Hey i noticed the movie piracy thread, wrote this gigantic rant, and then realized it didn't relate to the thread, so i made my own thread. Props to whoever reads all this and doesn't just make a little joke about it all in their response.
as a musician, one that will almost certainly be playing for a living (as opposed to being a production guy), i can say that the apathy towards intellectual property rights has taken its toll on the music business in a serious way. I, along with almost all musicians now, will not be able to make a living by selling an album, even if its a hit, because albums no longer sell. This is not just because i play jazz. In fact, i would say that the jazz community is one that continues to have a fairly large level of die hard fans that actually buy a hard copy of whatever record they want. Even with this, there is no way i can make enough money to support myself, even with selling a good record. John mayer, who is good at nothing BUT selling records, is even moving towards other ways of making money. I would bet that he makes more money now from the ads on his youtube videos than from record sales.
For a musician to support himself off of record sales, they have to sell A LOT of records. My friend who pretty much produced his own album, which is now on sale in the iTunes store for a decent price, makes less than 99 cents an album. John mayer, who IS getting produced by a very large company, undoubtedly makes much less per album (if the album were sold for the same price). This is inarguably due to the fact that people really don't care, or don't think to care, that they are stealing someone's product. I am not going to make a judgement of what is right or wrong, but I would argue that it is stealing.
Musicians have also tried to promote their cd's for sales with SAMPLES, that are free. You go to an artists myspace page and they got any number of clips or even entire songs for you to listen to. That should be enough to know if you want the product. Aside from this, you can go to the library in most places, and rent ENTIRE ALBUMS, to see if you want to buy them.
For many music stars i can see that the amount of effort, i will not eve talk about talent, but the amount of EFFORT they put into their music in no way compares to even a part time job. But there are a lot of musicians, especially in the jazz and classical genres, who spend far more time working at their art than any person will put into their job in their entire lives. I know people who practice and study 15 hours a day, and i can tell you right now, it is not all love, excitement and fun. Yea, music is a joy, but a lot of the work, even the majority of the work, just sucks, no way around it. It's fun to play, that's the best part, but for the other 10+ hours of the day, good musicians work their asses off.
It isn't just that musicians are going to be more impoverished due to the piracy, which on a large scale is true. There will always be stars, backed by studio magic, with nice faces and a marketable body and personality. I see a steady decline in the amount of people actually studying and working at the art however. The amount of effort that people put in just isnt worth not being able to sustain oneself. I have seen a lot of musicians in their 30s and 40s just give up because they can't live off what they do. This means we are actually steadily losing an art. The smaller community of musicians results in much less progress and innovation.
I think we are actually moving backwards. The new musical forms are all based off technilogical breakthroughs, not musical ones. Dubstep is entirely based off the use of LFO filters in production, and it changes the beat. All the rhythms that you can find in these new genres are old, not bad, but we already knew about them. There hasn't been any new trend in harmony. Dubstep for instance is based almost solely on one note, and the resolution of other notes to that note (the tonic). I'm not saying these forms are worse or less interesting than any other, just that they are not extremely innovative. I love some dubstep. I love some rap. I have heard amazing music from just about every genre. People listen to all that music for a reason. But for the most part, musicians are now turning to easier forms of music to produce, because the effort required to make the other forms just isn't worth the pay, of the lifestyle.
oh yea, almost all players have to teach private lessons now. I haven't seen one guy who is making a living off albums in a very long time.
What are your thoughts on this. I really think that with the amount of piracy today, music will either regress to it's simplest forms, die out, or turn into something besides an art , like simple media fads, or celebrities selling fashion and merchandise.
as a musician, one that will almost certainly be playing for a living (as opposed to being a production guy), i can say that the apathy towards intellectual property rights has taken its toll on the music business in a serious way. I, along with almost all musicians now, will not be able to make a living by selling an album, even if its a hit, because albums no longer sell. This is not just because i play jazz. In fact, i would say that the jazz community is one that continues to have a fairly large level of die hard fans that actually buy a hard copy of whatever record they want. Even with this, there is no way i can make enough money to support myself, even with selling a good record. John mayer, who is good at nothing BUT selling records, is even moving towards other ways of making money. I would bet that he makes more money now from the ads on his youtube videos than from record sales.
For a musician to support himself off of record sales, they have to sell A LOT of records. My friend who pretty much produced his own album, which is now on sale in the iTunes store for a decent price, makes less than 99 cents an album. John mayer, who IS getting produced by a very large company, undoubtedly makes much less per album (if the album were sold for the same price). This is inarguably due to the fact that people really don't care, or don't think to care, that they are stealing someone's product. I am not going to make a judgement of what is right or wrong, but I would argue that it is stealing.
Musicians have also tried to promote their cd's for sales with SAMPLES, that are free. You go to an artists myspace page and they got any number of clips or even entire songs for you to listen to. That should be enough to know if you want the product. Aside from this, you can go to the library in most places, and rent ENTIRE ALBUMS, to see if you want to buy them.
For many music stars i can see that the amount of effort, i will not eve talk about talent, but the amount of EFFORT they put into their music in no way compares to even a part time job. But there are a lot of musicians, especially in the jazz and classical genres, who spend far more time working at their art than any person will put into their job in their entire lives. I know people who practice and study 15 hours a day, and i can tell you right now, it is not all love, excitement and fun. Yea, music is a joy, but a lot of the work, even the majority of the work, just sucks, no way around it. It's fun to play, that's the best part, but for the other 10+ hours of the day, good musicians work their asses off.
It isn't just that musicians are going to be more impoverished due to the piracy, which on a large scale is true. There will always be stars, backed by studio magic, with nice faces and a marketable body and personality. I see a steady decline in the amount of people actually studying and working at the art however. The amount of effort that people put in just isnt worth not being able to sustain oneself. I have seen a lot of musicians in their 30s and 40s just give up because they can't live off what they do. This means we are actually steadily losing an art. The smaller community of musicians results in much less progress and innovation.
I think we are actually moving backwards. The new musical forms are all based off technilogical breakthroughs, not musical ones. Dubstep is entirely based off the use of LFO filters in production, and it changes the beat. All the rhythms that you can find in these new genres are old, not bad, but we already knew about them. There hasn't been any new trend in harmony. Dubstep for instance is based almost solely on one note, and the resolution of other notes to that note (the tonic). I'm not saying these forms are worse or less interesting than any other, just that they are not extremely innovative. I love some dubstep. I love some rap. I have heard amazing music from just about every genre. People listen to all that music for a reason. But for the most part, musicians are now turning to easier forms of music to produce, because the effort required to make the other forms just isn't worth the pay, of the lifestyle.
oh yea, almost all players have to teach private lessons now. I haven't seen one guy who is making a living off albums in a very long time.
What are your thoughts on this. I really think that with the amount of piracy today, music will either regress to it's simplest forms, die out, or turn into something besides an art , like simple media fads, or celebrities selling fashion and merchandise.
