I've recently added an on-line music store to ROCK-TIL-YOU-DROP at www.rock-til-you-drop-records.com. As well as providing another outlet for bands to sell their CDs and downloads, it provides audiences and fans with an address that they can visit to shop for music by their favourite overgrown kids.
I've sent the link to a few bands I like, that I think probably have a bunch of great CD albums in a box somewhere that are not seeing the light of day. They are all currently having a look.
But I've just finished reading the Observer article The end of the age of free! by Vanessa Thorpe and it left me feeling slightly depressed about both trying to sell music on-line, and being in a band, other than an established or young up-and-coming one.
The gist of the article is that news and music on the internet is free (in the case of music, only illegally) and this is not good for business. Apparently 95% of all downloaded music in 2008 was illegal. This is quite incredible.
The article points out that both music given away with newspapers and streaming music services such as Spotify only serves to make music appear even more free.
I know when I discovered Spotify, I couldn't believe it. All this music, for free?! So I spent the next few days greedily plundering the collection. And I can tell you it took at least a week to feel sated. I filled my boots alright. A bit like when I have one of those all-you-can-eat breakfasts that they offer at some hotels.
Because most music, right or wrong, is available somewhere for free, established bands are now making most of their money from live performance. This is not good for bands of our age who make original music, who (mostly) can't even get paid to play.
So is it worth attempting to sell our music on-line? Will anybody buy it? Should we be giving our music away too? And if we give our music away, will this help get people to our gigs and us paid for playing? I doubt it. Or do we just get over the whole business. Stick to playing once in a blue moon for the fun of it and making a CD when we can afford to, simply for posterity?
Which begs the question, am I a hobbyist or a wannabe professional musician? I thought I was over the ambitions. Maybe not?
Issues, Dude.
3 comments:
Very interesting article. I was only commenting online about on this very issue earlier this week - post interupted due to wife shaking a large jar of Patak or some such curry sauce all over the kitchen and asking me to clean it up! I've gone and lost me thread only to say I agree that the web as we know it will change simply because it has to. After all, it's only a teenager and it looks set to live forever in one form or another. We had better darn well learn to start adapting to life with it or we will eventually get sucked up its asspipe where it will leave us all for dead. The internet, culturally spaeking, has always been about free. Except that Amazon got in early adn cleaned up on teh 'for sale' side of it. Everybody else has struggled to copy it model. But for years Amazon was losing money, but it adapted and survived only to prosper. I predict that any day now (because the technology is readily available) that Amazon will change it model and will begin to offer music and books electronically. It's happening with MP3 downloads. It won't be long before they are offereing downloads to e-books, and in the case of novels etc. these can also be produced to order on a printed on demand basis with a minimum order of just the one. I've seen this technology and it's all over the place. Amazon wil be able to downsize it warehouses and staff. More jobs lost. In the case of the music industry, well screw 'em. They only have themselves to blame. If they were still signing and promoting bands like they used to there would be far more music out there that they could control. Their biggest mistake was to effectively downsize and hit the panic button when the internet started to take hold. They realised they had no control over it so they started cutting their acts like mad in a bid to maintain profits. Now they are buggered and have very little teeth because all they are doing is continuing to chase youth in the miguided notion that the youth still have money to spend on music etc., but haven't yet worked out that 'youth' is only interested in frees stuff because it is mostly a skint demographic. Ask yourself this question. When you look out over your audiance from the stage, do you see a sea of young faces looking back at you? Probably not eh? And when was the last time you went to a gig and there was a discernable abundance of 'youths' in the audiance? Record companies? Bhah! We don't need no stinkeen' record company...
Intersting.
1. The internet has changed life for all.
2. the free culture - yes it is there to, many people just don't expect to pay for stuff like they use to. I personally am lost on that, I do use Spotify but consider it more like Radio than anything else. It has led to me buying stuff. I'm a dickhead probably but I still think it right for me to pay my due to the person who created this thing I want/enjoy.
3. New bands? How the hell they going to get anywhere these days? I don't know. There is a new model that needs to emerge but it isn't there yet. If it doesn't new music will dry up to a large extent - at least artist development through the old route will.
4. Older bands - interesting. Is it feasible to have a career change at 50 and look to be a sucessful musician? Maybe that is part of the challenge of the new model.
So what is the new model? Yes sell through online - at least try to get people to.
Gigs - now there's the rub. Simply Red (hardly a new or teen targeted act) can charge £50 for seats at the 02 - it was hardly empty. But if I go to my local pub/community theatre etc. to put on a show how much will people pay? There's a huge gap in the live market from the big established acts and the less so. All those 40 and 50 somethings who will travel and pay through the nose to see Mick play his last or Sting play his reunions etc. now getting them to try something new in the live arena... is that the trick? and how does someone do that?
Well, the first thing is to start a band...
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