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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

#91

Post by user_0001 »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #27
6stringmerc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've done a strong job of describing what I felt years and years ago, and have come to learn is the lay of the land still in the music business. Labels have done a fantastic job of maintaining their gate-keeper status and of being able to break new artists into the mainstream. What didn't change with the internet is, partially kidding here, that 14 year old girls decide what's going to be popular. Outside of that,…

>> "Also Skrillex - his label had no interest in his bleep-blonk-screech-BASS DROP tunes and he set it free online and got that avenue going - now he's got his own label and millions in the bank." Financially I think artists like Skrillex (EDM producers in general) are incredibly lucky. Production costs are practically zero. You buy a DAW and some monitors and you can do everything at home on your laptop. You don't n…

Skrillex got rich by marketing "EDM" to the mass US festival market.

That and probably to no small extent the huge influx of MDMA and MDMA-like drugs.

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

#92

Post by robbyking »

jdietrich wrote: post #34
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…

Steve Albini's essay The Problem With Music is essential reading. It explains in detail the catastrophically bad financial outlook for most musicians. http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17

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.

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

#94

Post by theseatoms »

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…

What does your dysfunctional relationship with social media have to do with producing works of art? I honestly just didn't follow your train of thought.

The arts have to be their own reward. If you're making art for money, and not the love, it's probably not worth doing.

For better or worse, the marketplace is finally realizing this.

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

#95

Post by 6stringmerc »

Dwolb wrote: post #89
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…

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.

Pandora genuinely has a channel for independent music acts to submit material for play consideration. They are incredibly obscure about the process of whether they accept or decline to include specific music. But it does actually exist, so credit where it's due.

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

#96

Post by stigi »

proksoup wrote: post #86
Animats wrote: post #84

Musicians getting rich was a brief phenomenon. Historically, musicians ranked below bartenders. Making phonograph records was a process with expensive tooling, manufacturing, and distribution costs. Radio was an industry with limited airtime and a small number of stations. These factors created an industry with few songs produced in large numbers, resulting in the "rock star" industry. That's over. Through heavy prom…

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?

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.

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

#97

Post by Declanomous »

slouch wrote: post #39
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…

For me, it's still primarily http://last.fm/ 's similar artist feature.

I've had the opposite experience with Last.fm. I actually realized last week that my scrobbling was broken, and I wasn't particularly disappointed.

Last.fm used to be a place where I could check out bands I had never heard of. It was like the website equivalent of the friend who spends all day listening to new music, and will recommend music that is eerily perfect for you.

I feel like the "similar artists" function has changed to prioritize artists that are already extremely popular, even if a much less popular artists is much more similar to the band you are currently listening to. It's plausible I know a lot more bands than I used to, and that new bands are inherently less novel to me. However, I believe this is a trend that can be followed across almost all websites.

As evidence, you only need to look at the changes Facebook made in the same time period. They study the interactions their users make as much as any company, and they've ensured that their users spend the most time on Facebook and provide them with as much data as possible. Facebook used to show every update on the new feed. Now I rarely see posts from anyone I disagree with. I used to get a lot of my information about bands from their Facebook groups. Now the only updates I get are from the major companies I've liked, because they can pay to send a message.

I totally understand why large websites are doing this. These services are most profitable as an advertising platform. In the case of Last.fm, the people listening to John Doe and the Backup Band aren't going to make them money. This 'cultivation' has an extremely chilling effect on the variety and depth of news, viewpoints, etc. that allowed the internet to foster an explosion in creative expression.

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

#98

Post by cafard »

intrasight wrote: post #93

Historically, artists were long dead before their work was recognized and valued.

Not really. Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Mahler, all were were recognized and valued. They didn't make the kind of money that some of the really fortunate musicians of the mid 20th Century did, true.

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

#99

Post by ArkyBeagle »

yolesaber wrote: post #30
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 mean, to be fair, Steve Miller is like the blandest of bland dad rock. And Miles Davis is literally the coolest person who ever lived.

It's "Dad rock" because it worked. Cheerleaders never, to my knowledge, sang Miles songs on the way back from a football game.

"We're not about to do a free-form jazz, uh, exploration in front of a festival crowd!" - David St. Hubbins, "Spinal Tap."

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

#100

Post by chx »

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.
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