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A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

rootsmusic.ca

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Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#111

Post by jimrhods23 »

It's the same reason why journalists and whole host of other content creators are no longer making a living: There is so much out there for free, most people don't perceive it as having value anymore.

This is why music piracy of the early 2000s hurt the industry: the individual artist wasn't necessarily losing money directly at the time, but it definitely made it difficult for all artists to make money 2 decades later.

The same thing also happened to software, which is why so many companies moved to SaaS.

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#112

Post by ineedasername »

I was under the impression that music industry revenue had been on the uptick for the last 2-3 years [0]

But did artists actually make more money during the 40's/ 50's? It was my impression that large record labels generally reserved the profits for themselves then too (would love to hear a more knowledgeable answer though about whether is was easier for a musician to make a living then)

[0]https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#113

Post by Fricken »

jedberg wrote: post #6

For all of human history, we've been making music and art. And for almost all of that time, it was done for love of doing, not money. For a few hundred years, there was the patronage era, where if you were really good you could get a rich person to feed and clothe and house you while you made art. Or you traveled around giving performances for money or food or clothes or shelter. Then only in the last 100ish years ha…

For most of human history nobody made money doing anything. Capitalism is an an abberation in history, not "the way it should be".

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#114

Post by colechristensen »

jimrhods23 wrote: post #111

It's the same reason why journalists and whole host of other content creators are no longer making a living: There is so much out there for free, most people don't perceive it as having value anymore. This is why music piracy of the early 2000s hurt the industry: the individual artist wasn't necessarily losing money directly at the time, but it definitely made it difficult for all artists to make money 2 decades late…

>The same thing also happened to software, which is why so many companies moved to SaaS.

This isn't true. If you make updates paid enterprise customers are going to drag their feet and you'll be stuck supporting a large number of versions for a long time. It is much easier to lock corporations into continuous subscriptions.

Did anyone ever make much of a living on selling recordings?

I think a big problem is the lack of market for the less intense public performance (live music at restaurants and cafes and the like) which makes such things rare and usually very poorly paid.

I would love to frequent places with good food and good live music with the atmosphere of being able to carry a conversation while the band was on. What I've experienced is bands in big rooms with terrible acoustics and bad mixing so loud I can't hear myself think or anything really but the drummer. Combine this with the social and economic situation of everyone staying home and watching TV most nights makes the demand for live music weak.

There is an opportunity for targeting that kind of market but difficult to capture requiring a good booker and a sound person that doesn't want everything to sound like a rock show.

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#115

Post by clairity »

jedberg wrote: post #6

For all of human history, we've been making music and art. And for almost all of that time, it was done for love of doing, not money. For a few hundred years, there was the patronage era, where if you were really good you could get a rich person to feed and clothe and house you while you made art. Or you traveled around giving performances for money or food or clothes or shelter. Then only in the last 100ish years ha…

art and music do require skill, and people will pay for good art/music no matter the availability.

take pop music (of all sorts) for example. the money that pours into it is puzzling if you consider the music on its own merits. the melodies are catchy and the lyrics too, but no one really considers it high art. any barroom crooner could sing and play it.

(in fact singing is probably the most accessible and widely distributed art form. we're all born with the instrument and a little practice is all that's needed for passable entertainment.)

so why do pop stars make so much money? it's simply not scarcity that drives the price. it's fashion, or culture, or whatever you prefer to call it. it's the need to forget our troubles. it's our secret hopes and dreams routed through a channel for bonding with our fellow man. that's what we're paying for.

and we'll likely always pay for it. but whether the marketing machine of yesteryear can continue to maintain a stranglehold on access and taste is really the open question.

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#116

Post by NeedMoreTea »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #16
MereInterest wrote: post #8

> However, with a sampling rate of 44,000 samples per second, there were overtones of sound now missing. Human hearing only goes up to 20 kHz when you are young, dropping to about 12 kHz at the age of 50. 44 kHz sampling gives a Nyquist frequency of 22 kHz, easily encompassing the full range of human hearing. Any overtones that are missing in the recording are overtones that didn't make it through the human ear in th…

This stuff again. I have several friends who are convinced that a $2,000 HDMI cable can produce "better" audio and video. I've grown so tired of these debates, that I just nod my head and move on when they start down these roads. Because of these arguments, I've been saving articles about them when I run across them. When I retire, I may make a web site devoted to debunking this nonsense forever. One good example was…

There was, and is a lot of snake oil in consumer audiophile gear. There is in most fields. Let's discount idiots suggesting snake oil, and stick to the rational. :)

That there was a noticeable difference in equivalent quality master sources where one is digital and the other analogue, that can be heard in blind testing. As a result some engineers and artists preferred analogue mastering long into the digital age. Digital mastering had issues for years, and they could be heard on both the CD and vinyl. Hardly a case of claiming record is always better.

Superficially there is some sense - the higher frequency signals are rendered less and less accurately, and nearer a binary on-off. Who knows what nuance and harmonics may be lost affecting what's heard at lower frequencies.

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#117

Post by clairity »

anigbrowl wrote: post #88
jdietrich wrote: post #33

The author's basic premise is false and his article is riddled with basic factual errors. The vast majority of artists never made a significant proportion of their income from recorded music, due to the extremely shady accounting practices used by the industry to deprive artists of royalties. For detail on this, see Steve Albini's notorious essay The Problem With Music . https://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 T…

Much of what you say is true, but then the live music scene is dominated by an oligopoly for ticket sales (Livenation & Ticketmaster) and for bookings (GoldenVoice). Commercial venues tend to sign contracts with these big players and that's killed off most local and regional booking agencies that used to set people up. It's better than it used to be in some respects, but also centralized and excessively driven by ana…

by the way, livenation and ticketmaster are the same company (headquartered in LA).

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#118

Post by tomcam »

koolba wrote: post #66
philipov wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what he said. People made money for -performing- music, and performing artists still make money for doing that.

Not exactly. Before recorded music, a live band (or one man show!) was the only game in town. It was either that or silence. Everywhere that wanted to fill that silence had to hire musicians.

Not true in the USA. Thousands of towns had multiple amateur concert bands during the 19th century, and band shells are still left over in many parks, although of course they are seldom used for their original purpose.

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#119

Post by tomcam »

clairity wrote: post #115
jedberg wrote: post #6

For all of human history, we've been making music and art. And for almost all of that time, it was done for love of doing, not money. For a few hundred years, there was the patronage era, where if you were really good you could get a rich person to feed and clothe and house you while you made art. Or you traveled around giving performances for money or food or clothes or shelter. Then only in the last 100ish years ha…

art and music do require skill, and people will pay for good art/music no matter the availability. take pop music (of all sorts) for example. the money that pours into it is puzzling if you consider the music on its own merits. the melodies are catchy and the lyrics too, but no one really considers it high art. any barroom crooner could sing and play it. (in fact singing is probably the most accessible and widely dis…

> no one really considers it high art. any barroom crooner could sing and play it

Um, no. I say this as a holder of season tickets to the opera and as a trained operatic tenor myself. Many, many pop singers are incredibly good and far outstrip the skills of most barroom singers I have experienced.

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#120

Post by anigbrowl »

clairity wrote: post #117
anigbrowl wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of what you say is true, but then the live music scene is dominated by an oligopoly for ticket sales (Livenation & Ticketmaster) and for bookings (GoldenVoice). Commercial venues tend to sign contracts with these big players and that's killed off most local and regional booking agencies that used to set people up. It's better than it used to be in some respects, but also centralized and excessively driven by ana…

by the way, livenation and ticketmaster are the same company (headquartered in LA).

I sort of remembered that but then I told myself I was getting carried away on my anti-monopolistic rhetoric and exaggerating the issue, and it didn't seem important enough to pause and research the issue :)
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