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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

#271

Post by williamcotton »

ssalazar wrote: post #229
williamcotton wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 different…

Tyler Cowen wrote an entire book that answers your questions. It is called "In Praise of Commercial Culture".

http://www.amazon.com/Praise-Commercial-Culture-Tyler-Cowen/...

I expect it to turn out differently because the legal and accounting costs for future digital contracts will drop drastically.

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

#272

Post by williamcotton »

CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #254
williamcotton wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to convince anyone of anything on HackerNews. I'm up against the entire California Ideology on this forum. Every time you guys go to a conference or talk with a coworker or your boss this philosophy is being reinforced. I can't do shit but sit here and throw darts. It's really the only effective course of action. Sorry if it stings a little. If you actually are interested, I've previously said everythin…

Well, I concede that HN is not the forum for in depth debate. I do think your image of who visits this forum is a bit narrow though. Two data points speaking against it, you, and me. In any case if you'd like an in depth economic analysis of how the Internet actually did change everything that might challenge your view you might appreciate The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom b…

I counter with some pop science:

http://www.inc.com/john-boitnott/social-media-addiction-the-...

http://ericadhawan.com/social-media-hurts-productivity/

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/upshot/silicon-valley-has-...

As well as some economic studies:

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/03/the...

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/03/pro...

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/03/how...

Someone had better teach these techies some basic finance, accounting and economics at some point. Right now when someone posts something to Facebook it's basically a dead end for further economic potential. Compare this to how the finances of the book trade worked in the 19th century and it appears as if we're headed backwards. I blame a certain kind of arrogance in Silicon Valley for thinking that "information just has to be free now"... if anyone opened up their history books they'd realize that the printing press made the distribution costs of information comparatively cheaper than the Internet. People used to make copies by hand! Then it took us a few hundred years to fully invent intellectual property as a response to the issues created by cheap copies.

All that's happened as a result of the Internet is that we now have even cheaper copiers, but there's still a cost. Facebook's operation costs are in the billions of dollars a year. That's hardly "free information". Everyone needs to realize that Clay Shirkey and CmdrTaco were full of shit so we can move on with our lives.

It's about time that some adults with some conservative tendencies as well as a functional and practical understanding of the Internet stepped in and showed these techies a thing or to about how the world really works when they're not just spending daddy VC's money.

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

#273

Post by prawn »

baldfat wrote: post #153
pink_dinner wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you create a 'middle class' when there is no money left in the industry for smaller artists? Pandora pays the superstars well and if you aren't getting millions of plays, you aren't making enough to even provide for yourself. This all started with file sharing 15 years ago. Everyone thought they were helping out the independent artists, but in reality, it made it so they could no longer compete without a huge…

> 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…

Music Fans. The vast majority of people will never give Indie bands a listen and have the listening pallet of a 6 year old.

Seems harsh to blame people for their personal tastes. Maybe the product is wrong or the genre limited. Surely blaming discoverability and the like is fairer? Beyond discoverability, I think repetition is very important which is where labels and links to radio/etc are useful.

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

#274

Post by dublinben »

Grishnakh wrote: post #235
btilly wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you measure similarity to capture what you want? The obvious approach is that you look for "people who like this, like that". This is easy to measure and understand. And when you're faced with a person who liked this, it is usually the right answer. The problem is that you don't know WHY people who like this, like that. Often it is simply, "Heard both at an impressionable age." What you want it to be is, "On t…

You do it by objectively analyzing the music from a technical standpoint. That's how last.fm started; it was someone's research project to look for "musical DNA" and then use that "signature" to find similar music. It actually worked well.

Pandora is actually the site that was borne out of the music DNA project.

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

#275

Post by prawn »

williamcotton wrote: post #181
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 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…

Recently went to a one-day festival at a winery. All sorts of genres represented by very capable musicians across the day and evening. Every act played original music except one guy (Max Savage) who, though usually playing his own stuff, covered all of Paul Simon's Graceland.

The crowd was biggest and most engaged for Max Savage. After hearing 10ish songs that I knew back to front, the next act of originals felt very flat, despite being the more well known artist.

It made me very keen to hear Max cover other full albums, even a festival of nothing but interesting covers. Not cheesy covers, but cross-genre tweaks, etc. I'd pay to attend that gig sooner than I would an event of purely originals that I didn't really know.

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

#277

Post by WalterBright »

brandall10 wrote: post #268
WalterBright wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet they still brought in session musicians and George Martin still made enormous contributions. Ironically for your statement, Eric Clapton was a session musician to play lead guitar for "While my guitar gently weeps." Their pre-label original tunes just weren't that good. They played mostly covers. Can you suggest a pre-label Beatles original tune that was worthy?

They only brought in session musicians for instruments they could not play (ie. orchestral pieces). They never brought in session musicians to play their own pieces. All guitar, drum, bass, piano, etc parts were played by the members of the band and on very few occasions piano pieces by George Martin. Eric Clapton was not a "session musician", he was doing an uncredited solo for his best friend George Harrison's song…

If he was paid for it, he was technically a session musician. The fact that he was uncredited shows he was never a band member.

George Martin did a lot more than just play a few piano bits - he had a lot of creative input. Here's what "The Beatles" by Spitz has to say about it:

"Two weeks later, on his way to the Studio from Sussex, scheduled to give the song another shot, he was explaining to Eric Clapton how something radical was needed to light fire under the Beatles. "We were in George's car, driving in London," Clapton remembered, "and he said, 'Do you want to come and play on this record?'" It was an astonishing invitation. The Beatles had used plenty of Session musicians on other albums, but no one capable of upstaging them, certainly never rock 'n roll virtuoso on the level of Eric Clapton. Clapton hesitated, unsure of what to do. He knew the other Beatles "wouldn't like it," but George brushed aside his reservations. "It's nothing to do with them," he insisted. "It's my song, and I'd like you to play on it." Before anyone had chance to object, Clapton was already in Studio Two, strapping on his Les Paul guitar and listening to the rhythm track mixed down from their work on the sixteenth. The song was pretty much there, creating an effortless, affecting groove, but it lacked dramatic device to liberate the emotional tension that is never far from George's caged expression. Clapton's poignant guitar riff provided everything it needed. The way it weeps and moans, held in check by Eric's incisive phrasing, creates the longing that gives the song its emotional center. George's vocal couldn't have been more enchanting as he squeezes the mournful lyric of all its desperation, until by the end, he seems to be just barely hanging on, just riding atop the surging guitar as it works to strangle his overlapping cries."

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

#278

Post by proksoup »

CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #258
soundwave106 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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;…

Also I don't think people in general cares that much about the music as much as the idea of the identity behind the music. For AI music to be popular in a context where the an actual artist has to be emulated you either have to fool people into believing it's a real human behind it, or antopromoprohize the ai sufficiently to be promoted like a human.

Music has meaning, it's a tool for communicating very complex ideas.

I don't think anthropomorphising something that generates pleasant sounds is going to get you anywhere, by the time you get anywhere interesting, you've become the artist.

Here[1] is an interview with Alex Ebert where he discusses a non lyrical song teaching him about death.

[1] http://youtu.be/gVK51JvGzzk

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

#279

Post by proksoup »

Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #109
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?

These guys: https://www.jukedeck.com/ There will come a point when one of the easiest ways to make money for a musician - sync licensing - is overtaken by computer generated tunes.

That's really interesting. They talk[1] about being able to automate it in the future but it seems like there may be a lot of human involvement still.

That article goes further, that their goal is to be Instagram like, helping the unlearned make more professional sounding things.

That doesn't seem more revolutionary than the Auto-Tune.

[1] http://www.globaluniversityventuring.com/article.php/5136/ju...

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

#280

Post by proksoup »

Animats wrote: post #115
stigi wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern pop music follows strict patterns. I have little doubt that much of what's playing in the top 40 can be synthesized or already is :P All that you need then is a human avatar that the kids can connect to and take as their role model.

"All that you need then is a human avatar that the kids can connect to and take as their role model." Already in production. See Hatsune Miku in live concerts.[1][2] Not only is the performer an avatar, the singing is synthesized by Vocaloid software, which you can buy.[3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhYaX01NOfA [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyTmXLWCazw&nohtml5=False [3] http://www.vocaloid.com/en/

Yup, just need to "synthesize" words and melodies as the gp said and you're set.

"To create a song, the user must input the melody and lyrics".

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