oink had it all.... what.cd is the new place. itunes, and the other legal sources all sell in high quality. for the record, i too would rather listen to the cd on my home theater system. my previous post was in order to show how the majority (my generation anyway) of people listen to music. if it's not on their mp3 player or computer, then it's probably coming out of the radio which is even worse than some of those mp3 rips.
I'm a member of 5 different invite only sites that allow nothing below 192, and they're rarely even uploaded as most members scoff at that bitrate. Most everything is either V0, 320 CBR or FLAC. Waffles alone already has over 118,000 torrents in just over 3 months and 30,000 members, and they just recently started to allow new members. Considering OiNK had 200,000+ torrents in 3 years before it's downfall, I can only imagine what this place is gonna be like in this time period.
The future of music is going to be self-produced, self promoted niche artists that sell low unit numbers but get a livable return from them. Behold the future! http://cdbaby.com/mp3 Well, it doesn't look like much till you dig way into it. Compressed MP3's sound like crap, but 90% of all the people listening to music these days will never know the difference. They could tell if you played them examples side by side on good quality system. But most people under 30 have never even heard anything but computer speakers, earbuds and over-pumped bottom-end car speakers. And they don't really care because the music is so disposable. The CD's today aren't the result of a years worth of work and prodigious skill. Anybody can whip out a CD with Pro Tools; and they'll never sing or play off key or out of rhythm. Making a CD now is just not that special; every new rock album is just thrown on top of the 40 year old pile. For every 1 real timeless CD's you show me from the last 10 years, I'll show you 10 from each decade since 1964. I'm not just saying this because I'm geezer; it just the way it is. Music is ubiquitous, which means it isn't rare, so it has no value, so no one wants to have to pay for it, so there aren't any professionals, so everyone is amateur and amateurs with a few exceptions make crap. But at least you can wade through piles of crap to find the ocassional diamond.
Rarely, rarely, rarely download any music. I usually try to buy my CDs used off Amazon or eBay. I have ripped most of my CDs to my iPod (it is the old 60 gig) but I can't put everything on there (the iPod is missing most of my Miles Davis and John Coltrane for example) - I just put the stuff that I feel is classic and find myself listening to the most. I also have an external hard drive that is 200 gig and is my main backup storage for all of my CDs.
Correctumundo! This was included in the torrent of the new The Flashbulb Album, which is absolutely FANTSATIC btw, for those of you into post rock production. And yes, I donated $12, the cost of the lossless file even though I had already downloaded the torrent, and that money goes directly to the artist. This is how it should be done. Download, listen, if I like...purchase, and the money goes to the ARTIST.
I agree with this completely. The real issue, and it's something I've been researching for a couple months now, is can an artist (a band, specifically) make enough money touring, selling limited numbers of CD's or downloads and selling merchandise to support themselves AND make a career of it? The second part is the most important because I think most bands can do it for a short period of time, but, generally speaking, bands don't get really good until they've been at it for a while. Some of the BEST music has come from the 4th or 5th album of a given artist because they needed time to grow and develop. Until now, record deals gave them the ability to do that. Without that support, can they survive long enough to produce quality music? I dunno. It costs an extraordinary amount of money to make records and tour and attendance at both big concerts and club shows has been DECREASING, not increasing. When you consider that a band of 5 needs to clear $200,000 per year in PROFIT just to pay each member $40k per year (about what a tenured public school teacher makes) before taxes, it makes you wonder how they will accomplish that without being able to profit from music sales.
Unfortunately, you are the exception, not the rule. Reportedly, less than 25 percent of the people who downloaded the Radiohead CD paid for it. Fewer than 10 percent paid $10 or more. Those are the rumored numbers. Most of that remaining 15 percent paid $5 or less. Saul Williams put his CD online in a very similar way to the artist you described. Only 18 percent chose to pay $5 to help the artist. There's no way artists can trust the public to subsidize them as many people suggest. If fans CAN get it for free, they aren't going to pay enough to support bands. Look at ClutchFans. It is the ONLY site like it on the internet, but Clutch only breaks even with the Tip Jar. He's not making a living and he's not close to getting rich, yet he pours hundreds and hundreds of hours into this site every year and pays his bills with money from his day job. Ultimately, there is going to need to be some new option that allows artists the freedom to make music while making a REASONABLE living and still giving them a chance to advance and earn more income, just like any normal working American. Without that, we are just going to get a LOT of amateurish, crappy music and no great long-term artists.
I do a combination of both, and Youtube. But I havent done either in a while. I'm behind on all the "lossless audio" and FLACs and current ways...I still have a freakin tape player in my car Used to have the Limewire cranking non stop but havent even opened the thing up in 6 months. Getting more of a conscience about it I guess...Would like to work more within the current method. The current method has flaws but I dont think file sharing started as a "wake up" call for the industry to shake things up, as some people like to suggest. I'll use it again though, just on the fence about it now.. If I had to do one or the other It'd have to be the downloading. Cover art, artist bios and credits to the album makers and stuff is nice, but its tough to beat on demand purchases. Especially I if can just burn my own cds off what I downloaded anyways..
(Just wondering aloud, since you know more than me on this) Shouldnt attendance stay relatively the same? The only difference is the way the person gets the music. If the person wants to watch a live show, their enthusiasm to see it would figure to be the same....If you were even correlating it with paid versus p2p'ed that is. What % of musicians actually make a living out of music anyways? Its hard to tell between a legit music person in the industry and a psuedo wannabe poser musician. I think society's increasing apathetic attitude and lessening respect level towards musicians, entertainers, or anyone in the public eye contributes to things... American Idol has people thinking THEY'RE the stars just like the people they see and hear on TV and radio. Add that with peoples growing long list of justifications to p2p their music and its eroding from both the the inside-out and outside-in...just my thoughts
Yeah, I wasn't making a correlation. It's just a fact. Ticket sales for touring have decreased dramatically over the past 10 years. Some of that is ticket price, though I just paid $45 for great seats to see the Foo Fighters and two other bands at a 4-hour show. A lot of it is changing attitudes towards what to do for entertainment. There really isn't any correlation between P2P and touring that I'm aware of. I was just stating that many believe that if music is free artists can make a living from touring. I was pointing out that the interest in seeing bands live is decreasing, not increasing, so that is becoming more difficult. The music industry - including engineers, producers, musicians, songwriters and artists, all of whom I consider artists in their own right - helps tens of thousands of people earn a living every year. There are, of course, different levels of being a musician: Hobbyists They play for fun, play out only sporadically if at all and usually don't record. Amateurs These are generally younger, play out a lot and record demos, but not usually records. Semi-pro These are professional musicians who treat music as a career but don't make enough at it to do it full time, so they subsidize with a day job. Professionals These play full time. I generally agree with you. But, here's the problem. The more society decreases its interest, the LESS real art will reach the surface. Great music almost never is something that the general public "gets" on the first pass. As much as you say the public is apathetic towards music because of cheesy artists, Josh Groban was the number one selling artist in 2007. Josh Freaking Groban! The reality is that the crappy artists have and always will sell product because they are easy. The great artists take time to develop and find a following. In the past, this process was subsidized by the music industry. It allowed musicians and artists to hone their craft in the same way a doctor learns by going to school and doing a residency or an attorney learns by going to school and working as an associate. They get practical knowledge while still making enough to earn a moderate living so they can dedicate all their time to getting better. If you don't have the money, you have to do something else and that takes away a significant amount of time from improving your craft. The end result is poor quality and, ultimately, the loss of lots of great artists to other industries. In virtually every area of business, kids are encouraged to learn and grow. Businesses give incentives to kids right out of college to spend time getting better at computer programming or graphic design or stock trading. The good one's stick with it, earn a modest living and, eventually, become better and make more money. The GREAT one's go on to sit on the board of directors. Musicians should have the same opportunities. If they don't, many of them will choose another career or choose to only play when they can afford to. The end result is a lot more bad music released to the public because, again, it is easy consumption. I'm not saying musicians should make millions and become rock stars just because. Most of us could care less if we ever get famous. Most of us just want to make a decent living playing music. Most would be more than happy making what the average middle manager makes in a year or the tenured teacher. But that is increasingly becoming harder to do.
Just about every teenage music lover these days illegally downloads their music... for free. CD's are just not worth it when it is so easy to get free songs. Sorry, but I'm not gonna pay $18 for a Cd when there is only one song on it that I like, and I'm not gonna shell out some $700 a year to pay for songs individually on the internet.. that's a ridiculous amount of money for what I consider to be a necessity.
jeff, i hear you and understand your position but let me try and give you mine. art is not something one does to make a living. rather, it’s a calling and a privelage. the goal, for me at least, is to reach as many as possible because ideas are free and ought to be shared. when i was in grad school, way back when, there were “artists” that held their “precious” ideas close to the vest for fear that someone might steal them. IMO, these were almost always not “great” artists. in fact, i doubt they make art anymore. if you lack ideas, you are in the wrong business in the first place. i don’t want to go into the starving artist cliche but hey, art is not a business, it’s connection between the person experiencing it and something greater than he/she can understand. as far as p2p, i think you’d be surprised how many contribute to, if not monetarily, the promotion of new musicians. if you compare the music industry to the visual arts then hell, it’s always been more populist. i think that’s a good thing. i hate the elitist crap in the art world establishment and i rail against it every chance i get. as you’ve stated, we are experiencing a massive paradigm shift and i think it behooves everyone in the arts to try and roll with it. after all, i don’t think the dam will hold.
there is a fascinating talk going on right now on http://www.wnyc.org/ on the nature of creativity. it's only tangentially related to my point, but is far more articulate.
Man, if buying CD's is now considered "old school" then me and my record/cassette collection are getting very depressed. I feel sorry for the kids today who have never had the experience of going to a record store the day your favorite band's new album comes out, buying it, hauling ass home, throwing it on your turntable and listening for the first time while spending an hour studying the artwork and reading the lyrics on the inside sleeve. PS. No, this is not Deckard.
Not to mention the late night listening sessions with your friends (hey man, check THIS out....). These days most current bands (Radiohead and U2 may be exceptions) don't put out fully realized albums. They put out a single that happens to be on a CD with 8 other throwaway tracks. In the day, you would have entire albums that were ONE song or the "hit" would be the WORST song on the album...
Many bands sell their vinyl releases with a free mp3 download of the tracks included. So, for 10 - 15 bucks, you get both. Perfect for people who like record collecting. I buy music this way often. I rarely buy cd's anymore.
I've probably bought only like 5 CDs in the last ten years. I'm like most people. I don't like to buy CDs for just 1 or two good songs when the rest are crap. Sometimes they also scratch too easily and I have to repair it, but it still skips. I get most of my music by downloading, but I rarely do that either. I mostly listen to the radio or Youtube like someone else mentioned.
