211–220 of 363 posts
I always wondered why we reward vapid pop star hacks who can't do anything without a freaking team of people doing everything for them. Like Britney Spears for example, can't play instrument, can barely sing, can barely dance, needs a choreographer, can't write music nor lyrics. And I'm not talking about Britney Spears now, I'm talking in her prime. All she really brought to the table was her looks and ok singing abi…
The music business has been massively "democratized" last few decades. Now anyone can record high quality music at home. Anyone can self publish their music for the world to enjoy. Both were unthinkable a few decades ago. But there are still a few gatekeepers, and gatekeepers will usually charge for opening their gate. Why wouldn't they? A megastar can choose to record any of dozens of equally good songs. Whoever the…
"Now anyone can record high quality music at home." Eh, to an extent. Audio production is a highly involved process. Few people have the equipment and knowledge to mic instruments & track sound properly, mix audio properly, apply professional-level production, master the tracks properly, master the album properly... It's not as easy as having a computer and some software. You can get a pretty good sound at home now f…
Sufficient for a pro album ready for radio play? Probably not. But good enough to monetize on youtube? All day long.
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> since time immoral I like this typo.
Me too - but what would it mean? A long time or a short time?
Immoral: "an agent doing or thinking something they know or believe to be wrong."
A friend of mine decided to pursue music production around the same time I started in software engineering. We're both 20 somethings. We swap war stories now and then. I get to hear about how he's working with his mentor to do vocal production on a track getting pitched for Maroon 5, The Chainsmokers, etc. Sometimes the tracks take -- the artist likes them and decides to move forward. Usually they don't and it's a lo…
He moved to WA to dodge CA income tax If he waited for the big check before he made that move, CA will find him - it's not where you live when you got the check, it's where you live when you earned it.
A friend of mine decided to pursue music production around the same time I started in software engineering. We're both 20 somethings. We swap war stories now and then. I get to hear about how he's working with his mentor to do vocal production on a track getting pitched for Maroon 5, The Chainsmokers, etc. Sometimes the tracks take -- the artist likes them and decides to move forward. Usually they don't and it's a lo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He moved to WA to dodge CA income tax If he waited for the big check before he made that move, CA will find him - it's not where you live when you got the check, it's where you live when you earned it.
+1, moving intentionally to avoid this is asking for a lot of trouble, especially for a bill that large. I hope he consulted his financial advisors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He moved to WA to dodge CA income tax If he waited for the big check before he made that move, CA will find him - it's not where you live when you got the check, it's where you live when you earned it.
Perhaps it's naive of me, but I can't help but look down on this kind of behavior. I know that tax money is rarely spent in the most efficient way possible, but (ideally) the point of taxes is that they go to benefit the general public. Moving just so one doesn't have to pay as much, after (presumably) living in the state for some time feels selfish and greedy.
It seems as though this is not a well understood issue from reading the comments here. This isn’t artists doing interviews and saying “I wrote this”. The problem is that the artists are bullying their way into getting points for the song writing credits (publishing royalties) when they had little(change a word in the lyrics) or no input into the song. I fully support artists getting as much of the live performance/me…
This parallels my entire experience with comp-sci and "group" projects.
Because someone had to come in last place, it eased a lot of the tension and created a much more pleasant group dynamic:
- The free-rider(s) were perfectly okay with jumping on the grenade, filling the last-place spot, and knocking 20% off their final grade in exchange for doing very little work and still passing the class.
- The lazier people who did care about their grade were a bit more motivated to contribute than they otherwise would've been.
- The go-getters who wanted to ace the class felt like they were fairly compensated for doing most of the heavy lifting.
It seems as though this is not a well understood issue from reading the comments here. This isn’t artists doing interviews and saying “I wrote this”. The problem is that the artists are bullying their way into getting points for the song writing credits (publishing royalties) when they had little(change a word in the lyrics) or no input into the song. I fully support artists getting as much of the live performance/me…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed, and it goes back before Elvis. Screwing popular songwriters of their royalties has been a fixture of the music business since time immoral. From what I've read, Jelly Roll Morton's publisher added his own lyrics to Morton's instrumental tunes, to get a cut of the royalties. And it goes back before the recording industry. Before the phonograph, the "music business" was sheet music, there were "stars," and shee…
An interesting correlation is that songwriters used to be popularly-famous. Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin stick out. But I can't confidently name a single songwriter from the last 50 years, aside from the ones that were predominantly popular performers and recorded-music artists (Roger Waters, Lennon/McCartney, James Taylor). To me, not knowing any better, this suggests that songwriters had more economi…
Leiber and Stoller, Ashford and Simpson, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, Rod Temperton, Diane Warren, Desmond Child, and Max Martin are well known songwriters from more modern times.
However, their hits are much better known than they are, compared to the great American songbook guys. Although there are other very successful songwriters from that era with less name recongnition, for example, Johnny Mercer or Harry Warren.