What's happening to the recording industry? and its future?

[Thirteen]

It is a sign of a broader malaise - The personal computer. Without taking anything away from the obvious usefulness of a computer with an internet connection the PC is also having profoundly negative effects on our society and our individual lives. We are gradually withdrawing into a world based around our computers and they are limiting our lives and experiences. The computer/internet combination combined with cheap, plentiful storage capacity has cracked the foundations of intellectual and artistic copyright, the largest benefactors and thus promoters of this have always been the manufacturers of blank media, copyright violations have been the lifeblood of CD, DVD and hard drive manufacturers ever since CD burners became standard on home computers.

People are withdrawing socially as they shift their time and attention toward their computers and smart phones. They get hit walking across the street and crash their cars while engaged with their smart phones.They steal and re-distribute music, films and books with their computers, while the music that they steal was made by a musician using the same brand of computer. Retail shop assistants buy their clothing and consumer goods using a computer, then arrive at work to find that they have lost their job because of online shopping. People become addicted to social media sites, end their relationships using email, the first thing that many do as soon as they wake each morning is check their messages and they spend their last waking moments in front of their computer each day. High frequency trading computers have completely altered the share markets and have destabilised the economy as a result.

The personal computer/smart phone linked to the internet is the most profound social event that humanity has ever experienced since the industrial revolution and it has really only just begun. Google is a colossal data mining algorithm, as is Facebook, we conduct our financial lives via computers and smart phones, and hence our life's savings are one systems failure away from non-existance. Nothing that can be digitised is safe and unfortunately music, film, photography and literature are all completely unprotected.

Music will survive the personal computer but musicians won't. If you want to make a living and a life as a musician in the age of the NBN and 2Tb hard drives then you either have to find a way to skim what money you can from the Matrix before your work is disseminated across the web for free within days, or else find ways to take your music out into the real world again. Personally I think that there is a lot of scope for clever new ways to present live music to the world and to engage people on picking up real instruments and learning to play and appreciate them. We will have to operate collectively though to turn music back into a live, real spectator sport again, to make vinyl a new subcultural icon, to make playing a guitar or piano sexy, to make live events cool again, to re-ignite the desire to sit in a hall with a large orchestra, to build events like Night of the Proms, Vivid and the like by using multi-media music and light/projection events, basically to re-invent the music/live theatre experience into a format that engages people in a new way that is far more physical and interactive than the old pub/club/gig model.

[The Tasmanian]

Rick - I had to stand on my head to see that! - I like it - not sure about the venue.....

As far as the works at Mona, the tunnel cost ($XXX now edited) to make - and would be one of, if not the most expensive music installations on the planet...cant see anyone asking me to do another. I was commissioned - I dont own it, the institution does.
I don't want to own it really, it means nothing to me. The work means everything.

What gets up my goat is APRA is SO behind the times - nearly a million people had been through it in the first 2 years, running 8 hours a day = royalty check $120 per year!

But, the success and popularity of the work that surprised everyone - especially me, the outcome has been 4 more commissions - and others on the boil, and a brand new career.
Huge projects looming - and now I think like an artist, instead of a MP3 maker....
I wake up each day and make art.

But I'll fight to the death for my songwriter brothers!

[The Tasmanian]

Steve I totally agree - I dont mind being on my computer - because I live in the forest with no-one around, only animals and birds. I do have my coffee first in the morning though...
So for me the net is a way of being engaged, personally, and professionally.

And yes - we must re invent music, where and how it resides, anything but a MP3/digital format.
Or play live - but even playing live can be copied and put on the net overnight..

[Drumstruck]

You make the wheels in my mind spin Steve (in a good way)

... profound social events - a romantic listing:

- control of fire
- discovery of leisure
- the wheel
- the printing press
- electricity
- telegraphic communication
- photographic and audio reproduction
- radio
- flight
- nuclear fission

long pause....

the PC?

I'd love to fully agree and cite the PC as the root of all modern evil - perhaps it is?

[Wiz]

Our power went off here in Bundy for about 90 mins last night.

You know what happened?

The 3 of us sat down at the kitchen table by candlelight and had a talk......


normally my daughter wife and I would be on the net, or watching TV at that time of night.

We were discussing how we immediately came together, and how cool, the candlelight was... also how tired we had gotten even though it was early by our normal bedtime standards..

There is a great simpsons episode , where the TV is shutdown and all the kids go outside and play...

food for thought.

[jkhuri44]

PCs....im not sure they are the root of evil. perhaps from your perspective?
The democratisation of knowledge is one of the most incredible gifts to humanity i can think of....

[Drumstruck]

PCs....im not sure they are the root of evil. perhaps from your perspective?
The democratisation of knowledge is one of the most incredible gifts to humanity i can think of....

If only it was that honourable and simple - the greatest disseminator of free information is currently banged up in a foreign embassy with the threat of execution hanging over his head....

[jkhuri44]

on smaller scales, people can get answers for nearly any qyestion they can think of....
people share knowledge on forums....
etc etc

[Drumstruck]

wholeheartedly agree Jamil

[Thirteen]

I think that the best thing that could happen to music and to the development of children's minds in general would be for music studies to be elevated in schools to the same status as the other languages including English. Music skills are very good for mental development.

[The Tasmanian]

Wholeheartedly agree Steve.
I wish they had made me do music at school - I had to learn it on my own, putting me back decades.
I'll never forget a well known violinist friend, originally from Europe.
He was learning at 2 y/o.
His mother, a music teacher herself, would walk him through the park at 2, reciting the cycle of 5ths.

It really is a cultural thing here.
As a very young nation we missed out on so much of cultural history.
In Vienna, today, the old coffee houses still exist as cultural emblems of periods where the great thinkers/poets/composers would congregate in great coffee shops each morning , share ideas, and then go to work.
They are still there, and still used by composers etc.
You see these even young composers sitting at their tables with manuscripts / laptops working seriously away.
I spent a few months there a few years ago.

People would meet me socially, and ask what I did, when they found out I was a musician/composer, their faces lit up, they would offer me to stay at their houses, cook for me, tell their families to come over and meet me, give me apartments to live in.
They had total respect for me for dedicating my life to the arts.

Meanwhile, down in this great brown land, understandably, we had to build a nation, we had nothing, we needed to build roads, railways, infrastructure, farms to feed the settlements > there was no time to be creative.
In fact the creatives were shunned by society as "dreamers"

Unfortunately the legacy of this thinking still permeates our society today.
It permeated my family as I was 6th generation Australian on both sides of the family.
I had to fight to do my calling... ( and I did a trade to pacify everyone - so glad I did it though)

Yes - bring back music studies at a very young age.
Whether or not there is an industry for them to exist.

I always tell parents that learning music and art at a young age is essential to being a good businessman/woman.
If you aint creative in business - you are unlikely to survive.
Start young!

[The Tasmanian]

I think PC's are the root of all evil.
Macs are fine though.

[Wiz]

I think PC's are the root of all evil.
Macs are fine though.

I actually laughed out loud.

[Manning]

I think PC's are the root of all evil.
Macs are fine though.

PCs are for free thinking people who want freedom of choice and oppose globalisation.
Macs are for people who are slaves to fashion and corporate indoctrination.



And hey Ben - thanks for that link this morning!

[The Tasmanian]

Wiz - well done for not doing LOL!

[Drumstruck]

More lols

Was that true where you came from Chris? Music looked down on / not taught?

.... I just went to a public school - we had a couple of music lessons per week in every grade - in 6th class we were in the all-schools choir and sang in the Sydney town hall which was pretty cool.... I had assumed that every public school offered similar, and assumed the private schools offered better.... shows the danger of assuming I s'pose...

[The Tasmanian]

I knew I could bait Manning....

[The Tasmanian]

Ian - it was taught - but on a tokenistic dumbed down level.
Even the teachers were bored.
One lesson a week - if we brought our own instrument we could go outside the classroom and play - that's when I started my first band at 11y/o.

[Drumstruck]

Fairly similar in a lot of years - though if I was ever outside it was to get 4.....

[The Tasmanian]

of the best...

[Milo]

I was living in the UK in the Thatcher years, and a friend of mine - only teacher in a one-teacher school (19 kids) - had a visit from the education department. They had adopted a formula devised by the university to work out the amount of music teaching allowed (all music teachers were peripatetic), based on size of school, location, etc.
In all seriousness, this official delivered the news that the music teaching time allocation for his school equated to two and a half minutes per week.

Then came the poll tax.......

Milo

[SYOS]

Geez, new word for the day from Milo

Peripatetic - Noun: A person who travels from place to place.

Must have had to much music education and skipped out of English classes...............

[SYOS]

This article in yesterdays SMH is somewhat relevant

http://www.smh.com.au/national/educatio ... 2rpym.html

[Hookemeister]

Well even though the following link isn't about the recording industry, it is directly related, as the the more live venues there are, the more money in muso's pockets to spend on recording.

http://themusic.com.au/news/all/2013/06/27/read-dave-faulkners-impassioned-live-music-speech/?

A long read but a great speech from Dave Faulkner.

[audioio]

That doesn't make the album a lesser work. I was passionate about the music and invested huge amounts in bringing the work to the public. I just can't pay for it with the t-shirt and the world tour. So, most likely the album wont get made. That's a net loss to the public, fixated on free or unsustainably cheap music.

I've been staying out of this, as I've been giving it a lot of thought. Yes, I've read a lot of the opinion (Justin Colletti, Thetrichordist, et. al.).

Chris's comment resonates with me. I've heard people advocate a model where musicians use recordings as promtional tools -- yes, in later posts, I saw that mentioned -- but performance is the main game. But there are many forms (styles?) of musical expression that can't easily be performed (DJ's notwithstanding... sorry, couldn't resist). Are those composers to be condemned to a life of poverty? Are entire modes of musical activity to be discarded because of a prejudice in favour of performance?

That just doesn't seem fair to me.

Chris T's new vocation, if I may be so bold as to call it that, is fantastic. All power to him. But there are those of use working in "service" to performers and composers who have no aspiration or inclination to be performers or composers. Are we, like the composer non-performers, similarly condemned?

[The Tasmanian]

Well maybe David - unless you can find a new angle to keep doing your craft.

Or a way to reinvent what is "live" - even something like doing gigs / interviews in a relaxed house setting and beaming them via youtube . In effect - setting up a TV station from a terrace house.

It takes a radical different angle to start things from to come up with a new answer to this conundrum.

Its a tough question to answer, but whatever is the most out there proposition is a good place to start.
If I was only in the service part of the industry - recording/mixing/producing, thats where i would start > right away from studios/venues etc etc.

The punters will lap up a completely different approach to viewing a live set.
They want something fresh. Outside the square, like nothing to do with studios and venues.

Remember - youtube is like having your own TV station - a killer opportunity, that also should make people inspired to watch.

[Kurt]

Maybe the problem isn't that people aren't buying music, rather that the music we make is not what people want.

This thread is starting to sound a lot like a bunch of middle aged men bemoaning the glory days.

As someone pointed out earlier, Australian culture doesn't really have an ingrained musicality. This is evident even watching live video of concerts in Europe, the crowds can actually clap in time and sing in tune. I went to primary school in South Australia in the 70s, we had to do recorder and singing practice, one lesson each on alternate weeks. Once I got to high school music was an elective subject.

[Drumstruck]

.....
This thread is starting to sound a lot like a bunch of middle aged men bemoaning the glory days.

..... the crowds can actually clap in time .....

eh? what's that sonny? did you say old men? you'd better speak up a bit

ummm - if you class clapping on the "on" beat being "in time" then perhaps...... (one of my pet hates is crowds clapping along on the "on" beat)

More guys - this is an entertaining thread

[The Tasmanian]

On you Kurt!
No one makes music that people want anymore???
Whats clapping got to do with it?
Whats age got to do with it?

unless your a comedian...

Well done mate for your positive inputs (edited...very edited)

[audioio]

Well maybe David - unless you can find a new angle to keep doing your craft.

Well, yes. The end of my post was about us rather than the musicians, but the point is probably more pertinent to them.

What I meant was that if we value any music for its own sake, not just because it can be performed (and therefore anything which cannot be performed has no value), then I think we should equally value support services for music. Those services are not performed in a public sense, but are in their way just as valuable to the musical enterprise as the composers' and recording artists' craft. (And that goes for recorded music that can be performed as well.)

Maybe the problem isn't that people aren't buying music, rather that the music we make is not what people want.

Would it be fair to say that most consumers only end up wanting what they've heard, and most hear a very small range chosen by commercial media interests.

Besides, even if most artists will not recover the costs -- whether monetary expenses or those more difficult to quantify, like composition or practise time -- they still deserve to be paid a decent amount for every sale. in this thread I've not notice any complaints that artists don't sell enough units. If they do, great... if they don't, they don't. Rather, they don't get enough for each unit sold.

Even Lady Gaga doesn't make a decent living from Spotify and look at her sales!