posted
Remember when music companies were panicking about piracy and such?
Now it seems that technological changes not only allowed for easy piracy but have decreased the cost of the production of music and made it easy to send that stuff out to the world.
So now the likes of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles have to make their catalogs free on youtube/other places just to stay relevant. When more and more people are producing music everyday, and are finding it cheaper to produce and share it (to the whole world), it would be a loss for big name musicians not to make their music free.
Is this the case? Anyone write about this phenomenon?
Posts: 668 | Registered: Aug 2010
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posted
Generally what I read on this topic indicates that record sales are already largely not a viable way to get rich as a musician, even if you hit it big.
Live performances, endorsements, crossovers to other media, and brand licensing are probably all more likely to get you rich than selling records. (And the streaming services like Spotify only pay a pittance, so they don't replace record sales either.) I think record companies still get a big chunk of most of those revenue streams.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
It is curious. Prior to recorded albums, if you wanted to hear a band, you had to go see them perform. This was the primary method bands had of making money.
As technology improved, records and radio became the primary source of income for performers. Now that technology has increased to the point that you mentioned, ticket prices for live shows have generally risen substantially. Many artists charge more than $150 for a ticket to a live show. Some groups, such as Dave Matthews Band, ALLOW the people at their shows to use recording devices, and allow those recordings to be shared on the internet.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Did "bands" really exist in a form that preceded recorded sound?
Not in the sense that is meant by Band since perhaps the Beatles.
The great fallacy of the era of the record (which is now over, by the way), was that the record somehow had no effect on taste and understanding of music. The opposite is of course closer to the truth.
Basically, the record as a medium, starting with the gramophone record, is almost completely responsible for our modern conception of "classical music," as well as the concept of "great works," for the organization of "bands," for the modern headlining tour, and all the rest of it.
That's over now, and I for one am not sad: the tyranny of the record business over even our base conceptions of taste and understanding of musical contexts has certainly been effective, even when it has not necessarily been good. As a trained musicologist I can only begin to express here to what degree our understanding of musical history is skewed by RCA's Basic 100- and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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(If you didn't make up that term just now, then bear in mind my incredulity isn't really directed at you. But it's a stupid word. But in fairness, I think it's dumb most of the time someone tries to sound more legitimate and scientific by butchering the -logy/-logist suffix.)
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: A "musicologist?"
Really?
(If you didn't make up that term just now, then bear in mind my incredulity isn't really directed at you. But it's a stupid word. But in fairness, I think it's dumb most of the time someone tries to sound more legitimate and scientific by butchering the -logy/-logist suffix.)
The word has been around since about 1909. He'd have to be pretty old to have invented it.
Posts: 891 | Registered: Feb 2010
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