and blah blah blah ... what we sell is just one of the many ingredients they need to craft their final product, nobody buy our images to just print them out and resell them as postcards or whatever (i may be wrong of course).




Hobostocker

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« Reply #30 on: February 24, 2015, 06:31 »
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Generally I think its the same situation in the music industry and in the microstock business.

not yet, because the shelf life of a stock image can last a few years while the music market is so oversaturated that your window of opportunity is barely 2-3 months unless you're famous and backed by the top labels.

and while they can do gigs we could do exhibitions, vernissages, and art galleries but that's not the case for us unless we're into fine-art and established into the art market.

said that, i still feel better at the idea of earning 0.30$ for a sub than earning 0.50$ for a song on Beatport considering it takes me 1/100th the time to shoot a saleable image.

we're still having it a lot better than musicians in my opinion and it won't change anytime soon as musicians are the ones feeling the heat now along with journalists and writers, we're still in a sort of limbo but the industry is getting bigger not smaller not to mention that there's a growing need for imagery on the web while the demand for music is limited to multimedia and videos so it's a totally different ballgame as far as we're concerned.



« Reply #31 on: February 24, 2015, 08:29 »
-1
as David Byrne point pointed out, there's soooo many artists who are not cut for live shows, and i can say there are also many genres of music that cannot be played live due to the high production costs involved, what's going to happen once the only way to earn money is from streaming and a bunch of digital downloads ?

i can tell you what, they'll all stop playing music and go flipping burgers as producing music is NOT CHEAP nowadays and the cost/benefits scenario is totally stacked against musicians.
Most of the great musicians of the past didn't make any money until late in their careers and I think they made almost all their best music when they were skint.  Its unfortunate that most of them don't get properly financially rewarded for their music now but it isn't stopping them making great music.  Listening to a lot of music from the past year, the standard seems higher than ever.  They must be making music because they love doing it.  If 5% go on to make a lot of money, that's probably not much different to the other arts.

« Reply #32 on: February 24, 2015, 08:47 »
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Most of the great musicians of the past didn't make any money until late in their careers ..

Equally much of the world's greatest photography has been done by photographers who were/are essentially amateurs. Or as the unrelated side-projects of people who were also professionals. And every time a new wave comes in via the counter culture it is almost invariably in reaction/against the established professionalism.

Hobostocker

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« Reply #33 on: February 24, 2015, 12:09 »
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Most of the great musicians of the past didn't make any money until late in their careers ..

Equally much of the world's greatest photography has been done by photographers who were/are essentially amateurs. Or as the unrelated side-projects of people who were also professionals. And every time a new wave comes in via the counter culture it is almost invariably in reaction/against the established professionalism.

sure but there's a big difference in production costs.
an amateur can potentially produce gorgeous photos even with a cheap entry level DSLR sold at 3-400$.
on the other side to make a song nowadays you need a fast PC, a DAW software, plugins, knowledge about music, mastering, and a LOT OF TIME especially.

yeah there's an awful lot of free apps for music also, Reaper for instance is a top DAW and it's almost free, there are hundreds of decent free plugins too ... but again the time needed to master all this is a lot bigger than what's required to make a decent photo in my opinion.

the only exception is electronic dance music (now called EDM in the US for whatever silly reason) ... in that case you don't even need to know how to play an instruments and you can definitely use pre-made loops for 90% of the final product ... i've seen idiot DJs even taking pride of that and on top of this very few people noticed it and their "songs" received positive feedbacks .. we've come to this !!

but going back to the core issue : YES, with just a cheap laptop and free music software you can indeed make a good song today, i mean at least an instrumental song, the problem arises in case you need to record vocals ... you will need a good microphone, a mixer and pre-amp, at least a minimal home studio, and of course some good headphones or decent speakers + amp ... this doesn't come cheap at all.

as for the music itself : sure, technically we're now free to play any possible sound for free at this point, but despite this i see such a decrease in melodic productions in the last 20 yrs, very very few innovative stuff comes out and most of the staff being played is made with the same plugins, the same sounds, over and over again ... there's been almost no evolution at all in most of the music genres after the '90s and this is saddening considering nowadays even a 500$ laptop has all the raw power that in the past would have cost an arm and a leg.

everyone was complaining about the sheer complexity and costs of running an analog or digital studio, now you can produce good quality songs from top to bottom on the cheapest hardware and using mostly free software too, so no excuses regarding the technical side .. the issue as always lies in the lack of musical innovation and for this we can only blame the public which has been totally dumbed down and is now unable to appreciate good music after being brainwashed by MTV and Disco and Radios since birth.

« Reply #34 on: February 24, 2015, 13:05 »
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Hobostocker, not liking new music is just a sign of getting old.  There's always people saying that new music isn't as good as it used to be but they just can't appreciate it.  And every generation steals from those that went before them, even the Beatles did it.  Here's a few examples http://www.vh1.com/music/tuner/2014-02-09/10-little-known-songs-that-inspired-beatles-classics/

Hobostocker

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« Reply #35 on: February 25, 2015, 01:02 »
-1
Hobostocker, not liking new music is just a sign of getting old.  There's always people saying that new music isn't as good as it used to be but they just can't appreciate it.  And every generation steals from those that went before them, even the Beatles did it.  Here's a few examples http://www.vh1.com/music/tuner/2014-02-09/10-little-known-songs-that-inspired-beatles-classics/


i can tell you a few days ago i had the guts to listen to the entire iTunes top-40 and even the whole Beatport top-100 .. yes one by one ... i spent the whole day on it because i felt i had to "get up with the times".

it turns out i liked barely 5% of those songs and in a few cases i almost needed to throw up (Dubstep, Brostep, Trap, HipHop) and lower the volume to preserve my sanity.

sure, maybe i'm getting old but maybe this music just sucks despite being mixed and mastered very very good.

my impression is producers are totally clueless about what to do next, all they're doing is remixing over and over old stuff and cloning all the top-10 hits in the hope that something will stick on the wall, i mean even using the exact same sounds this especially visible on Beatport.

so, is it my fault being an old f-art or today's music is incredibly boring and predictable ? we'll see ... in the meantime i won't play that cr-ap anytime soon.

« Last Edit: February 25, 2015, 01:05 by Hobostocker »

Hobostocker

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« Reply #36 on: February 25, 2015, 01:12 »
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Most of the great musicians of the past didn't make any money until late in their careers and I think they made almost all their best music when they were skint.  Its unfortunate that most of them don't get properly financially rewarded for their music now but it isn't stopping them making great music.  Listening to a lot of music from the past year, the standard seems higher than ever.  They must be making music because they love doing it.  If 5% go on to make a lot of money, that's probably not much different to the other arts.

indeed, people will keep playing music even if they get zero financial rewards for it but the whole musical scene will turn into a bunch of hobbyists and amateurs, that's the ultimate result of all this mess.

only the few ones backed by the major record companies will have the resources and the time to produce professional stuff year after year.

but this means 80% of the hits on radio and streaming and downloads will be mostly cheesy commercial sh-it while the remaining 20% of the market will be made of a few diamonds in the rough produced by fly-by-night Indie labels, that's the way it is already.

should i listen forever to lady gaga or beyonce or Jay-z ? no thanks.
and in fact i'm not listening music much since more than 10 yrs, and if i do it's pre-90s stuff usually.
from time to time i take a look at the new stuff and all i get is the latest horrible cr-ap by lady gaga or Daft Punk or whatever "celebrity" that i couldn't give a F ck about ...

« Reply #37 on: February 25, 2015, 05:27 »
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Hobostocker, not liking new music is just a sign of getting old.  There's always people saying that new music isn't as good as it used to be but they just can't appreciate it.  And every generation steals from those that went before them, even the Beatles did it.  Here's a few examples http://www.vh1.com/music/tuner/2014-02-09/10-little-known-songs-that-inspired-beatles-classics/


i can tell you a few days ago i had the guts to listen to the entire iTunes top-40 and even the whole Beatport top-100 .. yes one by one ... i spent the whole day on it because i felt i had to "get up with the times".

it turns out i liked barely 5% of those songs and in a few cases i almost needed to throw up (Dubstep, Brostep, Trap, HipHop) and lower the volume to preserve my sanity.

sure, maybe i'm getting old but maybe this music just sucks despite being mixed and mastered very very good.

my impression is producers are totally clueless about what to do next, all they're doing is remixing over and over old stuff and cloning all the top-10 hits in the hope that something will stick on the wall, i mean even using the exact same sounds this especially visible on Beatport.

so, is it my fault being an old f-art or today's music is incredibly boring and predictable ? we'll see ... in the meantime i won't play that cr-ap anytime soon.

I think people grow tired of new music because they don't listen to it all the time.  Music grows on you, the more you listen, the more you get in to it.  How many times have you listened to that old stuff?  And there's so much music around now, lots of the good stuff doesn't even get in to the charts.  Try these:-
St. Vincent (David Byrne is back)
Mean Lady
Sleaford Mods (not for the faint of heart!)
Metronomy
Lusts





Hobostocker

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« Reply #38 on: February 25, 2015, 06:14 »
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I think people grow tired of new music because they don't listen to it all the time.  Music grows on you, the more you listen, the more you get in to it.  How many times have you listened to that old stuff?  And there's so much music around now, lots of the good stuff doesn't even get in to the charts.  Try these:-
St. Vincent (David Byrne is back)
Mean Lady
Sleaford Mods (not for the faint of heart!)
Metronomy
Lusts

thanks, i will check them out !

and yeah, probably old music sticks with us longer for many good reasons but i can guarantee most of what i'm hearing nowadays is just boring and predictable, i listen a song 10 seconds and i know already what's coming next, and i wonde "F it ... these songs one worth the other all the same like carbon copy" ...

again, this has nothing to do with the technical side, actually even the lamest mp3 demo is usually sounding very good and very clean, and if that matter i notice they're abusing FXs like compressors and sidechaining pushing the volume and the harmonics to the max which is not a nice development in my opinion.

THE problem facing music today is dealing with it's past : at this point all the major musical genres reached their maturity and are almost rotting on themselves, there's no way out, everything has been done to death in any possible way, every sound has been used and abused, every weird FX has been pushed to the limits, really one wonders what's left to try or to invent ... everybody is waiting for the "next big thing" since 20 years but there's nothing coming out that is radically new, even among the Indie labels that target the most unusual crowds.

and personally, having traveled in so many esotic countries i naively expected to "discover" some less known music genres played locally but i was wrong as even most of the folk music here in asia is the same sh-it over and over and in the mainstream there's a flood of cheesy chinese/korean/thai Pop ... India and Nepal are much more interesting in this regard and so is the Balinese Gamelan or the Cambodian Folk and Burmese traditional music and i could list a few other examples but all in all nothing spectacularly "new" or innovative from any perspective, actually it;s very sad since the pop culture here is becoming shamefully westernized with local musicians ripping off western cr-ap like Lady Gaga, i even heard Mongolian hip-hop for F cks sake ... hahaha ....


« Reply #39 on: February 25, 2015, 06:39 »
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I listen to the first album by Jake Bugg and the 2 La Roux albums a lot.  Nothing groundbreaking about either of them and its easy to spot their influences but the music is good and listening to something more recent is refreshing.

Who cares if most of modern music is rubbish?  I think there's more music being made now than ever before and even if I only like 1% of it, that's probably more than I have time to listen to.

Hobostocker

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« Reply #40 on: February 25, 2015, 10:13 »
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I listen to the first album by Jake Bugg and the 2 La Roux albums a lot.  Nothing groundbreaking about either of them and its easy to spot their influences but the music is good and listening to something more recent is refreshing.

Who cares if most of modern music is rubbish?  I think there's more music being made now than ever before and even if I only like 1% of it, that's probably more than I have time to listen to.

indeed there's an over-production of music nowadays, too much and who will ever have the time to listen ?
i'm sure there are many diamonds in the rough but i won't invest a whole night clicking here and there scouting for talent ... i'm not a DJ and i'm not an Indie label ... it's like if the whole market has been suddenly locked up itself after the 90s, i mean how many pop/dance/rock songs am i supposed to listen ? the umpteenth punk band "inspired" iggy pop or the ramones, the millionth cover of 80s hits ... no thanks ...

« Reply #41 on: February 25, 2015, 16:35 »
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Its funny that young people often think old music is rubbish and older people think the opposite.

A lot of those 80's hits were covers of older song or were heavily inspired by them.  Sometimes I prefer the most recent versions, like "Barbra Streisand" by Duck Sauce that uses a sample from "Gotta Go Home" by Boney M that was more than a bit inspired by "Hallo Bimmelbahn" by Nighttrain.


Hobostocker

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« Reply #42 on: February 25, 2015, 22:53 »
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Its funny that young people often think old music is rubbish and older people think the opposite.

hahaha good luck finding a modern band on par with The Who or The Queen ... keep dreaming, young guys, it's a creative desert nowadays.


« Reply #43 on: February 25, 2015, 23:45 »
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Its funny that young people often think old music is rubbish and older people think the opposite.

not if you're a horn/pianist/guitarist/(jazz) or  guitarist / drummer (blues/rock or even metal)
the young players still look to the old masters. only the pop ones think old is crap, then again
pop has always been crap from 60s archies sam the sham to whatever is top today

Hobostocker

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« Reply #44 on: February 26, 2015, 02:20 »
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« Reply #45 on: February 26, 2015, 04:41 »
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Its funny that young people often think old music is rubbish and older people think the opposite.

hahaha good luck finding a modern band on par with The Who or The Queen ... keep dreaming, young guys, it's a creative desert nowadays.
I prefer Muse to Queen.  There's maybe 10 Queen songs I really like, their last few albums didn't do it for me at all.

Hobostocker

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« Reply #46 on: February 26, 2015, 05:09 »
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Its funny that young people often think old music is rubbish and older people think the opposite.

hahaha good luck finding a modern band on par with The Who or The Queen ... keep dreaming, young guys, it's a creative desert nowadays.
I prefer Muse to Queen.  There's maybe 10 Queen songs I really like, their last few albums didn't do it for me at all.

i've never played Muse songs but since you ask i will now take a quick look ... as for the Queen yeah not their whole portfolio is good but they were able to produce 5-10 songs that will be played FOREVER and ever .. i could go as far as say that the Queen are probably the best rock band ever because unlike The Who their sound is super classic and evergreen.

« Reply #47 on: February 26, 2015, 05:19 »
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Hobostocker

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« Reply #48 on: February 26, 2015, 10:23 »
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Brian May likes them http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8304176.stm


talking about piracy .. among the first results on youtube if you search "Muse" there's a couple of their  albums, one of which has 1 million views ??

and the uploader has also the nerve to write this caption :

"No Copyright Infringement Intended: All rights reserved to the owners @ Warner Bros. Records & Muse || This is a Non Official Muse Greatest Hits Collection (2014). A non-profit fan made video, for purposes such as criticism & comment, a fair use permitted by copyright statute."

oh really ??? fair use on Warner Bros stuff ?

« Last Edit: February 26, 2015, 10:28 by Hobostocker »

« Reply #49 on: February 26, 2015, 10:57 »
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Muse only made $34 million last year according to Forbes, so you can see that having their music on youtube is hitting them  :)


 

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