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

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?

idk i was just kinda rambling about my own problems

^ we all are.

obv things suck for musicians now and the internet leading to people not buying physical format musical products is a huge part of that but, i dunno, a lot of great, less popular bands from say the 80s in the uk had members working in the informal economy and/or being on the dole to make ends meet and the biography many of punk, indie, underground etc. bands from the late 20th century involves members leaving to go to university or whatever.

I have heard a very interesting argument from another friend, in the past, that the idea that "recorded music is saleable product" is itself an anomaly and one that should be corrected, along with the idea that one can/should derive an income from the creation of recorded music

That recorded music as an art form would be improved by removing accumulation-of-capital from the list of reasons for its creation

Maybe he just made that argument to make me feel shitty tho

Outic OTM re the 20th c. aberration/back to folk culture idea. Our angst is a result of viewing the 21st century through 20th c. eyes.

it's certainly an anomaly but it begs the question of what should replace it... nothing?

xp

Honestly one of the reasons I started gravitating closer to dance music is that the built-in functional, communal aspect was appealing (DJ mixes etc). Other paths (making more background-y music, sending beats to rappers, etc) seemed more likely to lead to isolation.

Also, DJs actually download tracks.

Outic OTM re the 20th c. aberration/back to folk culture idea. Our angst is a result of viewing the 21st century through 20th c. eyes.

Yeah, the entire recorded music industry was a bubble based on technological limitations. As those limitations fell away, the bubble collapsed.

Canada has a support structure in place for musicians though, no?

What should replace it? Just doing things for the love of it, and to entertain your tiny circle of interested friends? I feel like Emily Dickinson or Franz Kafka should be the models of future musicians motivations.

to expand on my point about returning to folk culture - what I was referring to was the production (and consumption) of music re-assuming several characteristics of old, pre-recording technology culture. Being performed primarily by unpaid "amateurs" for the specific purpose of entertaining themselves and their small social circle (define that however you like - friends & families, facebook/twitter followers, whatever). Aesthetics will be developed and defined not by a monolithic pop culture, but largely by the needs and interests of various, relatively isolated groups and subcultures. Previously the boundaries isolating different folk cultures was geographic, but in the internet age, while geography will still play a role, subcultures are going to be self-selected based on interests, aesthetic preferences, politics, etc.

There will probably always be an elite of professionals that are essentially bankrolled by patrons (major corporate label money).

Will music be qualitatively "better" or "worse"? I have no idea, hard to measure. What it will be is a labor of love supported strictly by much smaller, isolated communities.

xp

twitter for the community.
bandcamp for the hosting/music.
I have found the whole synthwave scene revolves around this tag-team.

patreon is the future obv, unfortunately i was struck by lightning while typing this sentence

I feel like Emily Dickinson or Franz Kafka should be the models of future musicians motivations.

I don't disagree with you point but... maybe pick more encouraging icons?

like, those are two really fucking miserable people

the recorded music industry is still a $4 bn business these days, but the vast vast majority of that cash filters to the top .001% of artists and their affiliates.

i feel like anyone doing creative work should get paid for it

society doesn't care about your feelings

hell yeah it doesn't

Emily Kafka is my next band name, thanks

Ha, yes that’s suppose I’m being deliberately glum there to make the point. Like, if the possibility of becoming lauded but never making a penny isn’t enough for you, maybe you’re in the wrong game.

I wonder how different poetry would be there had been a similar amount of cash/industry in it.

Maura just shared this on Twitter and it's relevant

http://gloriousnoise.com/2018/the-importance-of-artifact

Like, if the possibility of becoming lauded but never making a penny isn’t enough for you, maybe you’re in the wrong game.

maybe the problem isn’t me but the game

jk the problem is always me

somehow there's something less icky about a person directly commissioning an artist to make something for pay than the patreon model but I can't quite articulate why it feels that way.

because the latter involves the internet, duh

to expand on my point about returning to folk culture - what I was referring to was the production (and consumption) of music re-assuming several characteristics of old, pre-recording technology culture. Being performed primarily by unpaid "amateurs" for the specific purpose of entertaining themselves and their small social circle (define that however you like - friends & families, facebook/twitter followers, whatever). Aesthetics will be developed and defined not by a monolithic pop culture, but largely by the needs and interests of various, relatively isolated groups and subcultures. Previously the boundaries isolating different folk cultures was geographic, but in the internet age, while geography will still play a role, subcultures are going to be self-selected based on interests, aesthetic preferences, politics, etc.

Yeah, I discussed this with jazz guitarist/bassist Joe Morris a few years ago - the idea that the "star" musician is effectively dead and gone, replaced by "there's a guy in my town who's a really good guitar player." I mean, never mind selling a million records - think of how many musicians can't even afford to tour more than one or two states away from where they live.

we can't tour at all and never have! I don't really regret this decision tbh.

^ 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

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