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Steve Miller: The Whole Music Industry Is Fuckin' Gangsters and Crooks

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Re: Steve Miller: The Whole Music Industry Is Fuckin' Gangsters and Crooks

#141

Post by drzaiusapelord »

bantunes wrote: post #4

Miles Davis on Steve Miller: “Steve Miller didn’t have his shit going for him, so I’m pissed because I got to open for this non-playing motherfucker just because he had one or two sorry-ass records out. So I would come late and he would have to go on first and then when we got there, we smoked the motherfucking place, and everybody dug it.” http://www.openculture.com/2015/05/miles-davis-opens-for-nei...

I hate this ingratitude. You know Miller and Young loved Davis. Absolutely loved him, but they were in the business of making radio friendly rock music by that time and obviously very different than the jazz scene Davis lived in. Their mainstream popularity gave Davis a great venue to open up to non-jazz listeners and promote someone they admired. Davis, being a jerk himself (oh the irony of calling Miller a jerk), took it as a personal affront to have this opportunity. An opportunity other acts would have killed for.

Life isn't and shouldn't be "everyone is fake except this one true artist here." They're all artists. If Miller could magically become a better musician he would have. He probably felt tremendously upstaged by Young's and Davis' talents. I'm sure hearing this broke his heart.

Miller himself got his early breaks through concerts backed by Chuck Berry in 1960's. I can't imagine him calling Chuck a low talent nobody, even though by then his music was very much out of style as blues-based and psychedelic guitar rock took over. Everyone has to ride someone else's coattails to make it in this industry. No need to be an asshole about it.

Re: Steve Miller: The Whole Music Industry Is Fuckin' Gangsters and Crooks

#142

Post by johan_larson »

digitalneal wrote: post #31
igravious wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the digital age wouldn't the life of a copy editor be rife with perl?

Alright, you and you. Out of the pool.

The gene pool? For wordplay beyond the call of duty?

Harsh crowd.

Re: Steve Miller: The Whole Music Industry Is Fuckin' Gangsters and Crooks

#143

Post by halotrope »

baldfat wrote: post #117
Dwolb wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a side note, I saw the founder of Pandora speak and he said their mission is to create a middle class for musicians by making it easier to discover, listen, and support non-hit artists. I'm not sure if their plan had a broader strategy, but I felt the vision was at least admirable due to its mission beyond just firm profits.

I was the Owner of the SMALL Label. My friend from college I worked at is a professional acoustic guitar musician. He makes 100% of his money playing guitar. He makes next to nothing from streaming, he says 1% from Pandora, Spotify and others. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo9kGHYn_bI

Wow, that must be one if the best guitar performances I have ever seen.

Re: Steve Miller: The Whole Music Industry Is Fuckin' Gangsters and Crooks

#144

Post by duderific »

moron4hire wrote: post #44
at-fates-hands wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work in a record shop and found out first hand how much promotion a band needs just to sell a few CD's. I can't tell you how many insanely good bands died because either the label didn't promote them, or they just ran out of cash and quit. The only problem I see nowadays is there's virtually no vetting process. It used to be the good bands would eventually rise to the top and the shitty garage bands would b…

The old ways of playing local and building a following are still available. Maybe you won't see the same crazy success numbers a teenage girl dancing around with a violin on YouTube can get, but that's the fuggin lottery anyway.

The old ways of building a following are still available, but much, much less so than say in the 90's. Many of the local clubs have gone out of business, as you're more likely to make more money in a commercial space doing almost anything other than staging live music. There are of course exceptions, as in music hubs like LA and Austin, but around the Bay Area for example, I'd say 50% or more of the local clubs have shut down. Edit: typo.

Re: Steve Miller: The Whole Music Industry Is Fuckin' Gangsters and Crooks

#145

Post by soundwave106 »

kmnc wrote: post #101
proksoup wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, you had me til the AI part. Personally I figure the musicians will have the last jobs, along with designers. Really artists generally speaking will be the most difficult AI, no?

I imagine the goal posts will for ever be moving when it comes to defining what art is, but ultimately optimizing for human emotional sentiment does not seem that difficult a problem. Art is mostly just a combination of past works optimized for the modern audience. Seems like the perfect problem for AI. We often judge a future AI in terms of how well it could replicate current things but the real question is what hap…

Generative music already is a tool / method in some artists' portfolio (particularly in ambient or experimental circles). However, it doesn't tend to be the only approach.

AI could perhaps work soon for certain formulaic music (like say bubblegum pop) as well as some forms of synth music (I easily can see generative minimal techno for instance). I will say that people don't tend to like overly formulaic music though; they tend to like the twists, turns, and "personality" that people can bring to art. Even in pop, formulaic pieces are quickly forgotten. But it's probably possible to write an algorithm now that does this sort of stuff really well.

Beyond pop formula, I think AI advocates sometimes underestimate the difficulty. There are no real "rules" in music. The music of the world is very diverse, the "rules" even in pop / folk vary from culture to culture.

Many styles of music are way beyond AI at this point IMHO. They are either much more technically complex (Western classical) or rely on improvisational skills that I would think would be difficult to parametize (jazz, Indian classical) Heck, even with something like say blues music, which pretty much uses the same template for most songs (well, a similar rhythm and similar chord changes at least), you've still got the soloists and the singing. Vocaloid ain't got nothing on Muddy Waters or BB King etc. :)

Re: Steve Miller: The Whole Music Industry Is Fuckin' Gangsters and Crooks

#146

Post by sneak »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #111
robbyking wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Albini's essay really illustrates how labels blaming streaming for declining album revenue is akin to the top 1% of income earnings blaming the poor for the middle class's economic problems. The labels always come out ahead, and streaming has become an easy way for the labels to refocus musicians' attention away from the actual source of the problem.

The labels that didn't come out ahead don't exist any more. Nobody says this: In the 1980s, you could establish the sort of relationships to get priority at CD plants and resell back catalog that was already universally known. So the people who won did that instead of so much trying to break new acts. The last gasp of a flood of new acts actually getting on radio was the SubPop ... thing in the 1990s. After that, not…

Literally anyone can put a streaming app into the major app stores these days and bypass all of this.

Why are the Big 3 still in this chokehold position? Is the market failing, or do they actually provide valuable services that can't be obtained elsewhere?

In either case: why is that?

Re: Steve Miller: The Whole Music Industry Is Fuckin' Gangsters and Crooks

#147

Post by coldtea »

rorykoehler wrote: post #55
earlz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, this is also true of most modern music. Sure it requires a bit more equipment, but with software amp simulation and the plethora of VST plugins you can get, you can almost always get a tone similar to your target for just a couple hundred dollars, at most. Combine with equipment and you're looking at maybe $600 in instruments/equipment and a basic mic for vocals. The only sticking point right now it se…

>you can almost always get a tone similar to your target Therein lies the rub. You can't beat real circuits and valves especially when you're cranking it loud for a gig. The difference between the (admittedly pretty amazing) VST's and the real deal is the difference between sounding good and sounding great. Touring a band is still expensive. So much so that it was the difference between going on extensive global tour…

>Therein lies the rub. You can't beat real circuits and valves especially when you're cranking it loud for a gig.

Actually you could very much can, and especially in a gig, where acoustics are not as perfect as at home with expensive hi-fi speakers.

You'd be surprised how many top artists, with huge followings, use amp simulations and plugins both on stage and on their productions.

>The difference between the (admittedly pretty amazing) VST's and the real deal is the difference between sounding good and sounding great.

No, that's talent and a good mixer, producer and masterer (neither of the three lesser acts have).

Tons of great sounding albums where recordings with VSTs. Heck, even Bob Ezrin uses the things nowadays...

Re: Steve Miller: The Whole Music Industry Is Fuckin' Gangsters and Crooks

#148

Post by sneak »

chx wrote: post #100
baldfat wrote: post #23

I owned a SMALL Record Label and Studio. I was (still?) good at picking out talent in bands. The Whole Industry Sucks I had two bands that ended up on Major Labels and Toured the World. I met a kid on the street wearing one of my Bands shirts and struck up a conversation. They still love the band 10 years later. These guys per person made at the TOP $7,000 in profit after expenses were paid. One band did a KickStarte…

I really like Patreon. https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204606315-What... it's continuous crowdfunding.

Patreon engages in content censorship.

Re: Steve Miller: The Whole Music Industry Is Fuckin' Gangsters and Crooks

#149

Post by sneak »

partisan wrote: post #73
20after4 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy does it all alone, never gets hardly any recognition and yet he's still pumping out great songs after a bunch of years: https://soundcloud.com/plastic-pieces

I see what you did there. The question is a good one. How does one differentiate themselves from the pack. The same goes for just about any art form today. There are so many artists and so many works, many of them good enough to tickle your fancy and yet the majority of them will only get a tiny fraction of the consideration they deserve. I would love to publish music or books, but I know that given my dysfunctional…

> How does one differentiate themselves from the pack.

That's called marketing, and it's something the major labels are exceptionally good at.

Re: Steve Miller: The Whole Music Industry Is Fuckin' Gangsters and Crooks

#150

Post by kiba »

williamcotton wrote: post #132
chx wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like Patreon. https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204606315-What... it's continuous crowdfunding.

It's just that Patreon is financial agnostic. We need to treat these investments like fungible capital goods. And we need to invest in the intellectual property that artists make, not the artists themselves. Why should we do that? Because it works and its a foundational element of a market economy. We're capable of much more than a simplistic patron model. That's how things were financed in the middle ages. We've got…

We need to...why?

That's how things were financed in the middle ages

In the middle ages, can you get thousand of people to essentially send you a small paycheck every month on an ongoing basis?

And what exactly is wrong with that model?

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