The internet is not very good for musicians these days, is it?

^ we could draw a distinction between how that change impacts artists vs how it impacts music. It’s obviously a bad deal for that guy, and it’s totally fair that we would reflect on that, but it doesn’t have to be the death of musIc as an art form (not that anyone said it was itt). Again, people still write poetry, right?

if someone writes a poem and no one reads it, is it still poetry?

Or crochet, maybe that’s a better parallel than poetry, given that there are zero professional crochet artists but it’s still a thing people do.

Simon Raymonde piece from last month entitled
‘There’s no money left in the music industry..’

http://www.longlivevinyl.net/simon-says-no-money-music-industry/

Maybe the question is, if you write a poem nobody reads are you really a poet?

http://www.longlivevinyl.net/simon-says-no-money-music-industry/

― piscesx, Monday, July 23, 2018 11:02 AM (fifty-three seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this url is a real journey

I’m crying a lot,tiredness.I feel like I’m banging my head against the wall.I make good and surprising records,I kill myself to make visual,in which I prove it’s about ideas and soul because god forbid anyone should give me a budget.But I get indifference in the industry.

— Roisin Murphy (@roisinmurphy) July 4, 2018

:(

yeah, there was a lot of reaction re her openness and honesty.
no idea if the outcome was/will be positive, but she certainly raised eyebrows.

And it's all so relative because everyone is (naturally) looking at the next step from where they already are. Obv a lot of artists would love to have her level of visibility, or think they would. Maybe it's worse if you've already experienced some financial success in an older version of the industry.

it definitely is not, so some of this is about a generational divide (borne largely of streaming services/generally devaluing of music imo) for those of us that are older and can remember when having a "scene" of people you connected to/saw on a regular basis at shows was a thing

― Οὖτις, Monday, July 23, 2018 11:47 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it’s still like this. im 26

i think the phenomena itt are more about u guys getting older than young ppl changing , or the internet changing in any fundamental way

flops stop reminding us you are young

you’re like 2 years older than me

i’m 31! but i’m glad i come off three years younger

i think the phenomena itt are more about u guys getting older than young ppl changing

this is entirely possible! tbf all I know is my world of young ppl and... most of them do not care about music/bands/shows/records the way my cohort did at their age afaict, it's not quite the cultural signifier/personality marker it was.

it's also a harsh truth that the percentage of people who care about music at all drops as you age. People move away from cities, have kids, stop going out, have to work more, most of their peers don't care about music anymore, it just drops away. I mean, count up how many 75 year olds you know with a record collection.

I think nobody questions that scenes exist, flops, but I wonder a bit about (say) national maintenance of a scene versus regional. Think there might be some more to the idea that we're returning to more strictly regional scenes in particular ways (unevenly applied, as always).

I've been out of the UK for about 15 years and now have a job where I employ mostly 16-22 year olds, and yeah, have noticed a distinct lack of the tribal musical affiliations which seemed to completely define moreorless everyone I knew in the 90s. But in some ways this seems positive, the arbitrary hate for certain genres seems to have faded away, they seem much less judgemental about other people's taste, and possibly more open too.

That observation in part reminds me of a standard framework that has grown up around the 1975 lately, that they don't have just 'one' sound, drew on many things, etc. I'd be hesitant to center them in any argument but it could still be a point to note.

I've been out of the UK for about 15 years and now have a job where I employ mostly 16-22 year olds, and yeah, have noticed a distinct lack of the tribal musical affiliations which seemed to completely define moreorless everyone I knew in the 90s. But in some ways this seems positive, the arbitrary hate for certain genres seems to have faded away, they seem much less judgemental about other people's taste, and possibly more open too.

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, July 23, 2018 8:26 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, music seems to be a lot less tribal now that it was even back in the '90s and it seems to me that people have accepted that music taste is an individual, personal thing rather than a tribalistic thing. That's a natural consequence of everything being available at any time at the touch of a button, whereas before you'd probably be exposed to albums you'd never heard before at friends houses etc. and it could turn into a more shared experience. Tribalism in metal will probably never die, though.

^^^ I was talking about this w my cousin a couple weeks ago and had to cite metal as an exception

\m/ ( -_- ) \m/

I am absolutely speaking from an "indie" perspective, which might be skewed-by-my-age (38)

Lots of electronic musicians and DJs I know, with low overhead, and high guarantees, they're doing fine

There are some periodic droughts but I think that people who use the internet to connect with other local acts, find events to attend, etc. is doing pretty well. I remember checking specific venues to see who was going to play and planning in advance, or relying on word of mouth to get my information on what shows were worth checking out. I'm loathe to congratulate facebook for anything, but the "7 friends are interested in this event" notifications keep surfacing a bunch of shows at venues I've forgotten about, or introducing me to local artists I hadn't heard of.

i also think the winner takes all aspects of online content dissemination/production have led to less widespread coverage of scenes that aren’t located in cities where media is concentrated. (the past coverage of which might have been an accident of timing and media reach in the first place.) but those scenes are still there, chugging along and putting on house shows and releasing cassettes and etc

I think nobody questions that scenes exist, flops, but I wonder a bit about (say) national maintenance of a scene versus regional. Think there might be some more to the idea that we're returning to more strictly regional scenes in particular ways (unevenly applied, as always).

― Ned Raggett, Monday, July 23, 2018 4:20 PM (fifty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe. ive

lol mp3.com

lived in 3 canadian cities and all seem similar in having social music scenes. even in miserably unfriendly vancouver

the winner takes all aspects of online content dissemination/production have led to less widespread coverage of scenes

I misread this as first with the *music* as the content, but it's the ecosystem of reviews/etc, right?

I haven't listened to them because I'm afraid the whole enterprise is insufferable, but in lieu of the local music reviews that the alt-weeklies used to do, there are a few local podcasters and some writers who try to make their way in a system that doesn't have a lot of outlets for publicity. The state NPR affiliate spends a decent amount of time at least mentioning local music, even if their selection of music shows doesn't really cover all genres -- they had a stage at the recent music festival and recorded sets to present on-air at a later date. There might be a blurb for an entire large event in the national media, and local media's reach isn't what it was.

To an extent it's always kind of been winner-take-all at the national scale where, unless a local scene was well-defined enough to get a story in a music mag, publications were mostly covering artists who got major label releases out there, right?

I am 47.

When I was aged roughly 11 to 18 (1982 to 1989), I lived in a world where the music you liked was intimately bound up with your tribe and where you stood socially. There were the burnouts and the goth kids and the deadheads and the New Wavers and the hip-hoppers and the teenyboppers and the punks.

There was enough overlap to be interesting: you could like Broadway show tunes and the Cure and Duran Duran simultaneously. You could like the Dead and Skynyrd simultaneously. You could like the Who and the Clash simultaneously. You could like Ice-T and the Furs simultaneously.

But some overlaps just didn't happen much. There were probably people who were equally into Led Zeppelin and Debarge, but I didn't know them. You could like Lionel Richie and Culture Club, but also liking GnR was a bit harder to parse.

Honestly if that tribalism has truly faded, I say: good riddance.

P sure it has tbh and yes, good riddance.

I mean afaik

I dunno, I feel like at the height of the MTV / Top 40 radio era, it was really common to like both rock and pop. Maybe pop was music you didn't necessarily buy in album form, for a lot of "rock" kids... but who *didn't* like both MC Hammer and G'n'R? (I'm not using the Lionel Richie / Culture Club example, because they were earlier than G'n'R.)

If anything I feel like that era was maybe less "tribal," because MTV played rock, pop, hip-hop, etc. Now kids can block out everything except the music they're specifically into, right?

Right but perhaps it doesn't do as much to define where you get to sit in the cafeteria as it did in 1985?

Just speculating; I don't know because I haven't tried to figure out where I'm supposed to sit in a HS cafeteria for 30 years

I remember being really pissed back in the late 80s when I heard about a Prince concert in my area (this would have been the Sign O the Times tour) after the fact because it wasn't advertised on the radio station I listened to, or in the local paper. If the internet had existed I absolutely would have known about that show and gone to it.

I can't remember how I even learned about concerts in the pre-Internet era (major concerts like that, as opposed to "band flyer" shows)

Like my friends and I were front-row center to see Lou Reed on the "Magic & Loss" tour -- how'd we know to be first in line at the record store when the tix went on sale a few months prior? Not his Twitter feed...

but who *didn't* like both MC Hammer and G'n'R?

Me.

More into Vanilla Ice & Whitesnake, eh?

No, definitely neither of those.

I was 10, almost 11 when "U Can't Touch This" was released and my memory is pretty different from morrisp's. I do remember a distinction between rock kids (like myself) who listened to GnR or Aerosmith and pop kids who listened to MC Hammer.

In reality, a lot of people probably did listen to both but didn't want to admit to it.

they were both awful

Afaict, the 'these days' version of the Internet (Bandcamp/Soundcloud/Youtube/livestreaming/Skype lessons) is not bad for contemporary classical (and I think jazz) composers and musicians, in part for the reasons Adam gives. Most have to teach, do wedding/lounge gigs, or get a day job, which is no different from most times in history, but making music available to people is easier.

I feel like dedicating your life to be a musician would be fine, financially speaking, if there was stuff like rent control and more government grants. There is that reality we are all aware of, outside of the music world, that it is just getting harder and harder for non-STEM workers to justify their existence in the market, that wage are not following costs of living. I am not a musician, but I wish I could purchase more records than I do but I can't because I have debt, so this is a loss of revenue for musicians etc. What I am trying to say is what is crushing the spirit of musicians is the same stuff that is crushing other types of workers across many industries.

All the while Daniel Ek is worth 2.8 billion.

Wonder how much Phil Ek is worth

Not 2.8 billion I don't think.

I used to go to about 30 shows per year, at a rather steady pace of 2 or 3 per month. Then our city got that huge festival going, and as I am not a big crowd + heatwave person I just stopped seeing as many bands as I used to and that did pull me away from the scene.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few years smugly congratulating myself for moving beyond tribalism. But I notice that the end of people using music as a way to define themselves coincided with the end of people buying music, so maybe the dumb tribalism was a necessary condition of a world that enables music as a career choice.