Want to be bad ass? Buy your music.
I was going to write something to go with this, but instead I'll just say: buying music should be the punk credo of the decade. Stick it to the man, and support your local artist. If you don't, the only people who will make any money from music will be The Big Guys.
From a recent interview with Gary Numan:How do you feel about the illegal download situation?
It's killing sales of CD's and legal downloads, absolutely killing them. Some people will say that the upside to this situation is that the people illegally downloading music are making the live scene flourish as they are still fans of the band and want to see them live. But how is that an upside? These people were fans before presumably and so would have gone to see the band play live anyway and probably bought the album legally. Some people seem to be of the opinion that people illegally downloading music are somehow 'new' fans that weren't around before. How do they figure that? Have these people grown out of a little seed packets once illegal downloading became commonplace? These are just people that are getting into music as part of growing up, or older people that are becoming increasingly internet literate, that simply don't see the point in paying for something when they no longer have to. And stealing something, by downloading it in the comfort of your own home, doesn't make you feel like a common thief and certainly isn't as scary or as risky as lifting something from your local high street store.
Things are changing quite dramatically in many ways. If my sole income was from selling recorded music, CD or download, then I would already have been forced out of the business and that's a frightening thing to come to terms with. But it's quite a common point of view amongst people I know in the business. It's quite normal these days for record companies to be insisting that any new band has to sign a deal that gives the record company certain management rights, publishing and even a significant chunk of the bands income from live work, as well as the usual rights to ownership of the bands music and so on. This is the biggest indicator I can point out to you that shows how bad things have become. Even record companies cannot exist by selling CD's alone, so low are the legal sales of music.
I think I've said before that we know for a fact that Jagged was illegally downloaded at a rate that eventually became over 5 to 1 compared to those bought legally. That figure by the way makes my fans amongst the most honest you could hope for so I'm grateful for that. However, only selling 20% of the albums actually in peoples homes is obviously a fairly crushing statistic for me. It's absolutely crippling to be honest. The making of albums has almost got to the point where they are considered nothing more than expensive to make promo items and the necessary evil requirement to justify going out on tour where, if you are lucky, you might make some money.
I still haven't covered the recording costs of Jagged through sales of the album and I make albums fairly cheaply due to my hands on approach to recording and having my own high quality studio. If I had relied solely upon Jagged for income I would have earned nothing at all since it was released. Not a penny. I'm not sure I ever will earn from it, and that could apply to any, and perhaps all, future releases. It's another reason why we are so keen to keep things 'in house' and sell them directly. Putting out albums through conventional stores and outlets earns such a small amount from the retailers, and has so many risks attached to it, that you would need to sell many more than you used to just to break even and, becasue of illegal downloading, we are now selling many times less than before, not more.
It's quite possible that in the future bands will release less and less new material but play live far more. Making new albums that only sell in very small quantities will become prohibitively costly. I think more people will go the route we are going and establish their own closer ties with their fan base and become their own cottage industries. I certainly can't imagine ever signing with a label again, unless they offer some ridiculous amount upfront as an advance, as their new contracts take so much of the bands income, from so many different sources, it's becoming impossible for a band to survive financially unless they are massively successful.
From a recent interview with Gary Numan:How do you feel about the illegal download situation?
It's killing sales of CD's and legal downloads, absolutely killing them. Some people will say that the upside to this situation is that the people illegally downloading music are making the live scene flourish as they are still fans of the band and want to see them live. But how is that an upside? These people were fans before presumably and so would have gone to see the band play live anyway and probably bought the album legally. Some people seem to be of the opinion that people illegally downloading music are somehow 'new' fans that weren't around before. How do they figure that? Have these people grown out of a little seed packets once illegal downloading became commonplace? These are just people that are getting into music as part of growing up, or older people that are becoming increasingly internet literate, that simply don't see the point in paying for something when they no longer have to. And stealing something, by downloading it in the comfort of your own home, doesn't make you feel like a common thief and certainly isn't as scary or as risky as lifting something from your local high street store.
Things are changing quite dramatically in many ways. If my sole income was from selling recorded music, CD or download, then I would already have been forced out of the business and that's a frightening thing to come to terms with. But it's quite a common point of view amongst people I know in the business. It's quite normal these days for record companies to be insisting that any new band has to sign a deal that gives the record company certain management rights, publishing and even a significant chunk of the bands income from live work, as well as the usual rights to ownership of the bands music and so on. This is the biggest indicator I can point out to you that shows how bad things have become. Even record companies cannot exist by selling CD's alone, so low are the legal sales of music.
I think I've said before that we know for a fact that Jagged was illegally downloaded at a rate that eventually became over 5 to 1 compared to those bought legally. That figure by the way makes my fans amongst the most honest you could hope for so I'm grateful for that. However, only selling 20% of the albums actually in peoples homes is obviously a fairly crushing statistic for me. It's absolutely crippling to be honest. The making of albums has almost got to the point where they are considered nothing more than expensive to make promo items and the necessary evil requirement to justify going out on tour where, if you are lucky, you might make some money.
I still haven't covered the recording costs of Jagged through sales of the album and I make albums fairly cheaply due to my hands on approach to recording and having my own high quality studio. If I had relied solely upon Jagged for income I would have earned nothing at all since it was released. Not a penny. I'm not sure I ever will earn from it, and that could apply to any, and perhaps all, future releases. It's another reason why we are so keen to keep things 'in house' and sell them directly. Putting out albums through conventional stores and outlets earns such a small amount from the retailers, and has so many risks attached to it, that you would need to sell many more than you used to just to break even and, becasue of illegal downloading, we are now selling many times less than before, not more.
It's quite possible that in the future bands will release less and less new material but play live far more. Making new albums that only sell in very small quantities will become prohibitively costly. I think more people will go the route we are going and establish their own closer ties with their fan base and become their own cottage industries. I certainly can't imagine ever signing with a label again, unless they offer some ridiculous amount upfront as an advance, as their new contracts take so much of the bands income, from so many different sources, it's becoming impossible for a band to survive financially unless they are massively successful.