"The recorded music industry was a huge deal for those of us who lived through it, and we took it absolutely for granted, and now it’s really gone; it’s not what it used to be. You can’t really get super rich just doing that; you have to be able to sell merch or something to go along with it, or have concert tours."
Is it optimal or sustainable that a band needs to sell t-shirts and concert tickets to support themselves as musicians, let alone be super rich? The recordings and the concert tickets are the only product offered by bands that we place value in; t-shirts hold some slight social value, but little personal value. Revenues from concert tickets go mostly to the venue operator, especially for smaller venues of 100-200 people that most bands play in, and the amount going to the band is hopefully enough to pay for the cost of touring, and probably not much more than that.
So that pretty much leaves recordings as the only valuable product that bands can hope to sustain themselves with. Merch and tour ticket sales are not going to cut it for most artists, so without sales of recordings in some form, they're going to need to work a regular job, and the music is relegated to a hobby.
Making good recordings costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time in a recording studio, so hobby bands have difficulty producing them. Recordings are valuable to us because they allow us to integrate music into our lives. How can we expect musicians to invest the time and resources to make good recordings for us to enjoy if we don't recognize their value by directly rewarding the artist for making them? Buying a t-shirt does not send the message to the artist that we value their recording; only buying recordings does that.
My impression was that anyone with even a modest amount of technical savvy could put together a recording incredibly cheaply using a computer these days. Decent software, audio interfaces, and microphones aren't that expensive, and you can tweak the production and lay in new tracks to your heart's content.
It still takes a ton of time to get right, but it doesn't have to be expensive studio time anymore.
It's true that the costs for equipment and software are going down, and in some cases, such as electronic music, it's possible to get good recordings with very cheap and accessible equipment. If you've got a band with drums and other acoustic instruments, however, that means isolation rooms, sound-proofing, and other measures needed to get good recordings, not to mention the software and skills needed to mix them; these are still relatively inaccessible and costly.
My point is that regardless of the cost, if we don't reward artists for making recordings, despite their great value to us, why should they bother with the effort to make them?
> My point is that regardless of the cost, if we don't reward artists for making recordings, despite their great value to us, why should they bother with the effort to make them?
Lots of people have always started bands, and relatively few of them have made a living at it, never mind gotten rich. Sure some people pursue music because they want to be rich rock stars, but lots of people make music because they like making music.
In earlier days, it was easy to play live (and not make much money), but expensive to record anything, much less get that recording out to people. Nowadays, it's very affordable to record things as well, and trivial to upload to YouTube, SoundCloud, etc. Of course, the chance that more than a vanishingly small number of people will listen to your recording is still extremely low, but the barrier is notoriety, not the means of production and publishing.
And yeah, part of the rise of electronic music is because it has the lowest barrier to getting started and making your music -- just like the rise of guitar bands came partially because it was inexpensive to put together a small rock group relative to some other kinds of music, and the rise of hip hop came partially because even poor kids had access to two turntables and a microphone.
I guess the question would then be how many of us are content to be listening to minimally viable recordings while the artists are largely unrewarded for their efforts. I'd rather demonstrate my support for their efforts in the hopes of getting good recordings.
Speaking as a sound engineer, that's a bit like saying you can paint a masterpiece for the price of some brushes, tubes of paint, and a bit of canvas. It takes a large investment of time (which has a significant opportunity cost) to become skilled in this area. Many excellent musicians are poor or mediocre engineers, and vice versa. The cheaper and more ubiquitous recorded music is, the higher consumer expectations are: a late-night jam recorded in a hotel room or a rough-edged recording of a live show won't get the time of day from most people. The shortest route to a breakthrough these days is to be pretty and make a Youtube video, but that too is easier said than done.
In addition to the basic ability to play music and perseverance, artists have usually needed an extra something special to break out. Whether it's exceptional songwriting, virtuoso guitar playing, or a truly gifted singing voice, or it's having a unique, marketable personal fashion style, contacts in the music industry, or fame from some other endeavor, having some way of differentiating yourself from other aspiring artists can make all the difference in the world.
Possessing gifted production skills (or knowing someone who does who will help you produce your music) is just another edge some artists may be able to bring to the table. Then again, if you are merely a mediocre engineer but a truly gifted songwriter or guitar player, those mediocre skills may be enough to let people discover your other, more remarkable talents.
Is it optimal or sustainable that a band needs to sell t-shirts and concert tickets to support themselves as musicians, let alone be super rich? The recordings and the concert tickets are the only product offered by bands that we place value in; t-shirts hold some slight social value, but little personal value. Revenues from concert tickets go mostly to the venue operator, especially for smaller venues of 100-200 people that most bands play in, and the amount going to the band is hopefully enough to pay for the cost of touring, and probably not much more than that.
So that pretty much leaves recordings as the only valuable product that bands can hope to sustain themselves with. Merch and tour ticket sales are not going to cut it for most artists, so without sales of recordings in some form, they're going to need to work a regular job, and the music is relegated to a hobby.
Making good recordings costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time in a recording studio, so hobby bands have difficulty producing them. Recordings are valuable to us because they allow us to integrate music into our lives. How can we expect musicians to invest the time and resources to make good recordings for us to enjoy if we don't recognize their value by directly rewarding the artist for making them? Buying a t-shirt does not send the message to the artist that we value their recording; only buying recordings does that.