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#41
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
DeeAa wrote:
On 6 tammi, 14:02, Mike Brown wrote: In article , DeeAa wrote: I don't see why I would need to ever buy music any more; So, nobody can make a living from music? Sounds like a sad old world to me, glad I won't be around to see it. No, I mean, I pay a percentage of tax for every piece of equipment that can play&store music or video, be it a floppy disk, harddrive, TV, mobile phone, memory card, whatever...a percentage of everything like that goes to ASCAP and is relayed to artists for radio play etc. I guess you don't understand how ASCAP and BMI handle those distros, and how they determine who gets what. The corporate bureaucracy will be riding in limos, the top artists will get the rest of the money, and the rest of us will find some other line of work. I also play the said 9,90 a month directly for being able to play music anywhere. And Spotify in turn pays as near to nothing as you can imagine for that music. This graphic is two years out of date now, but I follow these issues and the trend is not for the better from a working musician's point of view. http://www.informationisbeautiful.ne...ic-artists-ear n-online/ http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/012511pointzero http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/perm...1116stholdings http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/...centuryspotify Further, Spotify operates in the manner of a pirate, taking and distributing whatever it wishes to without compensation except where a major label can strongarm them into a contract. Some very high profile artists have been fighting with Spotify for a while now attempting to have tracks that were never licensed removed from the system. And here's how cute they are for the little folks: http://digitalmusicnews.com/permalin...111206spotmeup I also pay a general media tax, part of which goes to ASCAP. I pay for network access and cable TV part of which all goes to ASCAP. I pay something like $40-$60 in media related payments a month, not including phone bills etc. That's way more I have ever spent on CDs per month for sure. People who have a radio open in their store or company have to pay for that also, according to number of listeners. All this goes direct to ASCAP. Same as radio play and TV showings. Every gig played, a report is made and sent to ASCAP who pay the musician. All that is changed is that instead of getting paid 90c per each $20 CD sold the musician gets paid directly by ASCAP and Spotify etc. The musician doesn't suffer, large media companies may some. If anything, having stopped paying for CD's and DVD's I've started spending way more for music & media actually. Cheers, Dee The gist of it is this: you are not paying enough for the service to allow the creators of the art you enjoy to stay alive doing that art. Spotify offers one rationalization after another to justify what they do, my favorite one amounting essentially to "our piracy is better than the other guy's piracy". http://mymusicthing.com/survey-still...ittle-love-for -spotify/ "With 18% of their shares owned by major labels, and artists receiving fractions of a penny per stream, Spotify has managed to become the poster boy for everything that is wrong with both the old and new music industry when it comes to artist compensation." ----- "http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1047525 Meanwhile, they are failing as a business, running on hype that excites people who need to get rid of lots of money. http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/101111spotify -- shut up and play your guitar * http://hankalrich.com/ http://www.youtube.com/walkinaymusic http://www.sonicbids.com/HankandShaidri |
#42
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
Wilbur wrote:
On Thu, 5 Jan 2012 23:02:18 -0800 (PST), DeeAa wrote: I for one firmly believe it won't take long for all physical media to just basically vanish. I believe in a decade or two most data, including music and video, are all on cloud servers, accessible anywhere direct to earbuds or whatever device, whenever desired. snip A lot of people are going to hate what you wrote, and they'll vociferously deny it and fight it. But I think you're just about spot on. People have been making that type of statement for many years now. Meanhwile, back to reality, where in the US CD's earned two-thirds of the money last year, and that doesn't count perhaps ten million units sold that never got scanned at retail. -- shut up and play your guitar * http://hankalrich.com/ http://www.youtube.com/walkinaymusic http://www.sonicbids.com/HankandShaidri |
#43
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
hank alrich wrote:
Arkansan wrote: Sean Conolly wrote: Eventually people are going to rediscover how good uncompressed music can sound, and how enjoyable it can be on it's own without some kind of video. They may even start to rediscover how good LIVE music can be, surpassing even the best recordings. We can only hope. Sean Preach it, brother. This will not happen until the quality of live sound reinforcement gets a friggin' clue. I've been spending enough time in Austin to hear direcdtly that the situation is stupidly dire. Ain't just Austin, either. Look - *knowing what you are doing just puts you in with the others like you*. What is preferred is the "Indie cred" or closeness to the "Scene", not ability**. Go to Cocoa beach and see what passes for live entertainment. If you can reproduce the Corona Beer Commercial experience* for people, you win. *I once sat in a restaurant and watched a young couple do this. Open Coronas untouched for close to an hour... they didn't actually move... **watch "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" some time.... It does, however, offer opportunity for a handful of venues. Bronco Bowl, 1962-200x. -- Les Cargill |
#44
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
On Jan 6, 11:24*am, (hank alrich) wrote:
Wilbur wrote: On Thu, 5 Jan 2012 23:02:18 -0800 (PST), DeeAa wrote: I for one firmly believe it won't take long for all physical media to just basically vanish. I believe in a decade or two most data, including music and video, are all on cloud servers, accessible anywhere direct to earbuds or whatever device, whenever desired. snip A lot of people are going to hate what you wrote, and they'll vociferously deny it and fight it. *But I think you're just about spot on. People have been making that type of statement for many years now. Meanhwile, back to reality, where in the US CD's earned two-thirds of the money last year, and that doesn't count perhaps ten million units sold that never got scanned at retail. Sure, but that's a snapshot of this point in time. If you look at the snapshot from ten years ago, there was very little in revenue from downloads - it was all from CD's (and some vinyl, tapes, abacuses, whatever). Five years ago there was more from downloads, less from CD's. Now it's whatever it is now. But I'm very confident that ten years from now the CD portion will be as close to zero as the vinyl portion is now, and even downloads might be relatively small as the streaming portion grows. Why own a copy (electronic, CD, vinyl, tape or anything) of Like a Rolling Stone when I can hear it any time I want wherever I am on the device I always have with me? It reminds me of the late 90's, when I was telling people that 35mm film photography was dead. "No it's not", they would say, and then they'd quote some statistics that showed 35mm film accounting for 90% of all pictures taken, or something like that. Sure... NOW... but look into the future. Sometimes the future is really not that hard to see coming. |
#45
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
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#46
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
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#47
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
On Jan 6, 7:24*am, "Arny Krueger" wrote:
"Sean Conolly" wrote in message ... "Steve Hawkins" wrote in message . 131.10... (hank alrich) wrote in news:1kde7mq.1pyo0ig1sejgr8N% : We're making pennies off the current system of digital distribution and I cringe everytime I hear a compressed version of a tune I'm familiar with. Earbuds, Pods/Pads, computers and such are becoming the dominant playback devices. *I don't think my niece and nephew even own a stereo system.. This is a point I was considering recently - I actually know very few people who have a decent home stereo now, because they're all just using whatever they can connect to the computer or the TV. Eventually people are going to rediscover how good uncompressed music can sound, and how enjoyable it can be on it's own without some kind of video. They may even start to rediscover how good LIVE music can be, surpassing even the best recordings. I am unsure about this. Reproduced sound has gotten so good that the incentive to go to a live concert is vastly diminished. Some years back I was invited to a so-called live concert and my mental process was something like this: The venue has thousands of seats and even though it is one of the best large music venues in town, its day job is being a basketball stadium. Their sound system isn't nearly as good as my home stereo. Their mixers are questionable. Some of the acts will be working with video that isn't as good as the large screen HDTV at home. The venue is so large that I will end up listening to their sound system and watching their video. I think I will stay home and if anything spend the money on several of the artist's recordings, given the costs of even cheap concert tickets. But a live concert by talented musicians holds the possibility of experiencing something completely unexpected. That doesn;t come thru on DVD for me. I go to shows in NOLA and elsewhere and 90% of them are useless. But the 10% that are stunning keep me coming back. Gilian Welch on DVD just doesn;'t do it for me the way seeing her and husband live can change my world. hans |
#48
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
On Jan 6, 11:24*am, (hank alrich) wrote:
Wilbur wrote: On Thu, 5 Jan 2012 23:02:18 -0800 (PST), DeeAa wrote: I for one firmly believe it won't take long for all physical media to just basically vanish. I believe in a decade or two most data, including music and video, are all on cloud servers, accessible anywhere direct to earbuds or whatever device, whenever desired. snip A lot of people are going to hate what you wrote, and they'll vociferously deny it and fight it. *But I think you're just about spot on. People have been making that type of statement for many years now. Meanhwile, back to reality, where in the US CD's earned two-thirds of the money last year, and that doesn't count perhaps ten million units sold that never got scanned at retail. -- shut up and play your guitar *http://hankalrich.com/http://www.you...HankandShaidri Oh... and BTW... I would point out that sales of rmmga's CDV have been somewhat sluggish... Plenty more copies in stock at CDBaby.com for anyone to buy who wants one. Or two. |
#49
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
On Jan 5, 6:42*pm, Ron Capik wrote:
On 1/5/2012 7:18 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote: Ron *wrote: On 1/5/2012 5:23 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote: Arny * wrote: However, with much less than 1% of the market, non-digital recordings would seem to be a very tiny niche. Absolutely, but it's a great niche to be in. Mind you, the whole market for music that is intended to be listened to rather than absorbed in the background is a fairly tiny niche. And that is, oh, such a sad commentary on the state of today's musical culture. I'm not sure it was ever any different. --scott I believe there was a brief period in the 60's and 70's when people listened to full albums; albums ranging from Broadway shows to the Grand Canyon Suite to Houses of the Holy. Then too, it depends on one's definition of "intended to be listened to." Later... Ron Capik -- Part of this behavior is also related to the effort/annoyance that would be required to play individual songs on vinyl. The LP was made to play the whole side. That's not a characteristic of digital media and CDs. hans |
#51
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
MKR wrote:
It reminds me of the late 90's, when I was telling people that 35mm film photography was dead. "No it's not", they would say, and then they'd quote some statistics that showed 35mm film accounting for 90% of all pictures taken, or something like that. Sure... NOW... but look into the future. Sometimes the future is really not that hard to see coming. Well, that's an interesting sort of analogy. Because... even though 35mm photography is mostly dead, there are probably more people shooting 4X5 and 8X10 today than were doing so in the late 90s. Big markets turn into small niche markets, but that fragmentation is fine when there are enough different small niche markets to keep everyone employed. I don't see fragmentation as being a bad thing at all, and I don't see new distribution formats being a bad thing at all... they will mostly replace older distribution media, maybe 90%. But that last 10% is still a viable market. What I find a bad thing is that people are having a hard time getting paid. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
#52
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
wrote in news:je7hd9$sr9$2
@news.albasani.net: On 2012-01-06 (hankalrich) said: snip I don't see why I would need to ever buy music any more; I guess you don't understand how ASCAP and BMI handle those distros, and how they determine who gets what. The corporate bureaucracy will be riding in limos, the top artists will get the rest of the money, and the rest of us will find some other line of work. He obviously doesn't. but he's in three different bands. I'll bet they're all hobbyists, and not a one of them contains musicians who make their living via their music. These are all folks with day jobs who play their music as a hobby. I also play the said 9,90 a month directly for being able to play music anywhere. And Spotify in turn pays as near to nothing as you can imagine for that music. This graphic is two years out of date now, but I follow these issues and the trend is not for the better from a working musician's point of view. But all these cheerleaders for this crap aren't working musicians Hank. They've never depended on their art for their sustenance. IT's always been a hobby, they do it because they have fun doing it. Riiiight. Let's not forget those "real" musicians, the ones who rely on working spouses, trust funds, family businesses, retirement plans, etc. or the ones who have to teach 100 hours to perform one hour. Since when did a "Day Job" become the legitimizing factor of who's a working musician or determine what someone should expect to be paid for their work? Steve Hawkins |
#53
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
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#54
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
JEff writes: snip I'll bet they're all hobbyists, and not a one of them contains musicians who make their living via their music. These are all folks with day jobs who play their music as a hobby. I also play the said 9,90 a month directly for being able to play music anywhere. And Spotify in turn pays as near to nothing as you can imagine for that music. This graphic is two years out of date now, but I follow these issues and the trend is not for the better from a working musician's point of view. But all these cheerleaders for this crap aren't working musicians Hank. They've never depended on their art for their sustenance. IT's always been a hobby, they do it because they have fun doing it. You know, I'm not a cheerleader for this, and I'm unfortunately having to do it as a side job. I do it because I have fun doing it, yes. But I also do it because I have to do it. Like Keef Richards said: "To a musician, making music is like breathing." IOW, it's not a choice. Acknowledged and understood. Still you understand the otehr part of it too, that some of us do it because we feel the need, but because it's what we do! I'm trying to maneuver myself into a full-time gig, but it's dang hard to do. And watching folks pimp the play for no pay thing kinda' bums me out. There are some gigs I do for free as a ministry to those who can't afford it, but some dude who wrote about half of the New Testament also said that a minister is worthy of his pay. What was it, don't muzzle the ox as he threshes your grain? Put in other words, I'd do it for free if I was independently wealthy and could both pay the musicians around me and keep my wife and kids fed, but I'm not, so I won't. And I'm not even sure that it would be good for the industry as a whole if I did so. Understood, but it's the hobbyists who demand that i provide them services for free as well. Gee they'd like me to play on their gospel album, if I"ll play for free or for cheap, etc. YEs it's a labor of love for many of us, as much a part of us and our lives as breathing. i fit within that definition as well, but I drew the line in the dirt many years ago. That's why I'm selling off some of the gear in a remote truck and working on a system with two racks of gear that I can bring in to record somebody, or record my own stuff that still pays me to operate it, while providing the customer good value. The other gig, BTW, is jail minister. I do that because I love it, too--if you saw what I was paid, you'd see that too. *self-depreciating eye roll* I guess I say that to say: don't look down on those of us musicians who don't do it for a living. Some of us are trying to get to be "working musicians." I don't at all, at least those who play as an avocation who understand that for some of us we can't afford to sell ourselves cheap to support somebody else's hobby. My hobby is ham radio. Music or recording is no way a hobby for me, and although I love waht I do, both the recording and the performance I won't cheapen what I do to stroke somebody else's ego. There are times I"ll play for short money, if i really enjoy the music I"m playing. The less I enjoy what I"m playing, or the musicians I"m working with the more i demand that I be adequately compensated. Compensating those of us who do this for our daily bread adequately helps the hobbyist as well. If he treats the gig in a professional manner then paying him appropriately enables him to better support his hobby, and do those gigs without pay that he would like to do because it's for a good cause. That's one reason I used to really like the American Federation of Musicians' music performance trust fund program. Richard webb, replace anything before at with elspider Everybody does better when everybody does better. |
#55
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
On Jan 6, 1:50*pm, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
MKR wrote: It reminds me of the late 90's, when I was telling people that 35mm film photography was dead. *"No it's not", they would say, and then they'd quote some statistics that showed 35mm film accounting for 90% of all pictures taken, or something like that. *Sure... *NOW... *but look into the future. *Sometimes the future is really not that hard to see coming. Well, that's an interesting sort of analogy. Because... even though 35mm photography is mostly dead, there are probably more people shooting 4X5 and 8X10 today than were doing so in the late 90s. Well, maybe... I'll have to take your word on that. But there were very few doing 4x5 and 8x10 then, too (relative to the number of people taking 35mm photos). That's always been a niche hobbyist market, and probably always will be. There are still blacksmiths making horseshoes and some people hand-churn butter, too. There might even still be people recording onto wax cylinders, laquer disks and 8-track tapes, I suppose. And maybe in 20 years there will still be people making CD's, although somehow I think the romance of the digital Compact Disc is less than that of hand-churned butter or hand-pounded horseshoes, so I'm guessing that niche will be vanishingly small. Already the Compact Disc format is pretty obsolete (it's only 700 MB), and once the tunes are digitized, the storage medium is pretty much irrelevant. Big markets turn into small niche markets, but that fragmentation is fine when there are enough different small niche markets to keep everyone employed. I don't see fragmentation as being a bad thing at all, and I don't see new distribution formats being a bad thing at all... they will mostly replace older distribution media, maybe 90%. *But that last 10% is still a viable market. Sure - no argument here. There will no doubt be people shooting 35mm film for many many years to come. But let's admit that it's just a hobbyist niche market, and I don't believe it will be anywhere near 10%. What I find a bad thing is that people are having a hard time getting paid. Agreed. |
#56
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
The gist of it is this: you are not paying enough for the service to allow the creators of the art you enjoy to stay alive doing that art. Spotify offers one rationalization after another to justify what they do, my favorite one amounting essentially to "our piracy is better than the other guy's piracy". http://mymusicthing.com/survey-still...ittle-love-for -spotify/ "With 18% of their shares owned by major labels, and artists receiving fractions of a penny per stream, Spotify has managed to become the poster boy for everything that is wrong with both the old and new music industry when it comes to artist compensation." ----- "http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1047525 Meanwhile, they are failing as a business, running on hype that excites people who need to get rid of lots of money. http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/101111spotify In a nutshell. None of these new "distributors" or whatever they call themselves are interested in anything except the bottom line. Legallity, morality, and honesty don't come into it. Thanks Hank. |
#57
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
On 1/6/2012 9:28 AM, Deb Cowan wrote:
I haven't read all the posts in this thread, but I do want to say that here in the US at least, the small intimate venue is quite popular. An example of this would be the house concert, where there is hardly ever a sound system used. It's hard to make a living that way. It sounds pretty good to take in $15 per head for maybe 30-35 people and sell a dozen CDs or so, but you can't do house concerts too close together, and remember, there's no overhead. The hosts don't take 20% of the gate. Lots of travel. You have to do 10 a month every month to keep a roof over your head and feed the dog and cat. You have a pretty busy schedule. -- "Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge of audio." - John Watkinson http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and interesting audio stuff |
#58
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
On Jan 6, 3:31*pm, DeeAa wrote:
I have to say, I am not in any way wanting to promote 'free' music and no income to artists. I just think that things are changing, and instead of bickering and fighting it, it's time to work to improve the situation and make the best of it. Did a 'working musician' ever get a real income from CD sales? I got a check for about $60 about 7 or 8 years after my first CD went on sale on Amazon.com. Does that count? |
#59
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
On Jan 6, 4:12*pm, Mike Brown wrote:
The gist of it is this: you are not paying enough for the service to allow the creators of the art you enjoy to stay alive doing that art. Spotify offers one rationalization after another to justify what they do, my favorite one amounting essentially to "our piracy is better than the other guy's piracy". http://mymusicthing.com/survey-still...ittle-love-for -spotify/ "With 18% of their shares owned by major labels, and artists receiving fractions of a penny per stream, Spotify has managed to become the poster boy for everything that is wrong with both the old and new music industry when it comes to artist compensation." ----- "http://www.musicweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=1047525 Meanwhile, they are failing as a business, running on hype that excites people who need to get rid of lots of money. http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/101111spotify In a nutshell. None of these new "distributors" or whatever they call themselves are interested in anything except the bottom line. Legallity, morality, and honesty don't come into it. Thanks Hank. Same as it ever was. There's an anecdote in a book (I think it was "Music Men") that described an irate artist (I think it may have been Solomon Burke) storming into the record company president's office demanding that he be paid the money he was rightly owed from royalties for his best- selling records, and the record company guy calmed him down by giving him the keys to a Cadillac. After the artist left the building, another record company guy who witnessed this laughed and said something like "We owe him a LOT more money than that Cadillac is worth". And the other executive laughed and said "That's nothing - it's a rental." |
#60
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
MKR wrote:
Well, maybe... I'll have to take your word on that. But there were very few doing 4x5 and 8x10 then, too (relative to the number of people taking 35mm photos). That's always been a niche hobbyist market, and probably always will be. There are still blacksmiths making horseshoes and some people hand-churn butter, too. Precisely! I have no qualms about being the blacksmith, especially if I am the only blacksmith left. There might even still be people recording onto wax cylinders, laquer disks and 8-track tapes, I suppose. And maybe in 20 years there will still be people making CD's, although somehow I think the romance of the digital Compact Disc is less than that of hand-churned butter or hand-pounded horseshoes, so I'm guessing that niche will be vanishingly small. Already the Compact Disc format is pretty obsolete (it's only 700 MB), and once the tunes are digitized, the storage medium is pretty much irrelevant. Agreed, I predict vinyl will outlast the CD. Dunno about wax cylinders but maybe I should think about getting into that market.... does not look like much competition there... --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
#61
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
On Fri, 6 Jan 2012 11:25:06 -0800 (PST), hans
wrote: Part of this behavior is also related to the effort/annoyance that would be required to play individual songs on vinyl. The LP was made to play the whole side. That's not a characteristic of digital media and CDs. Why is that not a characteristic of CDs? In fact, I think they are better than vinyl LPs for that because you can play the whole thing without having to get up and flip it. Granted, you *can* put it on shuffle, but you don't have to, if the best way to listen to an album is all the way through. |
#62
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
Part of this behavior is also related to the effort/annoyance that
would be required to play individual songs on vinyl. The LP was made to play the whole side. That's not a characteristic of digital media and CDs. This is rather a backwards way of putting it. What you really mean is that phonograph-record playback equipment doesn't include any built-in random-access mechanism. Towards the end of the LP era, several companies made integrated turntables that could locate the blank areas at the beginnings of bands. These 'tables were programmable. |
#63
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
On Jan 6, 6:24*pm, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
I predict vinyl will outlast the CD. *Dunno about wax cylinders but maybe I should think about getting into that market.... *does not look like much competition there... There's a little -- there was a guy at Folk Alliance a couple of years ago from Middle Tenn. State U. who was cutting cylinders for people. $20 a throw, I think, and they were two-minute cylinders so you had to be quick. Peace, Paul |
#64
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
"Sean Conolly" wrote in message ... They may even start to rediscover how good LIVE music can be, surpassing even the best recordings. Perhaps for a good orchestra in a good concert hall. And although live modern music is often a worthwhile experience in it's own right, it is rarely better sound wise than when it has been well recorded in a studio and played back on a good HiFi syestem. Trevor. |
#65
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
I am unsure about this. Reproduced sound has gotten so good that the incentive to go to a live concert is vastly diminished. Some years back I was invited to a so-called live concert and my mental process was something like this: The venue has thousands of seats and even though it is one of the best large music venues in town, its day job is being a basketball stadium. Their sound system isn't nearly as good as my home stereo. Their mixers are questionable. Some of the acts will be working with video that isn't as good as the large screen HDTV at home. The venue is so large that I will end up listening to their sound system and watching their video. I think I will stay home and if anything spend the money on several of the artist's recordings, given the costs of even cheap concert tickets. The only gigs I pay to see anymore are folk and ethnic-mostly Celtic- musicians in a good bar. The bands do not have to be virtuoso musicians: they just have to go up and do it. The crowd, the booze, the atmosphere and the band all together are what I bother to go for. Every few years I'll take my parents to go see Handel's Messiah or something like that in a big church or classical venue. |
#66
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
Modern successful music events remind me of NASCAR. If you want to watch the race, get into the strategy, and see all the racing moves - watch the race on TV. If you want to get into the spectacle, the crowd and *the visceral excitement, go to the race. If you want to listen to musical artistry and exciting moves, watch the Blu-Ray at home on a good AV system. If you want to get into the spectacle, the crowd, and the visceral excitement, go to a music show. I could care less about NASCAR: vintage road racing is my thing. You have a real variety of engines, from 12 cylinder Ferraris to Alfa Romeo fours to Jag sixes to two cycle Saabs or DKW Formula Juniors, and very occasionally a jackhammer Offy or even a PT6 Pratt and Whitney. |
#67
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
On Jan 5, 1:09*pm, (hank alrich) wrote:
(Crossposted to RMMGA and RAP) We been having intermittent conversations about record sales. While we are met with an ongoing barrage of hype that the future is all about downloads, and that people, especially kids, don't want to purchase physical product, yearly sales stats offer a look at that reality interface where rubber meets road. Apparently the future is not here yet. Here are spattered quotes and a few links to Digital Music News articles this morning. This first bit is about 2011 vinyl sales: http://digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2012/120104vinyl "this is looking pretty bullish: according to stats just released by Nielsen Soundscan, vinyl sales in the US topped 3.9 million in 2011, a 39.3 percent gain over 2010." It is worthwhile to note that the figure for vinyl comes from Nielson Soundscan, so this is product sold at checkout points where industry data is logged and forwarded to Soundscan. The growth here does not include what is likely a significant amout of vinyl product that never even got its barcode, let alone a good scanning. Vinyl is doing well enough that tape would probably do well too of it were reintroduced at slightly less nonsensical prices. I'd buy some audiophile releases of indie acts, if they were on 1/2" 30 ips. If they were 1/4" I'd consider it, but not at $500 a reel. I'd need to get a 1/4" head stack for my AG440.... |
#68
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
Mike Rivers wrote:
On 1/6/2012 9:28 AM, Deb Cowan wrote: I haven't read all the posts in this thread, but I do want to say that here in the US at least, the small intimate venue is quite popular. An example of this would be the house concert, where there is hardly ever a sound system used. It's hard to make a living that way. It sounds pretty good to take in $15 per head for maybe 30-35 people and sell a dozen CDs or so, but you can't do house concerts too close together, and remember, there's no overhead. The hosts don't take 20% of the gate. Lots of travel. You have to do 10 a month every month to keep a roof over your head and feed the dog and cat. You have a pretty busy schedule. Deb works hard at it, and is an outstanding folk singer in the traditional sense of that term. She plays across the US and Europe. -- shut up and play your guitar * http://hankalrich.com/ http://www.youtube.com/walkinaymusic http://www.sonicbids.com/HankandShaidri |
#69
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
MKR wrote:
On Jan 6, 11:24 am, (hank alrich) wrote: Wilbur wrote: On Thu, 5 Jan 2012 23:02:18 -0800 (PST), DeeAa wrote: I for one firmly believe it won't take long for all physical media to just basically vanish. I believe in a decade or two most data, including music and video, are all on cloud servers, accessible anywhere direct to earbuds or whatever device, whenever desired. snip A lot of people are going to hate what you wrote, and they'll vociferously deny it and fight it. But I think you're just about spot on. People have been making that type of statement for many years now. Meanhwile, back to reality, where in the US CD's earned two-thirds of the money last year, and that doesn't count perhaps ten million units sold that never got scanned at retail. Sure, but that's a snapshot of this point in time. If you look at the snapshot from ten years ago, there was very little in revenue from downloads - it was all from CD's (and some vinyl, tapes, abacuses, whatever). Five years ago there was more from downloads, less from CD's. Now it's whatever it is now. But I'm very confident that ten years from now the CD portion will be as close to zero as the vinyl portion is now, and even downloads might be relatively small as the streaming portion grows. Why own a copy (electronic, CD, vinyl, tape or anything) of Like a Rolling Stone when I can hear it any time I want wherever I am on the device I always have with me? It reminds me of the late 90's, when I was telling people that 35mm film photography was dead. "No it's not", they would say, and then they'd quote some statistics that showed 35mm film accounting for 90% of all pictures taken, or something like that. Sure... NOW... but look into the future. Sometimes the future is really not that hard to see coming. The catch here is that the future has been being predicted for a decade at least and it's not arriving apace with predictions. The comparison with photos ins't apt, in my view. People are still buying prints of digital photos. The direct comparison is to analog versus digital audio recording systems, and there the outcome is directly analagous to that with photogrpahy. Very few are still using analog tape systems, though among those are some of the highest-end content creators. -- shut up and play your guitar * http://hankalrich.com/ http://www.youtube.com/walkinaymusic http://www.sonicbids.com/HankandShaidri |
#70
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
MKR wrote:
On Jan 6, 1:50*pm, (Scott Dorsey) wrote: MKR wrote: [...] There might even still be people recording onto wax cylinders, There a http://www.poppyrecords.co.uk/CXP000/cxp000.htm To my amazement the market has been increasing over the last couple of years (it started at a pretty low level). I am now getting orders for small batches rather than individual items, so I suppose they must be selling. [...] ...and once the tunes are digitized, the storage medium is pretty much irrelevant. That may be true for ephemeral pop muxic, but In some cases the 'sleeve' information helps to put the recording into context. Small portable devices aren't as good at displaying this as a nicely-produced inlay booklet or record sleeve. -- ~ Adrian Tuddenham ~ (Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply) www.poppyrecords.co.uk |
#71
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
PStamler wrote:
On Jan 6, 6:24*pm, (Scott Dorsey) wrote: I predict vinyl will outlast the CD. *Dunno about wax cylinders but maybe I should think about getting into that market.... *does not look like much competition there... There's a little -- there was a guy at Folk Alliance a couple of years ago from Middle Tenn. State U. who was cutting cylinders for people. $20 a throw, I think, ... Many of the Edison phonographs could be fitted with a recording attachment, so it is not that difficult to produce home-recorded cylinders. Currently there is only one source of blanks (as far as I know): http://www.paulmorrismusic.co.uk/WaxCylinders.asp If you want higher quality recordings with a good frequency response, you have to go to a lot more trouble: http://www.poppyrecords.co.uk/other/...erRecorder.pdf ... and they were two-minute cylinders so you had to be quick. There were two-minute and four-minute standards for domestic entertainment cylinders and a variety of other standards for office dictating cylinders. The entertainment standards are as follows: http://www.poppyrecords.co.uk/tec001/tec01.htm -- ~ Adrian Tuddenham ~ (Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply) www.poppyrecords.co.uk |
#72
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
On Jan 7, 7:30*am, (hank alrich) wrote:
ASCAP fees are negligible there because sales have nothing to do with it. Earnings would come from airplay and it takes a pretty good hit for that to amount to much. I think it's vice versa. Especially round here. I do not believe that there is a single artist here who make a living actually selling the albums, their main source of income is easily ASCAP fees, or in some cases gigging. I suppose the average artist sells a few thousand CD's a year at best. 10.000 copies is the limit of Gold Album and very very few artists sell that much of their record. Throughout history there have been a handful of artists selling over 100k or some even 200k, quaruple platinum, but that provides them very little in record sales income anyhow. One of the best selling bands ever around here who sold nearly 200k copies over 4 years or so went bankrupt actually, despite people were bat**** over them and every magazine and newspaper seemed to just talk about them...they hadn't much business sense and hadn't sorted their ASCAP issues well. 200k albums equals, over 4 years, something like roughly $10.000 a year in record sales royalties per band member. Half of what an unschooled industrial cleaner makes in a year for daily living. However, ASCAP fees aren't too shabby actually. When my songs have been played in radio, I have gotten roughly $50 for each airplay. It's not amounting to much, but in the best years that's meant a thousand or so in ASCAP fees, despite all the airplay I've gotten has been just some 'demo nite' type programs etc. Once my video was aired dozens of time over a few months on an independent TV channel and that meant roughly $3000 in ASCAP payments. Also, when I gig, I just send a report to ASCAP and get paid for every song of mine I play live too. That isn't nearly the $20 a minute you get from radio play, but still something like $20 per gig easily. They give out over 15 million in gig fees annually, spread accross some thousands of performing artists I presume. But gigs are the main source of income for many bands as well. If you have a song on the air or get popular, well it's rather easy to get gigs that pay $1000 per band member, and from gigging alone I understand that well-doing artists can gain up to like $100.000 a year in income. Mostly dance acts etc. though. But the cruel reality is, the musicians I know...I know people who, despite being among the most popular artists here, and selling records well and gigging regularly, mostly here but also abroad some, and work in sessions etc...well they aren't very rich. Most all of them live in small rented apartments or something. If you consider that an average worker makes about $50.000 a year income...well I would evaluate really just a dozen or maybe two dozen musicians can make the same. Of course there are a few out there who've made it internationally, and basically never have to work again after a few hit singles worldwide, but that's a different story. |
#73
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
On Jan 7, 7:30*am, (hank alrich) wrote:
But one doesn't get squidoodly for the plays. The talk is big; the payment is paltry. But it's fair. Even if you get 0,1c per each play, you still make $10.000 for that song if a million people listen to it. How much should a musician make for one song? How much would you be willing to pay for listening to a song? I think that's a pretty fitting sum to pay per listen. With that mathematic, my weekly music listening would amount to about $1,5. I would not be interested in paying a whole lot more. That means the same as buying roughly four full-price CD's a year, which is also pretty much what I'd do otherwise. Yep, I do think 0.1c per Spotify play to artist is quite fair and suitable. What I don't think is fair is someone makes one hit song and makes a million and then does nothing for the rest of his or her life, living off the income of that one song. THAT is insane. |
#74
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
wrote:
I could care less about NASCAR: vintage road racing is my thing. You have a real variety of engines, from 12 cylinder Ferraris to Alfa Romeo fours to Jag sixes to two cycle Saabs or DKW Formula Juniors, and very occasionally a jackhammer Offy or even a PT6 Pratt and Whitney. Sounds like the Washington Folk Festival to me. Traditional Indian bands one hour, blues musicians the next, then a mento band afterward. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
#75
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
On Jan 5, 2:26*pm, Steve Hawkins
wrote: (hank alrich) wrote in news:1kde7mq.1pyo0ig1sejgr8N% : (Crossposted to RMMGA and RAP) We been having intermittent conversations about record sales. While we are met with an ongoing barrage of hype that the future is all about downloads, and that people, especially kids, don't want to purchase physical product, yearly sales stats offer a look at that reality interface where rubber meets road. Apparently the future is not here yet. Here are spattered quotes and a few links to Digital Music News articles this morning. This first bit is about 2011 vinyl sales: http://digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2012/120104vinyl "this is looking pretty bullish: according to stats just released by Nielsen Soundscan, vinyl sales in the US topped 3.9 million in 2011, a 39.3 percent gain over 2010." It is worthwhile to note that the figure for vinyl comes from Nielson Soundscan, so this is product sold at checkout points where industry data is logged and forwarded to Soundscan. The growth here does not include what is likely a significant amout of vinyl product that never even got its barcode, let alone a good scanning. Next a look at total sales, including physical's share of the pie: http://digitalmusicnews.com/permalin...20104twothirds "According to year-2011 breakdowns just shared by Nielsen Soundscan, more than two-thirds of all albums purchased in the US were physical CDs." The online revolution has not yet consumed us. Given the info I posted a while ago about kids bying physical instead of virtual, that revolution may be a long time coming. I look at it like any other format change, it's gonna happen. *My questions are will artists benefit from the change and will the listening experience/quality be compromised? We're making pennies off the current system of digital distribution and I cringe everytime I hear a compressed version of a tune I'm familiar with. Earbuds, Pods/Pads, computers and such are becoming the dominant playback devices. *I don't think my niece and nephew even own a stereo system. Steve Hawkins I recently listened to a preview of an album off of npr.org with my netbook/earbuds. I listened to it more than once. Sounded great. 'Dun' by 'The Roots'. I never wouldathunk that I would like a 'rap' album so much. I went to iTunes and pre-ordered it, something I had never done before, come to think of it. Sometimes I listen to it through my stereo system and it sounds great, but I never would have been exposed to it if not for the internet/earbud system. I think The Roots benefited from and made many pennies as a result of me and many others being able to listen to and buy their music online. |
#76
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
"Les Cargill" wrote in message
... Ain't just Austin, either. Look - *knowing what you are doing just puts you in with the others like you*. What is preferred is the "Indie cred" or closeness to the "Scene", not ability**. Go to Cocoa beach and see what passes for live entertainment. If you can reproduce the Corona Beer Commercial experience* for people, you win. Oh dear, that brings back memories of one of my early bands playing Cocoa Beach, MoodSwing (I called it PMS in music :-) We were a bunch of young guys who were reasonable players trying to understand jazz, but who had a lot more passion than skill. We weren't good enough to play the few jazz clubs so we just worked the strip with whatever we had and called it jazz-ish. Lots of stuff from the Real Book with a few classic older pop tunes thrown in. We stayed busy though, had a house gig at the Pier House for many months, and we even got a little local press. There was really no good reason why we stayed booked so much in that area, other than we with a lot of energy to compensate for the lack of ability. Ira Sullivan bravely did a show with us once, and about halfway through one of his fans shouted out "why don't you play something mellow?". Ira's response was "these guys don't DO mellow!". Sorry for the sidetrack, but I just had to share, Sean |
#77
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
"Trevor" wrote in message
... "Sean Conolly" wrote in message ... They may even start to rediscover how good LIVE music can be, surpassing even the best recordings. Perhaps for a good orchestra in a good concert hall. And although live modern music is often a worthwhile experience in it's own right, it is rarely better sound wise than when it has been well recorded in a studio and played back on a good HiFi syestem. I'm surprised at how many people who read my comment are only thinking of reinforced music, or just music in a large hall. Go hear a group of really good players in an intimate setting, like where you're sitting 15 feet from the performers, and listen to the sound of a good upright bas or piano, acoustic guitar or sax. There's a visceral aspect that just isn't captured by recording, which is why the recordings are never as satisfying as being there - if you actually were there. My point is that the vast majority of people today have NEVER heard music like this. The best stuff they've heard live is crap bands playing through crap PA's, and the only good stuff they've heard was compressed through earbuds. Of course most people don't know how to really shut up their thoughts, focus and listen to the music anyway. Sean |
#78
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Listen...
Sean Conolly wrote:
Of course most people don't know how to really shut up their thoughts, focus and listen to the music anyway. Preach. Of course, our entire culture is based on quicklyIgottahaveitnowgimmewhatIwantinamicrowavewi thcaffeine! We've grown unaccustomed to quiet, to being still and listening to one another--let alone listening to the music. Fer cryin' out loud folks, drop the danged cellphone texting for a minute or two and LISTEN! Discussing this topic alone could fill a few bookshelves. ---Jeff |
#79
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
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#80
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Reality and Prerecorded Music Sales
Arkansan Raider wrote:
wrote: On 2012-01-06 (hankalrich) said: snip I don't see why I would need to ever buy music any more; I guess you don't understand how ASCAP and BMI handle those distros, and how they determine who gets what. The corporate bureaucracy will be riding in limos, the top artists will get the rest of the money, and the rest of us will find some other line of work. He obviously doesn't. but he's in three different bands. I'll bet they're all hobbyists, and not a one of them contains musicians who make their living via their music. These are all folks with day jobs who play their music as a hobby. I also play the said 9,90 a month directly for being able to play music anywhere. And Spotify in turn pays as near to nothing as you can imagine for that music. This graphic is two years out of date now, but I follow these issues and the trend is not for the better from a working musician's point of view. But all these cheerleaders for this crap aren't working musicians Hank. They've never depended on their art for their sustenance. IT's always been a hobby, they do it because they have fun doing it. You know, I'm not a cheerleader for this, and I'm unfortunately having to do it as a side job. I do it because I have fun doing it, yes. But I also do it because I have to do it. Like Keef Richards said: "To a musician, making music is like breathing." IOW, it's not a choice. I'm trying to maneuver myself into a full-time gig, but it's dang hard to do. And watching folks pimp the play for no pay thing kinda' bums me out. There are some gigs I do for free as a ministry to those who can't afford it, but some dude who wrote about half of the New Testament also said that a minister is worthy of his pay. What was it, don't muzzle the ox as he threshes your grain? Put in other words, I'd do it for free if I was independently wealthy and could both pay the musicians around me and keep my wife and kids fed, but I'm not, so I won't. And I'm not even sure that it would be good for the industry as a whole if I did so. The other gig, BTW, is jail minister. I do that because I love it, too--if you saw what I was paid, you'd see that too. *self-depreciating eye roll* I guess I say that to say: don't look down on those of us musicians who don't do it for a living. Some of us are trying to get to be "working musicians." To be clear, I do not disparage amateur or part-time musicians. I believe music has been a near-essential part of humanity throughout our evolution and that at times it may well have provided critical spiritual sustenance when other essentials were in short supply. I think that over the course of human history the contribution of part-time and amateur musicians vastly outweighs that of professionals. Only recently has music been able to become a prerecorded commodity, and the jury is still out on whther that makes any sense in the big picture over the long term. I think playing for one's supper was probably the first step toward music as a profession. If you got big enough to be wanted over in the next valley, they'd better have some chow for you after your hike to the gig. I have been a part-timer during several periods of my life, from time spent running a concert hall to that spent offering sound reinforcement, recording and production services in an area where the concept of a full-time professional performing musician would be laughable unless one wanted to spend one's life away from one's family. I think Austin TX and probably other markets, too, are oversaturated with erstwhile musicians. Too many of us want to be paid for being on stage, to the point that today there is less pay for that in Austin than there was when I was managing a concert hall there in the late 1970's. A steady influx of dreamers continues to arrive, many of whom within the week of their arrival begin to tout themselves to the world at large as "Austin" bands or musicians. On the one hand there is an astounding surfeit or superbly qualified pros, as on the other hand there is the same surfeit of mediocre writers and pickers. This will shake out over time. I agree with DeeAa that it will be brutal, and I suggest the brutality will extend beyond musicians. I think that over the same period Austin's luster will fade, because "development" has driven the cost of residence up to the point that already a few other, smaller cities, not in Texas, are becoming attractive to creative people who don't wish to work in advertising or marketing, or interior design, i.e., those we think of as "artists". Austin touts itself as the live music capitol of the world. Part of that is my own damned fault, for succeeding at AWHQ until the landlord sold the property out form under us. Redd Volkaert presently calls it "The Free Music Capitol of the World". The marvelous series at the airport is funded entirely through the efforts of Nancy Coplin, who raises roughly seventy grand a year to pull it off. So I wind up playing at Ray Benson's Roadhouse for a captive audience from a stage adorned with subliminal advertising for Pepsi, instead of from a stage proclaiming live music capitolization. I'm too old for any label to take an interest in any act that would include me. Brutality shows up in many guises, mortality being one of them. The present situation offers me a lot of opportunity, and I'm working to take advantage of that. At the same time, a lot of very good musicians are not being justly compensated _for music that is being consumed but for which no payment is being received or offered_. -- shut up and play your guitar * http://hankalrich.com/ http://www.youtube.com/walkinaymusic http://www.sonicbids.com/HankandShaidri |
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