PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

this is all asssuming that venues will exist and that distribution will exist. there is no evidence that getting rid of the majors, who are pigs that deserve to die, will, in the long run, lead to a renaisance for musicians. it's more likely that things will be even more centralized, and that musicians will find it even more difficult to make a living, at least here in the LA area. i still remember the "old" days before computers or cds, before the rise of the party DJ when we went to stores and bought music and even the crappiest bar room musicians made a living. if one had real skills, a musician was assured of steady work and a decent liveng that would support a family. i'm not seeing a return to that. i'm seeing braincell telling me that i don't deserve to make a living from dilligently tending to my art.

It's working for some people. Independent artists now account for 1/3 of all online sales. That is a huge increase from previous times so your post would appear to be inaccurate.

Remeber when the celbrities use to come to Tower Records on Sunset?
Or one could go to the Rainbow or Gazzara's and then race upstairs to the private area when the doors opened and the posers raced in.
SoCal was the shit until the politicians and do gooders made it impossible for a club to profit.
And even then the Gestapo would hang out by the clubs and pull people over when they closed down.
If one can make a living in Calfornia, they can rule anywhere.
It's sad to see the changes that political appointees have caused, that and the iPod / mp3 world makle it even harder, but you are a survivor, or you'd be doing solo gigs at the Redondo Pier......
Don't think you're alone though. I did a stint of the Coffee shops in the NE USA 6 years ago, and it was the most boring gig I ever did.
No smoking, no drinking, no fuckin' in the non existant dressing rooms, no barroom fights just a bunch of peace loving coffee drinkers who clap as if they are at a Golf tournament.
And people wonder why hundreds of thousands flock to Nevada to buy women and chug alcohol while they get slammed by live bands and visit one of the 74 clubs that are in a 3 mile strip.!!! &**&*&^ !!
If you ever grow weary of the Soviet Socialist State Of Calfornia you can work here. You'll be begging for time off............

braincell wrote:It's working for some people. Independent artists now account for 1/3 of all online sales. That is a huge increase from previous times so your post would appear to be inaccurate.

of course it's working for SOME people. there's a big difference between making a LIVING and selling a thing or two on the internet. your post is another example of misuse of stats. because internet sales from independants are up, everything is great? the internet is brand new. obviously, you're too young to remember how bad it really is, compared to 30 years ago, just one generation ago, there was NO internet. i'm not trying to say the the internet has anything to do with this, i'm just pointing out that things have gotten harder, the more high tech is available, in some cases. heck, i know plenty of people whose talent was only mediocre who made more money playing bars than in a bank or office back in the 60's and 70's. through careful handling of that money, a couple of them retired early and sent their kids to college. try that today....

Actually I retire every year or so, but the absense of war kills me, and I have to come back with yet another idea to make coin with.
Sure it's getting harder every year, but Metamorphasis is vital.
I got it........
Let's put a Reggae Band together with crazy synths and Ganja grooves and reclaim the strip from the genericism it suffers from..
Remeber that outdoor venue I showed you?
We could sell thousands of Scope mastered Redbook CD's and just work Thursdays through Sundays....
Your talented mixes and hair alone sell the product..............let me know.
On any given day 200,000 people walk through there....
We'll get half naked acrobats dancing around, and have fine Ho's walking around like Cigarette girls with harnesses full of CD's.......
Of course smokin' and alcohol will help, liquor sales and street vendors there will have increased sale.......I can see it as plain as day......

A lot of indies make money on the internet and in the past new artists simply were not paid by the labels until they recouped the cost of recording sessions so often they didn't get paid at all.

Grossly overgeneralizing the entire industry under a single banner there...

XITE-1/4LIVE wrote:a Reggae Band

I'm in.



ns

braincell wrote:A lot of indies make money on the internet and in the past new artists simply were not paid by the labels until they recouped the cost of recording sessions so often they didn't get paid at all.

this is kinda pointless too.

NO ONE makes any money until costs are paid. if an independant produces his own music, he makes NO money, until he recoups his production costs. where did you learn accounting?

tempting, Jimmy....

The days of Wall Street and those gay Cirque du Soleil shows are winding down as greedy shareholders and their corporate owners can't hide their false profits any longer.
Political correctness is no longer acceptable here as the Triads, Yakuza and Russian mob money is filtering back in while Unions are gaining ground w/ their Pension fund investments.
In 2 years time we will start seeing more of the Playboy girls of Rock & roll shows, Topless women doing acrobatics,.....no more fags dancing around in leotards.
Hell we even are building a Mob Museum owned and operated by the X FBI agents that ran the midwest Goombas out of town in the late '80's.....I love hypocarcy.
It's feast or famine in this business, and I don't plan on starving...............

Since it costs less to record at home, musicians save a lot of money. When will you know anything Gary?

braincell wrote:Since it costs less to record at home, musicians save a lot of money. When will you know anything Gary?

that's b$. it CAN cost less to record at home, it CAN cost less in a studio. how long have you run a studio? have you priced mics and pres? how about room treatment? it really depends on what you're recording. i know this much, it took actual musicians who knew how to get sounds out of their instrumnets before, with some notable exceptions(people hating geeks in their bedrooms got nowhere without other people). not only that, but musicians used to record at home back inthe day as well. a very famous example is "Angel Baby", recorded very near where i used to live in a living room. this song was a disaster, but people like it and it's one of the biggest hits of all time. then and now, distribution and advertising are the most important factors and the most expensive. what does NOT cost less is marketing. show me one success without real money being spent for marketing and i'll show you 10 million that nobody paid any attention to, regardless of quality.

i'm not against file sharing or the internet for marketing at all. it's an absolute lie to say that things are better because of it, however. some things are better some worse, but it still takes deep pockets to have commercial success. it's amazing how many "viral" campaigns are funded with big money(or it's not so amazing. T Reznor certainly has deep pockets). what has changed is that people are more gullible than they EVER were, because these days people have come to expect something for nothing. when i was a youth, something for nothing was an obvious scam for all but the naive and the retarded.

all these new instruments are cheap, but people spend much more money on them than they used to, also. each thing used to cost more, but people used them for a long time. the funny thing is that those "expensive" instruments are often more valuable today than they were new, something almost NONE of the present offerings will be able to say(old zippos are always more valuable than old bics). on top of that, music stores used to make a good living and the salesmen were knowledgable and had a carreer selling instruments. now everything is discounted, crappy, the salespeople are pimply kids who know nothing and work for nothing and the stores are going out of business right asnd left, leaving a few mega stores behind. the rest of the "biz" is similarly effected by trends. soon, there will ONLY be amazon, cd baby and itunes. 35 years ago, anyone with finished product could put 5 copies in any and every record store he could find, where it would sit in the same bin as the big names. a few shows and sales followed, since people used to heavily attend shows before MTV(how do you thing James Brown and Curtis Mayfield did it?). regional success was there for the taking for the motivated and people used to flip through ALL the records in the bin. a good cover could easily lead to a distribution deal as could a good performance in a night club. those days are gone. good luck.

It doesn't matter what you *need* to get a good sound because people are listening on cheap mp3 players with even cheaper earbuds.

see? YOU are the one making the art crappier. YOU don't care about a good job, because you figure that it's an MP3. the thing is, a crappy recording sounds even crappier on an MP3.

then, you rail against "fake" artists...

what does that have to do with the actual costs of production and distribution anyway? distribution and advertising are still the biggest expenses. even if the distribution costs are just a webmaster, the price is not small. no one is going to do all this work themselves unless they are funded, wealthy, or living with mommy(with the notable exceptions to every rule).

You don't need a "webmaster" that is what wordpress is for. The price *is* small.

braincell wrote:You don't need a "webmaster" that is what wordpress is for. The price *is* small.

then so are the results. come back when you've made some money yourself this way. selling the equivalent of 10 cds a month is NOT impressive. i might really enjoy selling 10 cds a month, i wouldn't turn my nose up at it, but that isn't the equivalent of making a living. it won't even pay the family food budget.

Heaven forbid that you are not able to propagate your gene pool and contribute to global warming. Maybe you need to lower your standard of living instead of bitching all the time.

Some fun facts from USA 2008:

-- Music purchases in 2008 reached 1.5 Billion, marking the fourth consecutive year music sales have exceeded 1 billion; 1.4 billion (2007) vs. 1.2 billion (2006) vs. 1 billion (2005).

-- During 2008, more Vinyl Albums were purchased (1.88 million) than any other year in the history of Nielsen SoundScan. The previous record was in 2000, with 1.5 million LP album sales. -- Note that more than 2 out of every 3 vinyl albums were purchased at an independent music store during the year.

-- Digital Album sales reached an all-time high with more than 65 million sales in 2008; up from 50 million in 2007; an increase of 32% over the previous year. -- Note that digital album sales account for 15% of total album sales compared to 10% in 2007 and 5.5% in 2006.

-- Digital Track sales break the 1 BILLION sales mark for the first time with more than 1,070,000 digital track sales. The previous record was 844 million digital track purchases during 2007; an increase of 27% over 2007.

Apparently, the genres loosing most to filesharing is Country, Latino and Classical music.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/2 ... dist=msr_3

So it seems to me people are still willing to buy, but not in the traditional way.

Funny you mentioned that.
Nashville accounts for most of the data you provided.
For example this year I contacted my old management and said I was ready to hit the road again and tour as the usual sideman ( bitch ) and asked what gigs were avaialable.
Annie Lennox was the only group on the books to promote a new album and tour, and there were 78 Country groups............!!! I recently decided to stay put and go to school and take a straight gig.
I would become an alcholic if I had to play the Joe Bob stuff.......Besides I bought Solaris and XITE-1 to play synth music,or progressive rock, not that crying ass Love it or leave it Yankee crap......the Yoddlin' and Hee Haw voices alone are enough to drive a guy to chuggin' massive amounts of Jager to keep a level perspective.
Would have been cool though to see a controller and a Solaris w/ a laptop and then a dozen acoustic guitars and mandolin/dobro's..............

record(cd and file) sales are not the only measure of a musician's ability to make money.