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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

#221

Post by williamcotton »

WalterBright wrote: post #193
williamcotton wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still write originals but I only put them in my set if they're better than the covers I know. More indie rock bands should play more covers and stop pretending like they're god's gift to songwriting. More people would go to and enjoy their shows. The country, bluegrass, jam, americana and folk scenes have tons of fans that support a large number of pro and semi-pro pickers and singers. They play a lot of covers bec…

A cover done well can be very enjoyable. I tire of the album originals of Zep songs, but enjoy the song all over again when it is a cover by someone else. Then there are covers that reimagine the song, like "White Rabbit" by Sanctuary. Pretty awesome. And who can forget "Tamborine Man" by William Shatner (!)

I think even Bob Dylan could agree that Shatner did the best version of that song!

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

#222

Post by WalterBright »

collyw wrote: post #202
WalterBright wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch the movie "The Wrecking Crew". Essentially, the studio fixes the nascent tune penned by the artist, and provides studio musicians to play on the recordings. The band rarely plays, or even sings, on the album. The reason is simple, they don't play that well, or sing that well, and the studio musicians do. This is one big reason why bands/singers/artists need labels. They're not able to turn the lyrics on the bac…

Most of all they provide marketing for the fairly bland consumer friendly sort of music that makes a lot of money.

I recommend watching "The Wrecking Crew". It's an eye-opener. Especially the parts where they show what the artist brought them, and what the studio turned it into.

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

#223

Post by WalterBright »

williamcotton wrote: post #221
WalterBright wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cover done well can be very enjoyable. I tire of the album originals of Zep songs, but enjoy the song all over again when it is a cover by someone else. Then there are covers that reimagine the song, like "White Rabbit" by Sanctuary. Pretty awesome. And who can forget "Tamborine Man" by William Shatner (!)

I think even Bob Dylan could agree that Shatner did the best version of that song!

"The Transformed Man" is one of my favorite albums. I sometimes play it to torture my guests.

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

#224

Post by WalterBright »

6stringmerc wrote: post #196
WalterBright wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch the movie "The Wrecking Crew". Essentially, the studio fixes the nascent tune penned by the artist, and provides studio musicians to play on the recordings. The band rarely plays, or even sings, on the album. The reason is simple, they don't play that well, or sing that well, and the studio musicians do. This is one big reason why bands/singers/artists need labels. They're not able to turn the lyrics on the bac…

While I am really familiar with that film and the players in it, I think your point is rather limited to considering "pop" music, which creates the biggest returns. None of the 'hired studio musicians / songwriters / etc' dynamic applies to a band like Muse, Coldplay or Radiohead, yet still applies to Adele and Taylor Swift. The Wrecking Crew film is a very good summary of the way 'the business' worked long ago - sti…

For fun, listen to David Cassidy's work during the Partridge Family years, when the studio wrote the songs and provided musicians for him, and compare to Cassidy's post-PF work. What, you never heard of his post-PF work? :-) It's because it's awful.

Ditto the Monkees. At least Cassidy could sing (and damn, he was good). The Monkees couldn't write, sing, or play without massive help.

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

#225

Post by Litost »

encloser wrote: post #191
baldfat wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone thought they were helping out the independent artists, but in reality, it made it so they could no longer compete without a huge corporation backing them. File sharing has only helped big labels by increasing the barrier to entry. Speaking about Indie Music I'm the SMALL Record Label. The money comes in through sales of Merch, Gigs and selling CD/MP3. I think there has never been a time better for Indie Mu…

I'm another person in their 40s that (tries to) primarily listens to Indie. What are you tips for discovering music? I primarily am using Pandora and it really depends how much time I spend thumbing music up or down. Once I zero in a station it doesn't seem like I hear new artists or songs very often. I'll also add that in my personal case, pandora led me to finding and buying more music. Spotify and smartphones over…

I was going to say discovering music is easy, maybe it's just me, but like anything, just get stuck in?

a) Find some bands you like, go see them live.

b) Get talking to people at the gigs (this helps if they're smaller venues), they'll recommend all sorts.

c) See the support bands, odds on you'll like some of them, then go and see them, see the other bands they're in, it doesn't take long before this gets out of control :).

d) Make friends, go and see bands they like, it might not always be your thing, but if it's a social thing anyway, it doesn't really matter.

e) Go to festivals, listen to all the bands beforehand - i used to generated spotify playlists of glastonbury etc. Ok, listening to stuff on spotify doesn't make the artist much, but if you like them, go see them when they headline, buy merch, recommend them to friends etc.

f) I used to take photos, it's pretty much a dead industry nowadays but it puts you in touch with bands and helps get you kind of noticed which might lead to opportunites you might not get otherwise.

g) Be eclectic, you're spoilt for choice, if you're lucky enough to be in London or SE England or a decent sized city.

h) Follow bands on facebook, soundcloud... often this leads to other similar bands.

i) Personally i don't bother with large venues or bigger bands that much, i might make the odd exception, but there's serious amounts of really great music and musicians well away from the expensive/aircraft hanger venue/popular stuff and there's the bonus it might actually have some meaning because it's not trying to make money :).

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

#226

Post by ssalazar »

sneak wrote: post #146
ArkyBeagle wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Barring circumstances of pure chance, an app needs marketing and promotion to gain any traction, and this costs money. It also usually requires deals with artists of some interest or popularity to get attention, and to ensure the service has enough content.

> 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?

My theory is that most people actually want to be told what to listen to and don't really care to leave a relatively small comfort zone in terms of music tastes. The current system "works" for consumers so the incentives for anyone to come around to change it are weak. Personally I don't consider this an inherently good or bad thing, just an observed state of affairs.

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

#227

Post by illegalsmile »

encloser wrote: post #191
baldfat wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone thought they were helping out the independent artists, but in reality, it made it so they could no longer compete without a huge corporation backing them. File sharing has only helped big labels by increasing the barrier to entry. Speaking about Indie Music I'm the SMALL Record Label. The money comes in through sales of Merch, Gigs and selling CD/MP3. I think there has never been a time better for Indie Mu…

I'm another person in their 40s that (tries to) primarily listens to Indie. What are you tips for discovering music? I primarily am using Pandora and it really depends how much time I spend thumbing music up or down. Once I zero in a station it doesn't seem like I hear new artists or songs very often. I'll also add that in my personal case, pandora led me to finding and buying more music. Spotify and smartphones over…

I haven't and don't find Pandora to be good for finding new music. Now that I don't have much time to seek new artists I usually hop on people's playlists on Spotify or try radio stations, something a little more hand picked. When I really had time to find new music there are college radio stations that put out podcasts DJ picked music, there are lots of blogs to guide you and you can always use the charts in various countries. The staggering amount of new music that comes out every week makes it extremely difficult to keep up with especially if you like to listen to the entire album.

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

#228

Post by mathattack »

mariodiana wrote: post #186
mathattack wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you say this, you've only listened to early 80s Steve Miller. Check out his blues and folk. Lots are up on Youtube. (Which, to the point of the original article, probably doesn't pay him much)

I saw Steve Miller a few years back in concert. I wouldn't have even considered myself a fan before having seen him, but I came away very impressed. I was even dreading "Abracadabra," but so help me that song was great live. His singing and playing were both spot on. His sound was terrific. I'm a guitar player myself, and the tones he got from his Les Paul and Strat were textbook examples of classic, excellent tone.…

I've been watching many of his live performances on YouTube. He's a great musician, who happened to ride the pop wave. We shouldn't judge him just on that. It's like judging the Dead just on "Touch of Grey" or Bowie just "Young American".

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

#229

Post by ssalazar »

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 invest in the intellectual property that artists make, not the artists themselves

At first approximation, this sounds like a worse scenario for the artist.

> Why should we do that? Because it works and its a foundational element of a market economy.

Modern finance has already created a model where music artists are beholden to financiers and middlemen. How and why do you expect this to turn out differently?

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

#230

Post by Grishnakh »

WalterBright wrote: post #220
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artists can do and have done all of the above, especially on the indie scene. The "just a performer" model is only true for that small percentage of singers who are just performers. That model includes some of the bigger household names. Some of them are essentially fashion models who sing and dance, not musicians. Others are singers who also produce, and have a feel for what sounds good even if they can't play all t…

> Artists can do and have done all of the above Of course. But not that many are successful at it. Even the Beatles floundered for years before success came only after signing with a label. Note that Ringo was a session musician brought in by the label. George Martin made enormous contributions to their music.

Yeah, but the story as I've heard it is that the Beatles only became successful after signing with that label, and completely changing their style, adopting those stupid bowl cuts, and playing really simplistic formulaic music, all because the label convinced them to. After they achieved a lot of commercial success with this, they started going in the more artistic direction they really wanted to, because they had the money, popularity, and leverage with their label they needed to do so. That's how they went from pop crap like "I want to hold your hand" to "While my guitar gently weeps".
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