(no subject)
http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/
This is an old article, from back in February, but I came across it via a post on the Castledoor blog today and had to comment.
This graph shows the decline in music sales over the past decade.
And the article goes on to point out that consumers don't want to pay for music any more, that they expect everything for free nowadays. The poor RIAA isn't making as many billions of dollars because the heartless consumers are ripping every one off.
What I'd like to point out is that these are US only sales, and only sales reported by major labels who are affiliated with the RIAA. With so many artists selling their own music, so many independent labels shifting their own product rather than relying on distribution deals done with the majors, so many artists getting deals outside of the US because they can't get them in the US, so many artists giving their music away for free because they can't get their music out there any other way. How can these sales figures be anything but skewed.
Ridiculous article aside, what I wanted to talk about most of all was the blog post over at the Castledoor site that I found the link on.
They say:
i don't wanna get into a discussion about the music "business" because honestly, it makes me nauseous. people become musicians so they don't have to look at charts and talk numbers.
but you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone, for the times...they are a changin'!
so here we are. a band full of modest nice guys and gals, being forced to kick and swim and force ourselves into peoples faces and ears. our shows are probably anything BUT modest, but that's because we are home there. the stage is the one thing we DO know. and we know it damn well. and we love it. but that god-awful word "networking" we don't know so well.
the reason our band goes through long lulls of no news isn't because we stopped rehearsing or making music, it's because we were waiting for opportunities to show up. every day checking the gmail to see if we got a big ol record deal (which is kind of an inside band joke). we get emails all the time from A&R peeps from all the majors. but you could respond to every single one of them and it wouldn't matter - at least in our experience. we even got 2 real record deal offers. one of them was swiped away from another local "silver lake" band (didn't think that could happen, but if it could happen surely it would happen to us). the other was retracted after business execs got cold feet in the biggest economic crisis of our time.
so then we wait some more. we wait for show offers, for interview inquiries, for something...ANYTHING. waiting around to die. all the while, doing our "job" of making and playing music. it's frustrating, because it causes you to question everything. thoughts like "maybe it's just not meant to be for castledoor" / then we remind ourselves the truth that we are a great band! certainly we're deserving of a chance if "so and so and so and so" get's a chance.
This is the kind of ridiculous attitude that shits me when I hear artists talk about the sorry state of the music industry. I work from home, I don't like accounting or paperwork either, but I do it because I have to. You don't like networking? I'm sure many many people who work for a living don't like it either. Too fucking bad. It's part of life and it's part of putting yourself out there to make it. These bands just expect someone else to come along and do the dirty business for them so they can fuck around playing music all day. The best musicians I know are the ones out there marketing themselves and making opportunities for themselves and looking for new and interesting ways to get their product out there. You guys sitting there twittering occasionally and bitching on your blogs about how you're being ripped off? Go suck it!
This is an old article, from back in February, but I came across it via a post on the Castledoor blog today and had to comment.
This graph shows the decline in music sales over the past decade.
And the article goes on to point out that consumers don't want to pay for music any more, that they expect everything for free nowadays. The poor RIAA isn't making as many billions of dollars because the heartless consumers are ripping every one off.
What I'd like to point out is that these are US only sales, and only sales reported by major labels who are affiliated with the RIAA. With so many artists selling their own music, so many independent labels shifting their own product rather than relying on distribution deals done with the majors, so many artists getting deals outside of the US because they can't get them in the US, so many artists giving their music away for free because they can't get their music out there any other way. How can these sales figures be anything but skewed.
Ridiculous article aside, what I wanted to talk about most of all was the blog post over at the Castledoor site that I found the link on.
They say:
i don't wanna get into a discussion about the music "business" because honestly, it makes me nauseous. people become musicians so they don't have to look at charts and talk numbers.
but you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone, for the times...they are a changin'!
so here we are. a band full of modest nice guys and gals, being forced to kick and swim and force ourselves into peoples faces and ears. our shows are probably anything BUT modest, but that's because we are home there. the stage is the one thing we DO know. and we know it damn well. and we love it. but that god-awful word "networking" we don't know so well.
the reason our band goes through long lulls of no news isn't because we stopped rehearsing or making music, it's because we were waiting for opportunities to show up. every day checking the gmail to see if we got a big ol record deal (which is kind of an inside band joke). we get emails all the time from A&R peeps from all the majors. but you could respond to every single one of them and it wouldn't matter - at least in our experience. we even got 2 real record deal offers. one of them was swiped away from another local "silver lake" band (didn't think that could happen, but if it could happen surely it would happen to us). the other was retracted after business execs got cold feet in the biggest economic crisis of our time.
so then we wait some more. we wait for show offers, for interview inquiries, for something...ANYTHING. waiting around to die. all the while, doing our "job" of making and playing music. it's frustrating, because it causes you to question everything. thoughts like "maybe it's just not meant to be for castledoor" / then we remind ourselves the truth that we are a great band! certainly we're deserving of a chance if "so and so and so and so" get's a chance.
This is the kind of ridiculous attitude that shits me when I hear artists talk about the sorry state of the music industry. I work from home, I don't like accounting or paperwork either, but I do it because I have to. You don't like networking? I'm sure many many people who work for a living don't like it either. Too fucking bad. It's part of life and it's part of putting yourself out there to make it. These bands just expect someone else to come along and do the dirty business for them so they can fuck around playing music all day. The best musicians I know are the ones out there marketing themselves and making opportunities for themselves and looking for new and interesting ways to get their product out there. You guys sitting there twittering occasionally and bitching on your blogs about how you're being ripped off? Go suck it!