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

Fgti that’s a challiop.

Why do music? Why not?

It’s like breathing air

internet "community" in general is in a very bad way right now

― Arch Bacon (rushomancy), Monday, July 23, 2018 6:40 AM (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ooh otm

― princess of hell (BradNelson), Monday, July 23, 2018 3:27 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I guess so? It's less about little pockets of interest and more a mire of friends and strangers jumping in and out of conversation

since the advent of Facebook it feels like this opportunity to collaborate and share tunes has become increasingly clunky and lacking in versatility

don't think i'd agree with this. we have more options than ever now. back in the day not everyone had broadband, now, that stuff is included in your wireless plan. it's so easy to throw a new song up on youtube, or soundcloud, or bandcamp. it's not terribly difficult to get material on iTunes even.

i was mostly in a DIY scene and Myspace/Facebook was a monumental help in providing free access, publicity, networking, etc. so many tours i have been on that were entirely arranged through Facebook, contacting venues, coordinating tours, etc. you could see this happening with Myspace but Facebook was so much easier to use.

i don't really agree that the internet is bad for musicians. it is likely bad for the outmoded industry models and no doubt there is drama there but there is going to be drama no matter what in any social scene. it's a huge boon for DIY communities all over the world

who came out of mp3.com?

i’d guess that if you did a little digging those “myspace success stories” were helped on their way by savvy behind the scenes machinations from connected people, much like today’s (insert platform here) upstarts.

not disagreeing with the premise of this thread mind you (post malone, ugh) but just saying that not buying into hype is key

of course there are ways to do these things if you like, i guess i'm just disappointed it's not just a bit... better? Like, just the shitness of Soundcloud and the lack of usability with Facebook. It just feels so obvious that with today's technology there could be a far better platform than what we have

re: mp3.com, the forum I ran used it to sell all our compilations, out of which a good few electronic artists went on to release on Warp, Planet-Mu etc

Hmmm. I find myself mostly agreeing with unperson and fgti here.

If I want to collaborate with someone I just... do it? Using whatever pathway is mutually convenient. It's not like there's a magical combination of tools and interfaces that will be the tipping point between doing a project and not doing it. Make it slightly easier or slightly harder, it won't change what I set out to accomplish.

I've used Soundcloud and Dropbox and Bandcamp; I've taken emailed tracks and added stuff and emailed them back. For me, Soundcloud works OK as an archive of previous work. If someone wants to record or perform something I've written, I can give them an idea of what it sounds like. When my band(s) perform(s), I put the live tracks up there so that our far-flung friends and families can hear kinda what it sounded like. But I don't cruise around Soundcloud or Bandcamp looking for the Next New Thing; I just don't have the energy and the signal-to-noise ratio will always be lopsided.

THAT SAID, I also agree with everybody else. If what you're trying to do is promote your music, sell your music, get your music listened to by people who don't already know you? Yeah, the internet sucks.

But so does every other way of doing those things.

In the 80s and 90s I used to walk around with photocopied flyers and a staple gun. It was mostly a waste of time. We played to our boyfriends/girlfriends/roomates/coworkers, and whoever was at the bar. Sometimes it was just my girlfriend, my parents, and the bartender, and literally no one else. Sometimes we went on college radio stations and did an in-studio appearance. I'm sure the five people who heard those appearances were deeply moved... moved, that is, to stay in their dorms and get high while watching X-Files.

Personally I have no ideas about improving that situation. It has always been a crapshoot.

fuck all that other noise and self flagellation, passion is passion

Not exactly the case for me, I can admit that one of the main things I'm after is a sense of community and some level of validation for what I'm doing. If I wasn't getting that I would keep trying, but the mentality that I'm just expressing creativity in a vacuum doesn't work for me.

Personally, Twitter + Soundcloud/Bandcamp has functioned as a decent Myspace replacement. I rarely discover anyone's music by searching around on Sc/Bc anymore, but follow links or people from Twitter.

For me, maybe the most frustrating thing is the disconnect between that and an irl music scene. It seems ridiculous that Facebook events are still the main way to get the word out about a show/party, obviously there are a lot of issues with that. But that also coincides with getting older, not being able to rely on friends or a social group going to shows, and not being very connected to the age group that is presumably still going out to dance or hear music. Buuuut, I also have the distinct sense that music is not the driving force behind socializing like it was when I was in my 20s.

PS Willl, pls link to your Soundcloud ;)

@ Jordan - I stopped paying for a subscription recently so it kind of cuts off abruptly at 2009 - before that there was a load of breaksteppy stuff on there. I'll probably resubscribe next time I try and actually promote anything: https://soundcloud.com/wascal *

I just finished a job lot of new jacking house over the last month or so for a party up in the Welsh hills last weekend so those will probably be online in the next month or so - I have a feeling it won't be many Ilxor's bag tbh.

*Terrible, terrible artist name I know, but it kind of stuck from many years ago.

a lot of the promotion involved in releasing music has shifted to having a curated facebook / instagram / twitter presence

^^^this and I hate it

music is not the driving force behind socializing like it was when I was in my 20s.

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

But that also coincides with getting older, not being able to rely on friends or a social group going to shows, and not being very connected to the age group that is presumably still going out to dance or hear music. Buuuut, I also have the distinct sense that music is not the driving force behind socializing like it was when I was in my 20s.

All of this, yes.

Personally I try to support my friends' creative endeavors as a golden rule / karmic thing (given that I want people to support my creative endeavors).

But it's a waste of energy to be angry about the fact that suburban parents of young children might be reluctant to hire a babysitter so they can go out on a weeknight to a sketchy part of town (with zero parking and iffy transit) and wait three hours to hear 20 minutes of amateur ambient space-rock while drinking $12 bottles of Corona.

I love music (TM), but I have a pretty high threshold for hiring a babysitter and going to who-knows-where to wait two hours to hear 15 minutes of minutes of amateur acoustic punk-folk while drinking $15 bottles of Bass personally, so I don't judge the legions of people who stay away from my shows.

Ditto even for the comparatively low-commitment step of shlurping around Soundcloud or Bandcamp for exciting new sounds and liking people's tracks. I already have a lot of records (so do most of us) and a lot of sources of reliable recommendations for new things I'd like (so do most of us).

I don't personally have the energy to overcome the signal-to-noise ratio of the entire internet just in case there is one gorgeous baby somewhere out there in the bathwater. Similarly, I highly doubt that a browsing internet rando has a burning need for something that I've created. And I'm fine with that.

for the vast majority of musicians and artists in general, there is no money, no dignity. the internet is not very good for musicians, but then again, nothing is very good for musicians. and that's how i ended up in the rusted root drum circle

soundcloud and mixcloud are for listening to music or dj mixes from artists you like ime, though i do discover a lot of other mixes and discover music via asking the artists what it is.

spotify shows me music i hadn't heard sometimes, via their use of data on me.

twitter is good for discussions about anything i am interested in and it connects the artist to the fan in a way beyond anything yet, ime. there are a lot of things to dislike about twitter, to say the least, but the corners of it where it connects me to people with similar interests or doing similar creative pursuits are invaluable.

i dunno what 'good for musicians' means in this context tho, or how myspace was better. rather than just say older and different. a major part of the problem for musicians, presumably, is that people don't have to buy their music anymore, and whether they buy it or stream it, the spread of choice is so vast that your chances of consolidating any major support are pretty slim. i mean apart from via gigging or djing or whatever.

but i would say as far as tools to promote yourself go we are living in a golden age.

in the future every body builder will have 15 promoted instagram posts of fame

Was thinking about this when I was in Seattle last week, talking to some people at a bar. Mid 20s probably, lots of tattoos, work at bike shops, etc...I would think it would be a given that they would have some level of awareness of a music scene (friends in bands at least), but nope, zero. I know that's super anecdotal and I also have lots of music nerd friends in Seattle, but still felt a little bizarre to me and indicative of how things have changed.

xp to shakey

Karl says in 10 words what takes me 200 words to say.

ha, well usually that ratio is flipped! :)

Fgti that’s a challiop.

Why do music? Why not?

― Ross, Monday, July 23, 2018 10:35 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It’s like breathing air

― Ross, Monday, July 23, 2018 10:35 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

When I worked at the CBC, there was a press release from a singer-songwriter out of B.C. who had, as her tagline, "Why music? Why breathing?"

If you personally equivocate your biological gaseous requirements with a model of making and recording music for the purposes of attractive attention, and subsequently, social currency and capital, and respect within your family and your community-- if this seems like breathing to you, then I cannot help you--

And furthermore the simile of music-making to breathing is aesthetically ugly, not something I find beautiful, despite being an appreciator of music and a consumer of oxygen

I absolutely have observed in myself and in others that music-- especially good music, that is, music that is good enough for others to eventually hear-- music is made with a final product in mind, and that final product is a single, or an album, and it will be played in public, and people will make use of it, and there will be a palpable response to its arrival, either in the form of applause or cash money or nice reviews. I believe that having a fixed and believable final state of one's music is an intrinsic part of many people's music making process. Even with an outsider artist like Tonetta, like Jandek, there is something there, some desired result.

What is there now? I still derive a thrill of pleasure at a well-played show, and a well-done mix, but, to put it succinctly, "my dreams are dead", and it's not just because I'm old and over it, I think that it's increasingly hard for emerging musicians to visualize a positive result of their time and financial investment

The most I can hope for these days is the dopamine rush that accompanies every "otm" my posts receive. Living my dream!

otm

fwiw otm x2

what you're talking about is one way of making and distributing music that is incredibly rare: music as a vocation

everyone else has to find a different reason to make music, or to make art in general, once the hope that there will be a consistent "public" for their work has finally been extinguished. i'm still trying to figure that out myself.

I think that it's increasingly hard for emerging musicians to visualize a positive result of their time and financial investment

i think maybe more than 50% of my therapy time is spent discussing what to do after this realization? or shifting the meaning of "positive result" to something that is closer to "i know that i wrote a good song, or made a good video or animation or whatever bullshit i made that no one saw" rather than "i sold enough copies of my new LP to finance the next one"

for me (and tbh it's always been this way) the key thing is to remember that the activity is more important than the result.

What is there now? I still derive a thrill of pleasure at a well-played show, and a well-done mix, but, to put it succinctly, "my dreams are dead", and it's not just because I'm old and over it, I think that it's increasingly hard for emerging musicians to visualize a positive result of their time and financial investment

otm and needless to say this applies to a lot of creative work

the activity is definitely more important the result, maybe one day my brain will actually understand that

but i also feel like i live in a world where results >>>>>>>>>

Yes fgti that wasn’t a great comparison on my part. I wanted to express that music is a natural thing. Saying this it took me 8 years to release a follow up to my 2010 record. As far as the dream being dead, personally my aim has never been to do this as a career but rather a glorified hobby. I see music making as a way to communicate and transcend this earth, and it’s therapeutic for me to play for friends and improvise on a piano. I started because Tori was my biggest influence, and I will continue as long as I feel like something needs to be expressed - which is not always.

After completing a record I generally dont want to hear it again due to the repetition involved in producing it, but on to the next thing instead or if nothing, living life.

I'm not sure that it is! The feeling of accomplishing something is nice but it's also solitary, time-consuming, and anxiety-producing.

(this goes for making music on my own, not for playing in bands or DJing, which is more social and fun, as long as the people are good and the show isn't a total bust obv)

xp

fgti, is it possible that a lot of us have simply reached a saturation point?

There is no shortage of excellent music, old and new. It's not like we're stuck in rural Appalachia in 1929 or Britain in 1959 or suburban America in 1979, feeling bored and disappointed with our available entertainment choices. Y'know, hungering for the next shipment of fresh sounds. Rushing home to tear open the latest import cut-out EP that we'd read about in an underground zine and getting it on the turntable.

I'm guessing everybody here has a music library with thousands, if not tens of thousands, of pieces of music, including stuff they're not bored with yet. Further, I don't think anybody here has listened to everything released between AD 1750 to last Thursday, and is just bored with it all.

Of course I sympathize with those who still feel they desperately need more, newer, fresher, more obscure, more scenester-ish, more local input. But that is a niche within a niche wrapped in an enigma with a nougaty center. Being disappointed that there isn't a correctly-shaped syringe to feed that jones seems a bit... petty? To me.

as far as music making, i have made multiple albums over the internet, i use the internet for pretty much every step in the process, from sending someone a demo, sharing a Drive folder with rough mixes during album recording, sending someone a link to a youtube video of a band you think the new song should sound like or we should cover, or whatever. all of this is easy, quick, and free. rad.

the downsides are like, what, you get ripped off? how is that different than the way it was before the internet. you can't post music directly on Facebook -- do you WANT to give Facebook ownership of your music data? use soundcloud or bandcamp or youtube or instagram a file sharer or a dozen other mostly free services. compare that to mailing out CDs at a cost of at least $5 per mailer (and more in physical labor time). none of this is needed w the internet. yes you might not get attention. that was always the case.

in general the promotional possibilities of the internet far outweigh any negatives. it is so easy to instantly send music, to coordinate tours/venues, to have a timeline of your stuff, etc. it is not just music either that is benefiting. lots of artists i know are using instagram or whatever to promote their work. for instance there is someone who travels and does stick-and-poke and uses instagram to promote her recent work as well as broadcasting upcoming availability. it is a hugely useful marketing tool, to spread awareness, to help small businesses, etc.

Sure it’s all those things Jordan.

I set time goals for myself when working tho, I won’t labour over one song more than a month. I know perfectionists that never release anything, you gotta know when to just say Ya Done

Anyway an aside but the jaded nature of music criticism is dispiriting - feels like any enthusiasm these days is frowned upon. This site is called I love music....

Regarding saturation points, it’s fair to feel nonplussed about music but I consider stagnation the enemy

in general the promotional possibilities of the internet far outweigh any negatives

how could this possibly be wrong

yes you might not get attention. that was always the case

otm

What would you want from an ideal music platform that isn't already being done piecemeal by other things?

i don't think there has ever been a time when doing a job in the arts was financially sound. you are better off going into finances or real estate. people have always ripped off artists and i don't think streaming companies are all that drastically eviler than the mob run companies of the 60's. ditto with major labels vs. indie record labels, they can all be crooked. there are always good people as well.

if you want to do into a performative line of work, as an artist, or a sports player, or an actor, be aware that very few make it. you have to want to do it largely for the craft. this is what makes you at heart a real artist and not a hack.

if you are a working artist, if you regularly play, if you are professional and play paying gigs, you can make it. i know many people that do this. some of them do corporate music cover gigs. some of them play original stuff. making money off the actual music has always been done by the money men rather than the artists. if you stay busy you tend to do alright.

making money off records/music as tangible object vs. live performance. the latter is and always will be the best venue.

i don't think there has ever been a time when doing a job in the arts was financially sound. you are better off going into finances or real estate

thanks dad

i think everybody here in a creative line of work is aware that almost no one "makes it"

Lol

Making it has always been as likely as winning the lottery. At least in the old model of gatekeeper owned distribution you could always blame your lack of audience on external factors. That’s harder now, and I think this brings an extra degree of existential malaise to the experience of having your music ignored.

question for those who have won the lottery:

how common is it for a musician that has "made it" to also have an agent/manager looking out for them?

Adam is not wrong, but at the same time it's not hard to see the 20th century as a weirdly anomalous golden age period where it was actually *possible* to make a fuck-ton of money as a musician if you were lucky/played your cards right. And even if you didn't make a fuck-ton it was possible to envision making a living by gigging constantly, playing sessions, etc. That has definitely not been true in most cultures for most of human history. But now it's gone, back to square one (ie folk culture)

i'm as wary of "the internet changed things" arguments as anyone else but i think maybe there's a distinction to be made between trying to express yourself or collaborate in relative silence and trying to express yourself or collaborate through a lot of noise, and the latter is what making art and promoting that art on the internet is like. of course you might not "make it." of course no one might hear you at all! but it becomes hard to focus or even remember why you are doing things when 1. previously guaranteed income evaporates never to return 2. everyone is so busily exhausting themselves refining their own presentations of self that it can feel like support systems that also once existed (scenes etc.) have evaporated leaving people in relative darkness and isolation in which to pursue creative work. which you can do for a few years before the second-guessing and insecurity and anxiety and pointlessness eat away at you totally, sure (only my personal experiences reflected in this sentence)

i mean, i'm in a band, i just made an album, and i don't know if we'll ever make another one bc it's a huge fuckin money pit even split between multiple people, especially afterward when i'm thinking to myself "huh only me and my friends will ever listen to this record to completion." i'm proud of it! i'm glad i did it! but one of the old forms of knowing something is finished has dissolved and mutated away from artists and has largely become difficult and pointless and another unit of oversaturation for ppl who experience music like ymp. i'm not saying it isn't extremely difficult and that craft isn't paramount and shouldn't be the driving force of any creative work; i'm saying that it feels like the few footholds that used to be there, that motivated artists to create more work and push forward, aren't, and its fucking discouraging when you're inside of it and feel like you can't grab onto anything secure

OTM

well, nice knowing I'm not alone ruminating on these things lol

so a new music platform with a built-in grant structure would be the solution?

multi-xp lol yeah I meant job security isn't evenly distributed across STEM careers

it's still insanely more likely when it comes to jobs that pay

Was music a safe ticket to lucrative and secure employment at some point in history?

Prob in the 1700s

Art was commissioned a lot more and it was a considerable amount of money more back then

Now you get a loan

I mean at one point almost everyone was a serf so.. 100% employment

idk -- maybe i just have never tried to be musically involved during other eras, but this era seems to be (to me, from my perspective) one of lowered barriers to entry, which yields a more diverse and potentially interesting crop of musical artists because people who had been outside (not involved in or excluded from these communities or groups from previous eras of musical activity) are suddenly in control of the same tools, or similar tools, as people who previously held all of the power.

with ease of recording and mixing one's own stuff to the ease of sharing it on bandcamp or soundcloud and then telling people about it on social media -- all of the barriers to entry are at least lowered to people in possession of those tools and ideas they are willing to develop. maybe this is bad for some groups of musical people but it's good for me! i can be who i want to be now, and collaborate with people who have similar interests. it's great! when i was a kid all i had was a tape recorder and no one to help me. now? i have the tools and i can do it myself. that's an improvement imo.

^^excellent point

I actually considered posting "it's all been downhill since the decline of royal patronage" earlier. xp

LL otm

La Lechera also makes excellent points. xp!

the one trend i've noticed in young people music scenes in north america is a shift away from bands and towards solo electronic projects who do lucrative dj gigs. it surely has something to do with economics but i think it's also just a cultural shift

It's an excellent post, LL. And I see it tying into the larger question this way: what, exactly, is valued, what is value, and where does it come from? You've made a clear case here that both the superstar dream model and the 'our band could be your life' model are limiting (thinking in part about people who literally can't/will never be able to put in that kind of time and commitment), while the romanticism of the 'record on four-track in your bedroom and make 50 tapes' model is outdated in an era of more immediate connection.

the lowered barrier to entry is undoubtedly great, but the same issue still exists in getting people to care about unfamiliar artists. the barrier's not just "a fuckton of capital" anymore but it is "a fuckton of capital and/or a fuckton of social capital"

How do you develop your own value within the community? "Where does it come from" is a very interesting question too imo. My guess is that because musicians aren't a monolith, it comes from different places for people with different musical goals.

Also I have found that "we jam econo" is more useful as an ethos than "our band could be your life" because one is something that is within my control and the other is definitely not.

young people music scenes in north america is a shift away from bands and towards solo electronic projects who do lucrative dj gigs.

"lucrative"

xp Right, definitely.

To Katherine: I think that's key but I also think that's part of what can be called a retreat from the idea that there's a way to know about 'everything.' While always impossible, the illusion of being reasonably au courant held for a long time due to limitations in terms of cultural production. With that gone, easier now to say "Well this is of interest" as opposed to "This is era/genre defining." And more truthful. (Obv more can be said.)

yeah LL post is good. i think there's an interesting unintended side-effect to the lowering of barriers in that the absolute diversity of music increases but the average diversity decreases. for every creative genius who would previously have been locked out enter and make original stuff, there are 20 derivative synth solo projects (or whatever). since individual listeners only see a small non-random snapshot of all music, relative diversity is more important to our perceptions. kind of a weird cognitive bias we have. it can give the impression that music is becoming more samey or less creative, even if globally that's not the case

Basically the explosion of the amount of stuff means that universality is less and less of a factor. 'Everyone' (not really but bear with me) can hear something now; rolling the dice and assuming you can place a marker that 'everyone' will in a practical and unavoidable sense continues to ebb. These are truisms based on long trends but they are further accelerating.

"lucrative"

― change display name (Jordan), Tuesday, July 24, 2018 12:39 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

zing! but you know, it's relative. several of my friends live off djing now, in the sense of not working side jobs. none of my friends in bands ever did that

Also the glass-half-full take on the cliquish scenes and social capital that Katherine is complaining about is that a lot of exciting music still comes out of irl communities, people supporting and motivating each other, which is a good thing imo (although can be frustrating if you're outside of it, sure).

xp

So I was writing a long post in the best multi-album run 2010+ thread detailing that there's been a whole bunch of female musicians that have been on really good runs this decade, at least to me. I haven't statically compared the 2010s to preceding decades, but to my unscientific eye it seems to me like we are living in an outlier so far. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

In any case I was wondering if female musicians/female critics saw a levelling of the playing field for them over the past few years? And if yes (or no!) if it is thanks to the internet?

I'm probably not the best data point here as far as female critics, but as far as female musicians, then the playing field is more level if you have PR and/or social capital, are young, and working in a currently trendy genre, but otherwise not remotely. (see the Roisin Murphy quote upthread). but I wouldn't attribute it to the internet, nor overt sexism, just the bleak reality that large swaths of people don't care about female musicians and especially don't care about ones outside that narrow purview.

feel for roisin murphy re that quote, damn

also with niels on the negativity itt

Personally I want to read more about the broken dreams of musicians itt, it is sweetly cathartic.