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Brian
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Post by Brian » Sat Nov 05, 2011 10:11 am

fossiltooth wrote:
Brian wrote:
fossiltooth wrote:
Brian wrote: What about the guy who does make a digital copy, and throws both in the trash?
Buyer beware I guess?

Sometimes I order a sandwich and it kinda sucks. Generally, I'd eat some of it anyway and remember not to order at that place again. I'd probably only return it if it was actually defective - Like if it had cigarette butts or broken glass in it, or if it was not actually a sandwich, but a wad of crumpled napkins painted up to look like a sandwich.

Maybe I'm alone here, but I think the idea that we should avoid eating because some sandwiches might suck is pretty silly. For me, it's the same way with music.
Well, what if the sandwich is made out of shit? Do you return THAT sandwich?
What if it's made out of rotting stuff like rotting lettuce and meat? Stuff that's gone off? What about unripe bananas or avocados?

I guess that would be an analogy for a burnouts music or someone who clearly doesn't know what they are doing yet.
Brian, I'm sorry to call you out on this, but based on your reply, I'm going to have to imagine that you didn't actually read the post you just quoted.

Sorry if I'm being a jerk about this, but in context, I really don't understand your reply.
Well, I did read it and what I took away from it was that the sandwich artist you wrote of was in earnest trying to make a decent sandwich with all their talent and their sandwich was not to your taste, though, possibly fine to someone else's, so you didn't think returning it was appropriate since it was a taste issue instead of a quality issue.
Then I hypothesized "what if the sandwich is badly constructed of the worst ingredients and did indeed offend not just your taste but health and safety laws regarding sandwiches in general and could presumably cause sickness or death?"
Should a person not avoid eating sandwiches from that maker?
Should that maker be encouraged to make more sandwiches in the same manner given that there is no feedback mechanism to tell him his sandwich is shit?
See, maybe it isn't a conscious choice that he sandwich maker made to put cig-butts and broken glass in there to hurt the patrons, maybe they just generally started with no talent or clue and haven't any inclination to develop that or and incentive to become a better sandwich maker when people keep paying hem and not returning for refund of incentive. (development, the example that talent develops into better more honed talent)
However, in the record stores of yore, we used to be able to listen in store on a set of headphones, and decide, and the stores that didn't offer that had returns and they were calculated against income on the artists fund.
Now, back then, 10,000 units sold would not get you any attention, 20,000 would. No label was interested in keeping an act that stayed at 20,000 units sold annually with no progress unless they were just high art that needed to be lauded and supported. In other words, a pop artists would be dropped for that and more "serious music" (whatever that is) wouldn't be dropped.
Harumph!

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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Sat Nov 05, 2011 10:26 am

Brian wrote:I guess that would be an analogy for a burnouts music or someone who clearly doesn't know what they are doing yet.
so, according to you, burnouts shouldn't be allowed to record their music? the only people allowed to make records are those who know precisely what every single knob, fader, and button in the studio do?

or are you saying they just shouldn't be allowed to try and SELL that music, because it's an affront to you, a guy who happens to know what every knob, fader, and button does in your studio.

i'm sorry but i just don't get it. why are you so bothered about what other people are doing? so there's kids in bedrooms with garageband posting shit on youtube. who cares?

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Post by Brian » Sat Nov 05, 2011 4:56 pm

MoreSpaceEcho wrote:
Brian wrote:I guess that would be an analogy for a burnouts music or someone who clearly doesn't know what they are doing yet.
so, according to you, burnouts shouldn't be allowed to record their music? the only people allowed to make records are those who know precisely what every single knob, fader, and button in the studio do?

or are you saying they just shouldn't be allowed to try and SELL that music, because it's an affront to you, a guy who happens to know what every knob, fader, and button does in your studio.

i'm sorry but i just don't get it. why are you so bothered about what other people are doing? so there's kids in bedrooms with garageband posting shit on youtube. who cares?
Not what I'm saying at all.
What am I saying in that context of burnouts or people who don't know what they are doing?
I'm saying they need a feedback mechanism, and they may have one, sorta, but, it's a half assed one. Anybody can put anything up for sale, and promote the heck out of it too, and if it sells without returns, where returns are a allowed and a feedback mechanism, they'll get an accurate gage of their specific market. That is pretty cool too. I'd like to have that. I don't want to sell a bunch of stuff and people who bought it not have a way to return it if they don't like it and then their only recourse is to talk shit about my stuff. I'd rather they just returned it, leave them unharmed by my terrible jam, and maybe I'll improve my jam, try again, and maybe do better the next time. It's all about the development without development money.
I kinda think that all these vocalists getting surgery on their throats after 1-4 years singing is a byproduct of no great professional coaching for vocals which is part of development and sans that focused development, I'm just trying to think up how that could be made a more organic structure, side effect, by product, of a feedback mechanism.
I explained it to someone earlier thus:
You're a good painter because people tell you that you are after seeing your paint jobs.
Suppose you go to walgreens and buy a paintbrush, and you book a few jobs, paint well, and clean he brush, but, after a few jobs, the brush gets worn and starts messing up your work, but you keep going with it for a bit because some people are still telling you you're good even though your brush is suffering and so is your work. Soon enough, people stop booking you.
But let's say the same thing happens at inception, you get the brush, you book jobs, the brush starts to show sign of wear though you've done everything YOU KNOW to take great care of it.
Then you go to a professional paint store and talk to a professional painter, and he points you to a professional brush and tells you how to care for it, use it, clean it and store it, and how to prepare it for the next job. Your new brush lasts for years after that and you keep booking jobs as long as you like.
Bets I could come up with spur of the moment regarding development.
Harumph!

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Post by trevord » Sat Nov 05, 2011 5:57 pm

I think I see the problem with your logic
AFAIK: No-one ever starts out making music with crap, achieves some degree of success AND KEEPS ON MAKING MUSIC WITH CRAP.
Everyone who achieves some degree of success UPGRADES equipment AND PERSONNEL.
U know the stories - the first record is done on a Mackie in Jo Blo studios in a basement - but the second album has to done in Abbey Road with the London Philharmonic because that's the "sound" he has in his head. The same goes for the video, promotion. Which is why a lot of the acts end up bankrupt after the second album is a hit. :)

So it would seem to me that the more people who are starting out making music would increase the chances of you getting hired later not decrease.

If not enough quality engineers are getting hired it is not because people are making music in un-professional environments - I would say the real problem is the star mentality that has pervaded the support staff of the music industry - that is - a producer/engineer works on a hit - every body wants him (because it covers some-one else's ass to say "i got the guy with the hits - aint my fault it didn't sell").

Don't get me wrong - its not that the producer/engineer is not talented. The real problem is he is probably booked for 10 C and D clients and 1 A client. So he listens to the tracks of the C and D clients on his IPAD while flying cross country to the A client studio - cranks the multiband compression - and tells the C and D clients its done - then spends a week in the studio with the A client.

Think about this - what percentage of the "hits" nowadays are done in "professional" environments - now compare that to what percentage of the "hits" are over compressed, derivative, over processed pieces of crap.
Did being produced in a "professional" environment help anything.
You can't have it both ways - you can't say being "professionally" produced makes a better product - then say most of the "professionally" produced stuff today is crap.

remember the Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #524 "Better to have a small slice of a growing market than be the market leader in a shrinking market"

All these unwashed uneducated masses are increasing the music production marketplace - there will always be a demand for quality.

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Post by Brian » Sat Nov 05, 2011 8:44 pm

I agree with most of your points, but, I wasn't talking about production, I was talking about development. That mean professional "instruction" like in my example, the anatomy and use of the vocal cords to consistently produce good to excellent pitch and volume without losing your voice, getting nodes, or throat cancer, with a great deal of control and proficiency.

This would work for guitar, keys, drums, or any other aspect. It helps artists grow into better artists. Nothing wrong with it. A good coach worth their salt can prove that in 40 minutes if your vocalist is stuck and you need to get the track AND make sure they know how to hit it right during the tour so the fans don't get let down, and I know you know what I mean on that.

I think the increase of people making a big dent in the future is off base. It sounds like "part three of the bubble economy effect on the music biz" Which so far has been ABYSMAL.
I hope the Ferengi are right. I'll be too old to care by then.
Harumph!

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Post by floid » Fri Nov 11, 2011 9:21 am

i've made it about a page and a half into this, so forgive me if i'm trotting out something that misses the direction of the rest... but it's made me think about the documentary PBS aired a week or two back on the history of the banjo - an instrument that has a long history of being strictly for amateurs jamming on the back porch (let's avoid the whole race aspect for the purpose of this argument). what struck me the most was the phase where there was an attempt to "elevate" its status from the tool of the field hand and minstrel to something with a respectable place in the bourgeois parlour. A whole industry sprung up around this effort, from mass production of what had always been a homemade instrument, to the publication of sheet music and instructional material based in the newly minted "classical" style (how's that for an oxymoron), to instructors themselves.
And yet the (true) classical tradition of the instrument carried on... innovators redefined technique, style, and role time and again... some coalminer goes into town for a week, records some tunes and sells the banjo he recorded them with so he can make it back home, and forty years later someone else hears them and feels compelled to go look him up... and today you have, say, Bela Fleck, who i'd consider a true artist by any measure, working with the same instrument as the guy sitting around a campfire joking "yeah, i finally got so sick of this thing, i threw it in the back of my pickup and drove to Wal-Mart, hoping someone would steal it while i was inside. Came out a half hour later, and folks had thrown three more in there, glad to be rid of 'em."
tools are what you make of them, you know?
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Post by hank alrich » Sun Nov 20, 2011 12:56 pm

trevord wrote: <snipitty>
Get real - music is a recreational activity which was co-opted by a business there was music BEFORE there was a music business. <snipitty>
Yeah, and for those who qualified, wimps like Bach and Mozart, for instance, life support came in the form of patronage. You played at the behest of royalty and/or church, or you picked a few tunes down at the pub or over at the picnic. It was most certainly business in the form it took back then.

No one is suggesting everybody shouldn't enjoy making music. Some of us might suggest there aren't a lot of Bach's and Mozart's in the world, not back then, and not now. I might enjoy mediocre music when jamming at a party, but I'm not about to buy a ticket to see it or want to buy whatever product arises from mediocrity.

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Post by hank alrich » Sun Nov 20, 2011 1:24 pm

Brian wrote:<snipitty> Losing $80 billion industrywide per year is not market growth. <snipitty>
Markets change, cultures evolve or devolve, and shit happens. The gaming industry now pulls in tons of money for a recreational activity that pretty much didn't exist at all not very long ago. Pinning the reduction of sales $ of prerecorded music product on the advent of tools that can do pro work in pro hands, yet are cheap enough to allow punters to buy into the kit too, overlooks many other factors that influence where the money goes now, versus where it went once upon a time.

On top of that, a lot of product/revenue is not being tracked by the likes of RIAA, Soundscan, etc. A lot of money is being earned well below the big-industry radar, and this is one aspect of the enabling of musical artists by the falling cost of decent equipment.

Then, as a recreational activity, the earnings of which might well be included in a column that once included only the prerecorded product, the sales of prosumer audio recording kit is pulling another few tons of money into a category that also is relatively new.

Nobody ever had a right to earn a living as an artist, and they never will. One who did make a living at it never made that living by complaining that the field was being threatened by amateurs. Amateurs (some of whom are far better musicians/artists than are many professionals) and mediocrity have always been with us, and I don't seen that changing, ever. That we now have seven billion of us on the planet, and picked up that seventh billion in the last twelve years, suggests we have more opportunity than ever before for plenty of amateurs and a nearly unfathomable sea of mediocrity.

Evolution works at many levels, and successful artists will adapt. Those who don't will do something else for their living.

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Post by Brian » Sun Nov 20, 2011 2:00 pm

hank alrich wrote:
Brian wrote:<snipitty> Losing $80 billion industrywide per year is not market growth. <snipitty>
(snippity back atcha)Pinning the reduction of sales $ of prerecorded music product on the advent of tools that can do pro work in pro hands, yet are cheap enough to allow punters to buy into the kit too, overlooks many other factors that influence where the money goes now, versus where it went once upon a time.
That's stipulated. There are more things happening at once that are contributors. Recession for one.
It's all of them at once, it's:
Recession = destroys the little guys,
Cheap Gear Glut = destroys domestic manufacturers and enables hundreds of thousands of "punters" to make mediocre stuff and distribute, lowers prices via unfair competition and market destruction,
Cheap Music Glut = gluts the market without quality control creating a quality search chaos, price lowering, market destruction, etc.
Market Destruction = no market for product.
Lack of Artist Development = lower quality product.
If you want an analogy, let's say you make hammers, people get to know you for making good hammers and word gets around with help, but, you sell a lot and get known for that too. Then for any reason, you stop making such good hammers because you no longer employ the best designers and workers in an effort to make more money. You let people off the street design your hammers with no hammer design experience hoping to get even better hammers designed cheaper. You get some interesting anomalies, but, on the whole, not better hammers, just cheaper hammers of lower quality. People get to know your hammers are sucking. You have to lower your price. Stupidly, you keep on with he cost cutting method of street designers and fire some of them too, hammers get worse as a result, eventually you quit making hammers because you've designed and manufactured the cheapest hammer ever, sold billions for peanuts, made little real profit, engaged in recapitalization schemes, and nobody needs any more hammers, all competitors businesses destroyed, you've sold to many and glutted the market with your cheap hammers. Pricing unsustainable, Industry OVER, workers unemployed, new hammer makers can't even begin to make a living, economy crashes as glut of unemployed lose their houses and tank banking industry.
This is also what the independent artists of today are doing, not just the labels.
Quality development is very important and requires experts and seasoned pros. It's the giving back to new artists.
On top of that, a lot of product/revenue is not being tracked by the likes of RIAA, Soundscan, etc. A lot of money is being earned well below the big-industry radar, and this is one aspect of the enabling of musical artists by the falling cost of decent equipment.
Nope, below the industry radar because the amounts aren't worth tracking. They don't enable artists, mostly they slowly bleed them dry by not being sustainable or creating a sustainable market condition.
Then, as a recreational activity, the earnings of which might well be included in a column that once included only the prerecorded product, the sales of prosumer audio recording kit is pulling another few tons of money into a category that also is relatively new.
Not in a recession, the market is now FLATLINING.
Nobody ever had a right to earn a living as an artist, and they never will.
Wrong, we established that right in america with IP law, it has proven itself to be the very life's blood of the economy just by the fact that it's lax enforcement of the last 30 years has destroyed all economies.
(snipity again) Amateurs (some of whom are far better musicians/artists than are many professionals) and mediocrity have always been with us,
So few that in 35 years I haven't met ONE that beats any of my professional clients. Not ONE.
and I don't seen that changing, ever. That we now have seven billion of us on the planet, and picked up that seventh billion in the last twelve years, suggests we have more opportunity than ever before for plenty of amateurs and a nearly unfathomable sea of mediocrity.

Evolution works at many levels, and successful artists will adapt. Those who don't will do something else for their living.
The very same number of albums that made money, actually turned a profit, in 1975 is exactly the same as the number that made any money in 2011. Around 7000 across all genre's.
The difference is: that's how many commercial releases there were back then, with artist development included, which there is NONE of today (and cheap gear doesn't equal artist development at all), VERSUS the 198,000 releases you had to wade through to find those 7000 (though no one buys across all genre's)= 3.5% up 1.5% from 1976.
The point of that is that there has been zero gain from this.
Now if you argue that labels were evil and he artists didn't get payed compared to what the label made, Labels invested $250k + in JUST recoupable recording funds, That doesn't include promotion, publicity, videos, marketing, artist development, and tour support, all of which is around $7k/week/service (you do the math for 1 year of that!) all of which is non recoupable unless there is an actual profit.
People made nebulous charges against labels, but when asked if they'd put an audit clause in their contracts MANY stammered instead of answering.

It's no secret that I am PRO LABELS.
WHY?
Personal experience.
What they did far exceeded what they took, the proof is in the pudding.
You may argue that now, without labels, artists get to keep 100% of income, minus costs, but, usually, they have no budget for promo, publicity, marketing, distribution, and tour support, they just "hope" they "go viral" and book a van tour for low dough.
So, 100% of "not shit" is still not shit. ZERO GAIN.
Then people usually argue "well, we get to keep our schwag money too" well, labels didn't take a piece of that anyway. ZERO GAIN.
Now you have labels taking a piece of your ticket sales, NET LOSS.

I don't know who designed his "new model" or "record industry fix all" but I don't think they ever took a math class or had kids or brains.
What's happened has hurt the majority of artists and just because there are more releases doesn't counter that, they are making so much less now that their careers are effectively suicide missions into unsustainability.
NOT THE WORK OF A GENIUS.
Harumph!

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Post by hank alrich » Sun Nov 20, 2011 2:52 pm

Brian wrote:Nope, below the industry radar because the amounts aren't worth tracking. They don't enable artists, mostly they slowly bleed them dry by not being sustainable or creating a sustainable market condition.
The estimate I've seen is ten million units, untracked. Maybe a hundred fifty million bucks worth of product is peanuts to the RIAA, but not to some of us.

My own relatively paltry sales are therein, and that's helping me sustain.

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Post by Brian » Sun Nov 20, 2011 6:36 pm

hank alrich wrote:
Brian wrote:Nope, below the industry radar because the amounts aren't worth tracking. They don't enable artists, mostly they slowly bleed them dry by not being sustainable or creating a sustainable market condition.
The estimate I've seen is ten million units, untracked. Maybe a hundred fifty million bucks worth of product is peanuts to the RIAA, but not to some of us.

My own relatively paltry sales are therein, and that's helping me sustain.
Hundred fifty million bucks?
That's $15/unit! I don't know ANYONE selling units at that price. Most people are selling product at $1 - $4 per unit.

What makes it "paltry" is that it is not sustainable and you won't be able to build your market fast enough to make a real sustainable business. There is no "helping me sustain" in business, there is a working sustainable business that puts people to work, gets families elevated, puts food on tables, roofs over heads, kids through colleges, and parents through to retirement, that's what it's about.

You can't walk on "Art street" only and say you're a business or producing anything. Anyone can create art (to some extent, and it doesn't have to be magnetizing, attractive, or, desirable) and go broke doing it, that doesn't even really take effort. If you are making an effort, walking solely on art street then you do yourself a real disservice by not getting a real smart team to do the business side, SOMEBODY has to walk on "Commerce street" or you'll have to forgo kids or your art, forgo college or your art, forego retiring or health care or your art, unless you think you'll be on public assistance when you're old or once you start a family.

The other part of the deal is that it's spread out among so many more units of sales and entities that it isn't adding up to a sustainable business for the other 97%. It's adding up to a stupid ramp up in use of resources without profit. THAT is the problem. It's creating a lot of junk. I'm not saying your stuff is junk, but, with 198,000 releases, and 3% making a nickel, there's a lot of junk product.
This is what happens when the chinese want your markets, a glut of chinese made product in the US, which creates another set of cheap products following that and a lack of quality control/assurance that is pervasive throughout at all levels.

What gets me is that this isn't an unknowable failure of model, this is a totally predictable outcome of this method and it WAS predicted that this is what would happen. It's mindblowing that it was even attempted.

Exactly what outcome is expected and by whom is it expected specifically?

That's a real question and the answer will be an eye opener.
Harumph!

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Post by hank alrich » Sun Nov 20, 2011 8:57 pm

Brian wrote:That's $15/unit! I don't know ANYONE selling units at that price. Most people are selling product at $1 - $4 per unit.
I don't know where you are or where you've been, but we sell our CD's for $15, and are getting circa $10 wholesale from reputable retailers. We haven't fully recouped yet but we're headed that way, and yes, it is viable for us. Apparently you don't know what's going on with a whole lot of the industry that is running, as I've already put it, below the radar.

Due to efficient production our return per unit is excellent. We're headed for full recoupment and profit.

We do not give them away. We ask fifteen bucks for a ten song CD and we get it, because the audients enjoyed the music and want to hear some of it again.

I think you've fallen into a trap of negative assumptions and are pasting those assumptions all over the rest of the universe. Whatever you think about it, when it comes down to what I'm doing, and what many smaller indies in the folk world are doing, your assumptions won't hold water or air.

True, the big part of an industry that has not held artists in high regard since the bean counters took over the action (beginning circa 1980) is dying from blood loss after repeatedly shooting itself in the foot while bragging about its marksmanship. That part of it has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. There's a lot of other action happening, and not only do the majors not get it, you are not aware of it, either.

No skin off my bag. I don't plan to buy into the doom, because it's not what's happening in my world.

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Post by Brian » Sun Nov 20, 2011 9:32 pm

hank alrich wrote:
Brian wrote:That's $15/unit! I don't know ANYONE selling units at that price. Most people are selling product at $1 - $4 per unit.
I don't know where you are or where you've been, but we sell our CD's for $15, and are getting circa $10 wholesale from reputable retailers. We haven't fully recouped yet but we're headed that way, and yes, it is viable for us. Apparently you don't know what's going on with a whole lot of the industry that is running, as I've already put it, below the radar.

Due to efficient production our return per unit is excellent. We're headed for full recoupment and profit.

We do not give them away. We ask fifteen bucks for a ten song CD and we get it, because the audients enjoyed the music and want to hear some of it again.

I think you've fallen into a trap of negative assumptions and are pasting those assumptions all over the rest of the universe. Whatever you think about it, when it comes down to what I'm doing, and what many smaller indies in the folk world are doing, your assumptions won't hold water or air.

True, the big part of an industry that has not held artists in high regard since the bean counters took over the action (beginning circa 1980) is dying from blood loss after repeatedly shooting itself in the foot while bragging about its marksmanship. That part of it has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. There's a lot of other action happening, and not only do the majors not get it, you are not aware of it, either.

No skin off my bag. I don't plan to buy into the doom, because it's not what's happening in my world.
After looking at your site and listening to your excellent music, I can see why you would say that you think I have fallen into a trap of negative assumptions.
Your part of the industry hasn't taken anywhere near the hit the rest of the industry has. But, how many kings can any one genre hold up? Not too many.
Nobody is trying to tell you to buy into anything. You don't have to. I don't have to buy into any doom, the doom already happened to most of the industry. What we are in now is the aftermath stage. Folk and old style country, bluegrass, what I'd call "Authentic music" never took the hit, though, it was never that big when the population swelled. Still, it holds it's own pretty well.
It's pretty clear that there isn't a lot of cohesion, and no overarching plan in the rest of the industry. Results have been and will continue to be "spotty" till that happens, and no you will not overcome a market glut by force of will or magic and suddenly everything will work. The numbers are the numbers. Even though you are selling some product for your full rate, and congratulations, please do keep that up, there is still no improvement from 1975 levels. We haven't reach a fraction of half what we lost yet, when we get to 80 billion annually, then we're on our way.
Also remember I'm talking across all genre's, not just folk, in fact probably excluding most authentic music genre's.

BTW, I like your music, a LOT. You and your daughter sound great together.
You may get $15 out of me too.

I don't think Folk music took the hit that the whole industry did, it's a more solid market, more established, and never was so mainstream that the bean counters could really kill it. PLUS the musicians have more license to create feel in the music and let's face it, that's just better all around.

You can't get too serious about pop music, but, if you work in it, you can be pretty serious about the boats that it floated.
Harumph!

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Post by comfortstarr » Mon Nov 21, 2011 8:53 am

This is just a small nit on my part, but damn is that Shilo Productions group annoying. You're in advertising dudes. ADVERTISING. Your work is used to sell shoes, etc. Always remember that whence pontificating. I'm not slagging advertising. I generally don't care what people do to make a buck. It just irks the shit out of me when they present it (to us and, likely, themselves) as something else.

Anyway... Good discussion here. I actually think the whole thing is a non-issue.

1) Good stuff will always be better than not-good stuff. And yes, there may be more not-good stuff to wade through, but we'll find a way. And yes, tech has aided and abetted the ability for the masses to create the not-good, but whatever?!?! Why should the availability of these tools cause anger or frustration to anyone? What's the alternative? Withholding them?

2) People who make not-good stuff usually know it and eventually stop making it. The "talent" aspect is real and cannot be hidden from, I know, I try everyday to hide from it and delude myself.

3) The true artists, of which there are very very very, VERY few (and I'm certainly not one of them) will, to misquote a famous character played by Alec Baldwin: always be creating. Sure they give a shit about the economics and the models, but at the end of the day, they'll be creating no matter the environment.

4) I am curious to hear about all this from people who were raised in cultures where music was much more part and parcel of everyday life. My wife lived in Russia for many years and said you couldn't go to a party without a bunch of singing breaking out. There are many examples of this. Perhaps, the middle and over classes of America are just struggling with something that's forming of which they have no cultural experience with?

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Post by Brian » Mon Nov 21, 2011 10:24 am

comfortstarr wrote:This is just a small nit on my part, but damn is that Shilo Productions group annoying. You're in advertising dudes. ADVERTISING. Your work is used to sell shoes, etc. Always remember that whence pontificating. I'm not slagging advertising. I generally don't care what people do to make a buck. It just irks the shit out of me when they present it (to us and, likely, themselves) as something else.

Anyway... Good discussion here. I actually think the whole thing is a non-issue.

1) Good stuff will always be better than not-good stuff. And yes, there may be more not-good stuff to wade through, but we'll find a way. And yes, tech has aided and abetted the ability for the masses to create the not-good, but whatever?!?! Why should the availability of these tools cause anger or frustration to anyone? What's the alternative? Withholding them?
I think I explained pretty well why people would be "disturbed" about it in certain genre's. Protracted market glut of anything causes market collapse for no other reason than the glut, if here are reasons for the glut, I can't speak about that.
2) People who make not-good stuff usually know it and eventually stop making it. The "talent" aspect is real and cannot be hidden from, I know, I try everyday to hide from it and delude myself.

3) The true artists, of which there are very very very, VERY few (and I'm certainly not one of them) will, to misquote a famous character played by Alec Baldwin: always be creating. Sure they give a shit about the economics and the models, but at the end of the day, they'll be creating no matter the environment.
Don't expect them to be sharing when they do if that's how their brains work, and that's what they do, then they deserve to be paid a living wage to do it. So does everyone else on their team.
4) I am curious to hear about all this from people who were raised in cultures where music was much more part and parcel of everyday life. My wife lived in Russia for many years and said you couldn't go to a party without a bunch of singing breaking out. There are many examples of this. Perhaps, the middle and over classes of America are just struggling with something that's forming of which they have no cultural experience with?
That's one hell of an assumption. Please elaborate on what you mean by that last statement.
Harumph!

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