Musicians Say streaming Music will Leave them Broke.

Writing is on the wall. Consumers basically get everything for cheap.
The only money is in touring now. You have to play live.
Question is - society is becoming less interested in going out, and paying - for live music, live theatre, movies at theatres etc.
Not sure where it is leading. Changing times.
If new musicians stop producing or distributing, we we run out of music to consume, and just rely on old music.
 
This dovetails into why it's probably better to just be in a cover band, or a tribute band, if you were going to just perform.

As for writing music? I'd probably go into attempting to write the next great American novel ;)

And this is why we have crap to listen to on the radio stations. The good writers have gone into network marketing.
 
The big money is in licensing now. Playing OPM will get you a $100 or so but that's nothing to live on.

But touring, when done correctly with routing planned in advance, merch to sell and "pre-texting" via social media (street teams) will also contribute greatly to the success of a band.

Major labels have taken to offering "360 deals" which is pretty much they get a slice of everything; merch sales, ticket sales, part of your songwriting revenues, etc. That's the only way they can survive.

The tools available today have made it so much easier to create that those with lesser talent and training have enabled themselves to create content and sell it. And it's always been that way; there's always that one band with the weak link leader that can't sing their way out of a wet paper bag but their ability to sell and negotiate puts the band into a better bracket.
 
This dovetails into why it's probably better to just be in a cover band, or a tribute band, if you were going to just perform.

As for writing music? I'd probably go into attempting to write the next great American novel ;)

And this is why we have crap to listen to on the radio stations. The good writers have gone into network marketing.

There's still great bands out there, Bo. Thing is, the major labels and those with the power to put them out there want a pound of flesh to do so and as a result, they tend to say "meh" and don't go for it. Clear Channel gets marching orders on what and whom to play from those who make such decisions, and those decisions have very little to do with quality of content but rather "how much are you going to pay us?"

I mean, another angle is to look at the R&R Hall of Fame. They'll induct a rapper who was born in 1990 before they let in someone like Rush or any number of the other luminary artists who have helped forge R&R into the form it is today. It's all political unfortunately.
 
Writing is on the wall. Consumers basically get everything for cheap.
The only money is in touring now. You have to play live.
Question is - society is becoming less interested in going out, and paying - for live music, live theatre, movies at theatres etc.
Not sure where it is leading. Changing times.
If new musicians stop producing or distributing, we we run out of music to consume, and just rely on old music.

Depends on the band/ group I think. For instance I saw DMB three time in less than a week and each venue was near sold out, if not.
 
There's still great bands out there, Bo. Thing is, the major labels and those with the power to put them out there want a pound of flesh to do so and as a result, they tend to say "meh" and don't go for it. Clear Channel gets marching orders on what and whom to play from those who make such decisions, and those decisions have very little to do with quality of content but rather "how much are you going to pay us?"

I mean, another angle is to look at the R&R Hall of Fame. They'll induct a rapper who was born in 1990 before they let in someone like Rush or any number of the other luminary artists who have helped forge R&R into the form it is today. It's all political unfortunately.

I'm not being overly sarcastic or angry, it just seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same. Perhaps this is why we have the truly great artists of our time. If it was meant that everyone be able to be great, finance-producing artists, then everybody would be doing it, and it would be worth nothing.
 
I mean, another angle is to look at the R&R Hall of Fame. They'll induct a rapper who was born in 1990 before they let in someone like Rush or any number of the other luminary artists who have helped forge R&R into the form it is today. It's all political unfortunately.

I don't think it's political, I think it's about capital. People forget that things like R&RHoF are not about art, they're about entertainment, and ultimately, the ability to make money.

Let's call it the monetization of art.

Things have certainly flipped through the decades. There was a time when touring was not seen as a big money maker itself, rather it was seen as a way of boosting record sales: you toured in support of the new record.

This "turned on its head" phenomenon is not unique to the music industry. Technology has allowed people to do lots of things on their own that used to require a large supporting infrastructure (like making an album). At the same time, technology has made it possible for people to steal said material easily (download/trade new album).

Compare this situation with the book publishing industry. I won't get into the e-book thing other than to say that the creators learned a lesson from the music industry about preventing copying. 25 years ago I decided to write a college engineering textbook. I signed a deal with a reputable publisher and we set about making a book. All is wonderful, right? No. Sales were good but the publisher warned me that they would drop off in a few years once the used market for it started to kick in. I don't have a problem with students selling books to each other but what really drew my ire was the emergence of reseller companies that would go from campus to campus buying up used books to resell them back to college bookstores. The students got screwed on this deal. Not only did they have to pay a lot more for used books but they didn't get as much for their used books. At the same time, the publisher and author got zero. So the publishers' solution was to start cranking out new editions every 3 or 4 years to gut the used market even if the text didn't need an update. That, of course, drove up production costs. The publishers also see themselves as serving a captive audience and they will price at whatever they think they can get. Now it is not uncommon for a single college text to fetch well over $200. It's crazy.

What to do, right? Well, different authors have different solutions. Mine was to abandon the for-profit publisher model and go into the OER model (open educational resources). Computers and the Internet made it possible to self-publish and self-distribute globally. I've produced a half dozen titles under the OER model. I have complete control over my work, students all over the globe get to use my work for free, and other professors can take my work and modify or expand it for their needs. The only thing they can't do is resell it. This becomes a community endeavor, we all benefit from it but no one makes any money* on it. That is, the benefit is not personal profit, it's more along the lines of shared workload and cost savings. The model works if everyone contributes.

This model can work for education but I'm not sure it can work with for a strict producer/consumer situation like entertainment. It can work in other other areas, for example community supported software (think Firefox, Arduino, etc.). CSA (community supported agriculture) might be closer to the music situation but the trick here is the creation of a physical product not an "intellectual product".

I wish I had a good answer.


*To be fully upfront, I did receive modest stipends from my college in support of this work but it's far less than going through the traditional publisher route.

 
I have no idea how the future will pan out. It does seem that superstar musicians are a 20th century phenomenon.

When I speak to parents regarding a child's musical career, I highlight education. There will always be education. And I stress that multi percussion is the way to go. Drummers who only play dumset seem, at least to me, to have limited options within an ever decreasing market place.

Reading and theory kids. Good luck.
 
It's true that income for the majority of artists has shifted from record sales to live performance (or the occasional licensing.) The internet is largely responsible for the decline of sales over the past several years, and YouTube is singlehandedly putting the final nail in that coffin.

But let's not confuse streaming with downloading a song from iTunes, where the artist, writer and (mostly the) label benefit pretty much as they always have. Of course, the numbers on iTunes are much lower than they were in the past, but the slice of the pie is the same.

What concerns me is that artists/bands consider streaming as potential income, and it's really not, at least not in the same way that actually selling music provides cashflow. Many of these artists don't want anything to do with labels, and many labels may not want anything to do with them, either! But then the artist complains that they can't make money when they've already bought into the idea that people streaming music for free, and the pennies per click paid by advertisers, will amount to something.

The paradigm has indeed shifted, thanks to the internet kiddies that both enable and decry it. But I don't know that it can be halted, much less reversed. It will be what it will be, and only when listeners - and the artists - understand that music has value, and act accordingly, can there be a return to the valuation of the music.

Bermuda
 
I have no idea how the future will pan out. It does seem that superstar musicians are a 20th century phenomenon.

When I speak to parents regarding a child's musical career, I highlight education. There will always be education. And I stress that multi percussion is the way to go. Drummers who only play dumset seem, at least to me, to have limited options within an ever decreasing market place.

Reading and theory kids. Good luck.


Very few of those among today's "Stars"...
They are more actors/dancers than musicians.
 
Well, I cant speak for the musicians, but as someone who streams music, or watches youtube, I am very glad there are these sources for me to hear new music from bands I like, or never even knew about.

As someone who lives in Chicago, the third largest city in the US, there is NO (zero, zilch, nada) new music played on the radio with the exception of POP music. Pretty much every radio frequency that is within the bandwidth of a standard radio is used here in Chicago. 50% of it is in Spanish or Polish, so those are a no go for me. The other 50% is talk or news radio, classic rock, 80/90's music, and new age pop music. There may be country, but I think its only one or two stations max. Now, I can live with classic rock and 80/90's music for the most part since I am not in my car that often, but there is nothing new being played over the radio waves to let new bands be heard by the people.

Thats the sad reality of what is the music industry. Unless you, or your band, play music that can be heard on American Idol, the Voice, or X Factor you will not be played on the radio. Your only option is the internet. That means streaming your music for nearly free. You build up your fan base by touring, you take a break from touring and create a new album, and you repeat the process. You may get lucky by having your song gain enough popularity that it gets used in a TV advertisement, but it still wont be played on the radio because if its not Pop music, it ain't getting played.
 
I dont know about you guys but I'm making BANK on streaming revenue. I'm pulling down a hefty $1.25 or so EVERY MONTH!

Seriously though. I stream some music, I download (legally and pay for it) a lot of music and still buy a few CDs. I've grown to hate going to live shows, so I'm pretty much done with that.
 
I have no idea how the future will pan out. It does seem that superstar musicians are a 20th century phenomenon.

When I speak to parents regarding a child's musical career, I highlight education. There will always be education. And I stress that multi percussion is the way to go. Drummers who only play dumset seem, at least to me, to have limited options within an ever decreasing market place.

Reading and theory kids. Good luck.


I am very new to this forum, but I have to give kudos to you. You hit the nail on the head. I refused to call myself a drummer for years (when I was younger) because I wanted people to know I was a professional percussionist. I studied for many years in that realm and set was just for fun and a stress reliever. Now that I am an adult, I am more serious into set... since there are no adult symphonic bands for me to play in. I am trying a new route!
 
Thats the sad reality of what is the music industry. Unless you, or your band, play music that can be heard on American Idol, the Voice, or X Factor you will not be played on the radio.

In some respects, little has changed. Zappa made the identical argument in the mid 60s. The difference now is that there are no record sales (comparatively) for someone who might go the independent route, but on the other hand it's much less expensive and far easier to get quality production out there than it used to be for an independent.

In the long run, the music consumers are shooting themselves in the foot because they want something for free. The only musicians who can survive that are a few fortunate ones who can combine the right product with the right marketing. There will be a small, select group who get very rich, and a huge population barely getting by. The large middle ground is getting the life sucked out of it. The average musician will simply become another member of an economically exploited class. Does this scenario sound vaguely familiar to anyone? And I certainly don't see any effort to alleviate this disparity coming from within the industry because this system still works for the corporate heads.

I think the only thing that can be done is to make an end-run around the industry itself. Artists need to work together, to cross promote, to create their art and figure out ways to get it to the public directly, without filters and without the hands of middlemen taking their cut.

And this brings up one really cool thing about music and art in general that makes it entirely different from the sports entertainment industry, and it's something artists need to capitalize on: Liking A does not preclude liking B. In sports, if I have a favorite team it means that all other teams are second and anything that hurts those teams helps my team. But if I like a certain band, the success of some other band does not negatively impact the first band. In fact, I might be VERY interested in seeing some members of band A join with some members of B and C for an album or a tour. It's not a zero-sum game.
 
Well, I cant speak for the musicians, but as someone who streams music, or watches youtube, I am very glad there are these sources for me to hear new music from bands I like, or never even knew about.

Don't get me wrong, streaming is great in terms of discovering new music. The problem is, too many people simply rely on streaming the songs when they want to hear/watch them, rather than ever make a purchase. To them, music exists as an on-demand, and free commodity, and the internet has enabled it in a way that labels and artists never saw coming while they were busy complaining about people making cassettes of LPs and trading them.

I love YouTube, but not when someone takes an artist's song, and posts it with a silly, quasi-legal disclaimer. They are giving someone's music away, and YouTube apparently condones it.

Artists who think streaming is a form of compensation for their art, are just delusional. Some artists genuinely want to give their work away, and that's their business. But they're also not the ones who are doing the complaining.

If my work was being given away on YouTube by someone I don't know, I'd take action to help preserve my career.

Bermuda
 
I dont know about you guys but I'm making BANK on streaming revenue. I'm pulling down a hefty $1.25 or so EVERY MONTH!

And Uncle Sam doesn't want you to forget to list that $15 as earned income at the end of the year
 
In some respects, little has changed. Zappa made the identical argument in the mid 60s.

With no disrespect to Frank Zappa, his music was never going to be played on the radio. It was way too niche market to ever see radio play outside of the Dr. Dimento radio show.

Now, satellite radio is much better for hearing new music, or even Zappa for that matter, and I do have a subscription to that. Of course even with this access to new music I still don't go out and buy CD's anymore. I think the last CD I bought was almost 20 years ago. I don't think its because of the internet. Its because bands I liked started breaking up, their music went out of popularity, or I got busy with college and starting a career. Life took importance and music became something that is just in the background. Honestly, anything after 1992 and it just doesn't exist in my memory.

If I want to hear a song, I can look it up, or if I just want music in the background I can use satellite radio, Pandora, etc. I don't see this as cheating the system. Downloading the music and burning it on a disc or putting it in to your music library would be direct stealing. But using services that are there to provide music, such as the radio provides music, is totally fair game IMO.
 
With no disrespect to Frank Zappa, his music was never going to be played on the radio. It was way too niche market to ever see radio play outside of the Dr. Dimento radio show.

Zappa was declared to have "no commercial potential" by a music marketing exec in the 1960s yet he produced over 60 albums on his own. I'd also lay odds that virtually every forum member who was alive during the 1970s has heard of Zappa and is familiar with at least some of his material, and those who have not probably count Zappa alumni as influences. I don't consider that niche. No, he didn't sell like Michael Jackson but that's no reason to blackball someone.

In any case, it's his observation about the music industry that I was pointing to, not his music.
 
Back
Top