CyberSpace to the rescue?
I think that it does help by the way of getting exposure. It's not easy get exposure in the music press by any means. With MySpace, other networking sites, easy to use web design programs, PayPal, and this forum would anyone agree that the Internet does help a great deal? Or not?
Tell us about your experience (positive and negative)!
What advice can you give?
Does the Internet favour a particular genre of music?
Tell us all about it!
Does the Internet help or hinder musicians?Moderators: Christophe, Mark
17 posts
• Page 1 of 2 • 1, 2
Does the Internet help or hinder musicians?Well, this is a loaded question.
Sure, the internet helps. It puts the power into the hands of the people producing the art they want to circulate. However, it also means that you get to hear all the crap as well, because instead of sending demos to record labels, people post their material all over the place. Personally, I don't mind. It even allows us to track each others progress...... and on top of that, I'd choose saturation over corperate control any day of the week. Instead of choices being made for you about what is accessable, you can weed through all the crap yourself, and find something you resonate with. A good example for me would be a guy called 'Minimal Criminal' I really like his sound, but I would have had to wait to hear releases from him on labels in the past. When I first heard of him, he didn't have any real releases to speak of. It's kind of fun to watch the progression.
Does the Internet help or hinder musicians?As I said in the other thread, it drowns any decent music in a mire of complete krap. How many bands are there on MySpce, for example? I would suggest it's far more than you would find in the biggest record shop in the world. MySpace has no categories to narrow your search so it's like walking into a warehouse sale and trying to find something worth buying from tables full of undifferentiated junk.
Therein lies the problem. I wouldn't go to a warehouse sale to buy music, I go to specialist music stores. You'll counter with sites like Vampire Freaks, and they are a step up from MySpace, except they lack the other thing that a record store gives you - quality filter. Any idiot is free to post his music on the internet which not only forces you to wade through hundreds of bad artists to find good ones, but dilutes the quality of the genre as a whole, which has to drag it's wider reputation down, hindering it's growth. The "old" way makes far more sense to me. You write some songs, perform them in front of people until you get good at it, then someone decides that you are worth spending money on. Often that will be a small, independent label that is in it for the love of music and only seeks to cover their costs. They put everything back into the business so that their artists get the best out of it. So you get to release an album and hopefully play bigger shows that get you noticed more. By the time someone from a major label notices you, you should be ready for the big time, if that's what you want. Even shows like Idol are a better way of getting noticed because someone who knows about the industry gives you one-on-one time in an audition. I don;t know what it's like elsewhere but here it's not always the winner who goes on to have a good career. It's not just about the competition, it's the exposure it gives you. The other aspect of it is what you want to achieve. If all you want is to have people notice you and say nice things, then I suppose the internet is perfectly fine for you. But if your primary concern is your art and you want to promote and support the music you really believe in, the internet is next to useless. You might feel good about having an outlet to do something but the reality is that it's all just pissing in the wind. You may as well busk on a busy city street for all the good it will do you. In fact, the busking analogy raises another important point. It requires hard work and dedication, where putting up a MySpace page requires neither. Sure, you can make it work for you by tirelessly promoting yourself on-line, as bands like AngelSpit do, but unlike busking, it's all time away from music. Let's look at NOVAkILL as an example. We get an advance for each album of 500 euros. Our label presses 1000 CDs and uses about 200 for promotion. The break-even point is about 500, when they have covered their costs and we start to get royalties trickling in. It took about 6 months to reach break-even on each album. In the four years since our last album reached break-even, we have made a further 20 or 30 euros and our label has probably made a little more. Clearly neither of us are in it for the money. We put in a lot of work to produce the music, they put a lot of money up-front to get it out there. They pay a PR company to promote it properly and they work really hard for us, to make it succeed. Now, you might think it's nice to have lots of visitors to your MySpace page and lots of nice comments but that's easy, it doesn't cost anyone anything. When you release a CD, it means that other people value what you do enough to risk a decent sum of money on it. That makes you work harder and it gives them plenty of incentive to work hard for you, too. That's true of every record label, from the smallest independent to the biggest major. It's about other people working hard because they believe in what you are doing. It's just that the bigger the label, the more is on the line, so they can't take as many risks and need bigger returns. Yes, the internet is one piece of the puzzle - we get reasonable traffic through MySpace and we get a lot of traffic through our website [because of my synths]. But I'd put it all at the level of fanzine support in terms of how much it helps us do what we want to do. When you add to that how much the negative side of the internet, file sharing and piracy, hurts what we are trying to do, it completely negates the positive. I'd liken it to a fanzine that publishes an interview with you but also puts your whole album on a cover CD without your permission. Someone makes money off the transaction [in MySpace's case that is ISPs and News Ltd, who are far worse than any record company] but in the long run it really hurts your prospects of progressing up the music industry ladder. Last edited by bones on Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
Dell G7 (Hexa-Core i7)|Cubase Pro 10||Analog Keys|Ultranova|MicroMonsta|Uno|Skulpt|Craft Synth 2.0|
novakill.com
Does the Internet help or hinder musicians?For what I said about MySpace and Facebook - those are like a fishbowl full of business cards at the end of a bar. I use Humblevoice in my tag as it's 'off the beaten path', has a nice layout, yada-yada.
And it's my full Geopoliticking CD there, for free 24/7... You just can't download it is all. Well ahead of Prince and Trent Reznor. Music sites like Soundclick and such I think are really great. You can experiment with labels, see the stats, manage easily, meet people in the same league and so on. Plus, what I like to do is put up VASTLY different things at different sites. And see where my talents are, if any? I might not be the greatest country performer, or sing like Pink Floyd, but it's out there, So that's something I could never have done seriously amongst my own friends and label interests. Got quickly branded as a 'insane shit' for having even tried. But on the net - who knows? You may start off doing 'trance', then do a little silly kids song and put it up on SesameStreet.com for a crazy laugh, and suddenly be bigger than Raffi.... If you can do it, the internet can take it.
Does the Internet help or hinder musicians?The internet can help and hinder in many ways.
Myspace and the like are great, but you can`t expect people to find you. If you are already established then they are a fantastic way for people, labels, fans etc to get hold of you, check your latest stuff etc. I get 89% of my gig bookings via myspace. But nothing beats hard physical work. Getting out there, human contact, gigs, record shops (these are becoming a thing of history now admittedly) shmoozing. Then when you contact people with mysapz info or whatever, they can put an encounter to that web address, a physical memory. Now for the creative side the net helps loads, collaborations and remix work transcends national boundaries, as a whole communication improvements are soooo helpful. For gigs, for sorting artwork, manufacturing, remix artists, advertising for artist for your labels blah blah. Sure there is more dross out there, and more filtering needs to be employed to find the good stuff, but this is changing. We are still seeing a young sales model grow. I predict in a few short years that stores will no longer accept anything but digital music from respected digital distributers and those distributers will need to employ stricter quality control. My labels used to be entirely vinyl based output, with respectable sales for the genre, and over the years we have seen record shops, and then distributers go out of business. Due to my control feakiness I got involved at all levels of the biz, from manufacture to dsitribution to final point of sale. The tide is changing and we can`t fight it, record sales are nothing more than promotion for gigs, which is where the money now lies, if that`s what you want. Whereas it used to be the other way round. An album was promoted by touring. The internet is a fantastic system for communication, and your voice doesn`t always get lost. A lot of the artists I have released on my labels were gotten purely via the internet. Either they sent me a communication to a myspace site, or a nicely worded email (un spam like) which I then replied to for links to demos, or via forums etc. So it isn`t all bad. I try to keep my quality bar set fairly high to keep the labels credibility up, and it works. Essentially, the net is a tool to be used. And with music, like anything, you get out what you put in, to a certain extent, so if you are serious, then you need to act seriously and work hard. Don`t expect to be "discovered" you need to get out there and shout loud, and make sure you say something worth hearing.
Does the Internet help or hinder musicians?I think too, if you're someone like Bones who is good at graphics, has a band that's gigging alot, great VSTs to offer, etc. Then it's best to have www.novakill.com Had he just gone with a MySpace page or the like, I wouldn't take him seriously - whether I liked industrial music or not.
And let us not forget - music IS competition. Some are more ego, and less music, some are vice versa. But at the end of the day, we all want that hit, the acclaim, the front page cover, the exclusive interview., the breakthrough. Some are happy to get it for a week, some strive to stay on the charts for a month, and some want to wipe U2 or Depeche Mode off the map and be the biggest and the best forever. So like getting played on MTV would be a 'crowning acheivement'', it really isn't anymore. As MTV rarely plays any music videos hardly. And sadly MySpace is as much a 'household word' now. Whereas saying "I'm #1 on Soundclick, come check me out" You might as well say "I'm on Asian Pay Per View, contact your local cable company..." I just don't like the 'status quo' MySpace and Facebook have taken on. This 'I'll search for you on MySpace... WHAT? You don't have a MySpace page....?" I was pressured into I think FaceBook, and it was immediately like putting a sign on my front door saying 'Give me as much junk mail as possible!' Sure, there's some good people there. And possible interest for futhering a career - be it Joe Blow Records or RCA... Remote as it maybe. But the blogs, the Twitters, the 'who's done what in the last 24 hours'. How does anyone feel competitive, gratified, and confidently informed with that going on? And 'the bigger you get' the worse it gets - for the artist and fans alike. Let me have MJ's life anyday - humongous chart toppers, an insane amount of money, a mansion filled with hot babes, and if one of them is under 18 - you'll be lucky to get a picture of me at the courthouse. Power to the tabloids I say - because there is NO bad press.
Does the Internet help or hinder musicians?Any publicity is a good publicity.
Now how you can come into people ears is another story. If you are interest so much about that july's Computer music magazine has a really helpfull extensive article about internet use-exposure and how you can gain the most out of it. Emu1212m | Alesis micron | Edirol pcr500 | FOCAL CMS 50 | Senheiser hd 25-1 II | Core i7 etc
Does the Internet help or hinder musicians?Sorry Vicious, had my head between a debuntants legs there. What was that about 'coming in peoples ears?' :rofl:
I think I said elsewhere here, and you helped solidify it - we still trust and buy 'paper' to guide us for cyberspace. Nothing against CM per say, fine mag indeed. But with all the articles, info, contacts, etc. already on the net... I just find it ironic on someone staying off it to read a article on how to attract people on it to them. Maybe it might help? :confused: That, and if you can have sexier chicks on your page than the banner ads over top... That might help too.
Does the Internet help or hinder musicians?On that front, we'll have interviews in 4 or 5 printed magazines for this release [we only got Zillo and Orkus for the first two]. I am certain these will do far more for us than anything I can think of on the web. The only internet promotion planned is via internet radio.
But if the internet wasn't there, those same things would most likely still have happened, they would have just sent you demos in the post, aster finding out about your label through having bought something or from an industry directory. It's really no more than the difference between a fax and an old teletype. e.g. We uploaded our new album for the label, whereas we posted them the last two. Next time, we will go back to posting because it took more than a week to upload it successfully and both of us chewed through half our monthly bandwidth doing it. In real terms, that has cost more than an EMS Courier satchel would have, it has taken just as long, required far more effort from us and the printer doesn't get proofs or anything, so there are more points of failure in the process. Reading through the responses, it's interesting that no-one else wants to acknowledge the downside - illegal downloading of your copyrighted music. Is that because you don't care if you ever get a chance to get to the next level, as long as the stuff is out there somewhere? Is it perhaps because you see no value in other media? Or because you download so much music illegally that you don't really see any problem with it? For us, the most important thing is being able to release albums on physical media. Without that we would never bother putting anything up on the web. It simply doesn't interest us in the slightest. In fact, the reason this album has taken more than four years is because for a long time it looked like we'd only get digital distribution and even having mp3s on iTunes means nothing at all to either of us. If that was all that was ever going to happen with it, I would not be motivated to finish it beyond getting it to a stage where we can play it live. Getting up on stage and performing the songs live is why they exist. Having people listen to them in any other way is meaningless to me, but at least releasing an album is a way of ruling a line under a particular set of songs, which is very helpful in allowing you to move on to the next thing. Without it, I would still be tweaking SHOkNOVA endlessly and I'd want to play 40 songs at every gig. As it is, I am perfectly happy not to play any old song now, although we do play one or two off the early albums, just because people ask for things. Last edited by bones on Sun Jul 26, 2009 12:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
Dell G7 (Hexa-Core i7)|Cubase Pro 10||Analog Keys|Ultranova|MicroMonsta|Uno|Skulpt|Craft Synth 2.0|
novakill.com
Does the Internet help or hinder musicians?That's a good point Bones. Either A: People just contend with the artists 'free stuff' (ahem), or copy it. crack it. and put it up on a torrent site. Soon as I heard of Napster, I thought 'oh-oh, this can't be good...' And bless Metallica for getting pissed and fighting to the wall on it. But even after I felt like that wasn't going to do a piss of good. It's purely a generations attitude now. They're told what's right and wrong - but they don't know right or wrong to begin with. They know 'time outs', 'bail outs', and 'hand outs'. I'm of the adage of The Beatles - why go out and play live when there's all this wonderful technology at ones disposal. Make fantastic CD's and music and videos, and there you go. Even back in the days of the fab four, they got the lowest percentage of mechanicals for their records - but made a fortune still. If they were around today, they'd have TWICE the siccess, with only 25% total sold. It's really insane when you think about it. Yet, people want to go out pay high cover charges and ticket prices, be jostled around by pothead puking pickpocket people, go deaf, spend $75 on a 'official T-Shirt' and say 'gee, that was a fun night. I'm going to steal that bands music and put it on my iPod tomorrow.'
Almost makes me ashamed to be in any part of the process of music today. :rolleyes:
Does the Internet help or hinder musicians?interesting article here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8120552.stm and also, interesting how attitudes change. Here's what Metallica has to say about things now: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7598617.stm
Does the Internet help or hinder musicians?and Robert Smith's opinion here (or rather his opinion on free music):
http://www.thecure.com/blog/default.aspx?nid=21082 Last edited by V/M on Sun Jul 26, 2009 11:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
Does the Internet help or hinder musicians?As far as 'illegal' downloading goes....... I know many people aren't that ethical about how they do things in this regard, but if it's worth paying for, I will. I have to admit though, that I'm really happy not to have to get screwed with a bunch of filler crap on an album I bought for the one good single I heard on the radio.
Also, I downloaded a sample pack a couple weeks ago, because I was thinking I might be interested in buying it. I'm really glad I did, because it was total crap. The folders were called things like 'hats', and in the folder about 100 hi-hats labelled only 'Hat1' 'Hat2' 'HAT3', etc. no indication as to if the hat was open or closed, synthetic or recorded. It was the same with all the other folders in the pack as well. This pack is on one of the better known digital download sample sites. I've downloaded many things to check out, and bought them after. It's not much unlike how the local music store when I was a kid, would actually open the cd, and let you listen to it. If you didn't like it, you didn't buy it. As for software, most companies have wisened up a bit, and made demos that are more functional, or free versions that include just a few key parts of the software. However, if I had bought MOTU's vst sampler (forget what it's called) without having tried the full version of it, I would have felt totally ripped off, and I don't think asking for a refund on software makes that much sense to anyone. I think people need to watch out when they talk about this, and try to think a little more open minded, and logical. We're really talking about 'file sharing' when we talk about most of the downloading stuff. Have you ever made a friend a copy of a casette back in the day when that was the media of choice? G N' R songs being leaked before the release of Chinese Democracy, is something a little different. However, I tend to see these issues a little more like how it seems Metallica now does. To take it one step deeper, think about what kind of control would really have to be put in place over the internet, if they wanted to truly put an end to all the downloading, and file sharing. I'm sure you're e-mails can already be read, but this would just bring it way out into the open, and essentially the idea of privacy (which we have very little of left) would be a thing of history. If you have some time, here's an interesting video of a talk the the founder of the Pirate Party gave on copyright vs. civil liberties: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... +Falkvinge Bones - I totally understand the idea of wanting an album put out on 'physical media'. Actually, I still buy cds because I like having the physical cd with the artwork and liner notes etc. However, I have bought some digital downloads as well, and I like knowing that a larger percent of the money from the download will go to the actual people who made the music.
Does the Internet help or hinder musicians?
you may disagree with the way they run their business, but I don't think that gives you the right to open and examine the merchandise without their permission. I feel you should respect their wishes and move on, it's their loss for handling their business in a way that doesn't work with your personal philosophy. also, their lack of attention to detail, such as a meaningful naming convention, doesn't justify your actions.
Does the Internet help or hinder musicians?Well bones, firstly I was running my labels before the internet properly blossomed, and getting demos by CD was rubbish, hated it.
Sifting through CD`s was time consuming and lots got binned without ever passing my ears. The internet allows me a quick click, I can scan through tracks (and with applications like soundcloud, this is even better) and pick the ones I like. The process of demo selection becomes far less time consuming and tedious. As for physical product, well sure, we`d all prefer it, I loved it. We even used to do limited edition slip in prints of cool art for the releases and other stuff. Nice little tokens that made things special. However the tides of change are upon us, and as much as we can moan, you either keep up or get left behind. The fact that so many stores and distributers are collapsing is an obvious sign of the times. (and this has been happening long before the global downturn) The age of the album is almost dead, which I find horrific, as people pick and mix and shuffle on their shitepods. But unless artists embrace digital media and make it work for them, they will slowly fade to nothing. People like Trent Reznor are showing how the model can work. Sure, piracy is an issue, you will never stop it. We still get vinyl releases and the day the promo`s go out you find the files online somewhere for download. How this happens we just don`t know. There will always be a core crowd for a genre that will pay for the music, but you do need to look at other ways of marketing. Gigs and merchandise are great. Selling CD`s at gigs is great, especially if the facilities to record and duplicate the gig just played are on hand. For all the moaning, the digital age is a fact, it is here, in your face and the kids are wearing it like it always existed. Deal with it, work it, do what you can to make yourselves float to the top, work harder to set yourselves apart. For all the moaning, I finally took the plunge into digital online media, after much deliberation and much research into my market, as the physical product was becomeing more and more of a risk. Initially sales were droopy, but after a lot of work in promotion, keeping the quality up, makeing sure presentation was good, getting promo`s to the right people, getting reviews, DJ listings etc, sales are actually now, pretty respectable, and nearly comparable in terms of profit, to when physical product was doing good. With a fantastic system that allows us to track sales right down to per-track, and which stores sell what etc, we get a much better idea of the market and how things are progressing. Sales are increasing with each release, and we know which stores are more effective and can market accordingly. It`s not all doom and gloom.
17 posts
• Page 1 of 2 • 1, 2
Who is onlineUsers browsing this forum: No registered users and 486 guests |
© 2017 Synapse Audio Software. All Rights Reserved. |