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

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.

the end of people using music as a way to define themselves coincided with the end of people buying music

I don't think there's a causal relationship here, both are a reflection of the devaluing of music - ie, if something is readily available and costs nothing, why invest any value in it, either social or economic? It obviously isn't worth anything.

tbf I enjoy lots of things that have no social or economic value. making music is something like growing a plant or a tree - it has no real recognized economic value and other people probably don't give a shit that I have a rhododendron or whatever but I still enjoy it.

age is also a thing. bands that were big enough to keep touring get the soft-focus haze of hindsight. music that wasn’t something you were into twenty years ago but heard randomly for decades seems ok, for many people

there’s a Journey/Def Leppard show in town today that my coworker is going to with his wife and I doubt either’s really that into it, but their kids are with his mom for a few days so it’s convenient

I’ll settle for correlation over causation. But people can often use the most arbitrary and economically insignificant things to signal affiliations. What color you paint your front door. What coffee chain you frequent.

Οὖτις - I think people still value music; they just express that value in ways other than buying records.

In the past week I: played at a reasonably well-attended acoustic open mic. I watched four documentaries about musicians (Peter Green, Martin Garrix, Lowell George, and Lady Gaga). And I went to two large concerts (Janelle Monae and Pixies/Weezer).

At every moment of this journey, I noticed large numbers of people who were interested in and engaged with music. Nobody bought a record, but everyone I encountered was 110% on board re: music.

Wow, a lot of pessimistic takes on making music itt. As much as I agree with the sentiment of "the activity is more important than the result", I love the results! Often listen to my own stuff and find it both hilarious and inspired, surprised at the distance between where I am now and where I was when I wrote and recorded.

I've had lots of support from friends, who (for reasons that are in part beyond me) really enjoy listening to the stuff too. And it's never been easier to share it than now - I use SC profiles, YT channels, Spotify artist pages... and this whole infrastructure is available to me for free even though hardly any of my tracks have more than 1000 plays (of which half surely come from people I know)

it is just getting harder and harder for non-STEM workers to justify their existence in the market
can someone point me to an appropriate thread for discussing this idea?

I am with niels: that's a rich tangent. But I don't know what the right thread is either. Perhaps create one?

short version: I can work successfully in STEM-adjacent fields precisely because of my background in the arts and humanities (English/philosophy), but it does take a near-continuous PR effort. For which a pro bullshitter is well-positioned, due again to the arts/humanities background; it is a tidy circle.

I'm not sure why STEM work is assumed to be completely safe either

half of the workers in actual labs that I know are constantly worried that research direction will change or that most of their job will be automated and head count will drop because swabbing things on to petri dishes or spinning down samples in a centrifuge is grunt work

yes and: if you have a background in the humanities, especially rhetoric, you will be way better at persuading employers of your value.

i wonder what a spotify for STEM would be like

Just Might as well be walking on the sun on repeat

http://time.com/money/4189471/stem-graduates-highest-starting-salaries/

According to a new report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, more than half the employers surveyed said they planned to hire graduates with bachelor’s degrees in STEM fields, making them the most sought-after candidates entering the job market.

Engineers are expected to make an average of $64,891 right out of school in 2016—a 3% increase over their projected earnings in 2015. Computer science majors, who are expected to take home $61,321, rank as a close second. Math and science majors trail slightly with an average starting salary of $55,087.

Education and humanities majors ranked at the bottom of the list, with expected starting salaries of $34,891 and $46,065, respectively.

Not saying these aren't anxious times for STEM graduates/workers. Everyone is affected by inequality as policy, automation, climate change, etc. However, it's hard to argue there isn't a significant gap with performance artists for example.

Performance artists have never been in great employment demand (for those particular skills), outside of the usual industries — regional theaters, cruise ships, etc. Performers who write & perform original material, even less so. How is the gig economy these days? Isn’t that the real question

yes and: if you have a background in the humanities, especially rhetoric, you will be way better at persuading employers of your value.

― nonsensei (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, July 24, 2018 10:50 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

citation very incredibly much needed

do you WANT to give Facebook ownership of your music data? use soundcloud or bandcamp or youtube or instagram

lol

at any rate, to return things somewhat to the original topic, the focus on "scenes" as applied to music has always been depressing to me. I realize it was ever thus, it's just that virtually every music scene -- or anything scene, really -- is designed to keep people like me out. the internet has been good in that regard because I can find out about and support music without having to ingratiate myself to the correct set of 15 cool kids in bushwick who would probably hate me in principle and in person

to go way back to a YMP post

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

it hasn't faded at all, it just doesn't use music as a marker

Other industries figured out how to more effectively monetize tribalism.

As in, you probably wont be a hardcore punk after 30, but you can be a hardcore libertarian till the day you die.

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.