(From Doonsebury)
…and the problem with this would be?
Here’s the deal; we’re in a changing world right now, and the changes are going to hit the ‘creative’ businesses pretty hard. Jimmy’s right that the world supported by mega-acts in turn supported by mega record sales…requiring mega-distribution, mega-promotion, and mega-corporate structures to support ‘the star-making machinery behind the popular song’ is probably going to get a lot smaller. It is already.
Is that a bad thing, though? The market for estates on the Costa Smerelda in Sardinia may get a little smaller; but a new door opens as an old one closes.
I’ll argue that it ought to be more possible to make a ‘middle-class’ living as a musician or writer.
In the case of music, bands, playing small venues, supported by regional fan bases and direct sales of their music, ought to be able to generate middle-class incomes for their members. You can have kids. If your SO works, you could buy a house.
I’m under no illusion that it wouldn’t be damn hard work to get there and every day once you were there. But most jobs are hard work, and the idea that an independent artist could monetize what they do on an ongoing basis…
…rather than playing Music Industry Lotto and working for nothing for years in the hopes of hitting it huge…
…strikes me as a damn good thing. I say this as a consumer of music who long ago gave up going to stadium shows in favor of clubs.
I think the same model applies in books, video, and potentially games. the current channels won’t go away. The Britney Spears’ of the world we will always have with us, sadly. But new alternatives will open up; we’re on the verge of an explosion of new models, content, and possibilities.
Most of them will vanish, but some may just survive.
I should make a disclosure, and comment that I have a substantial personal investment in a startup aimed at making just this happen. So you could say I’m shilling for my interests.
Or that I’m putting my money where my mouth is.
Right on, A.L. Most of the musicians I know (all of them, even) would love to be able to simply ‘make a living’ doing what they love.
I agree. My son’s a musician. A few years ago five or ten people connected with his band of the time were heartbroken when a big-label deal didn’t work out. It turned out that a.) a subsidiary was spun off or bought out or whatever and b.) someone or another decided that their category (alt country) had no commercial potential. But there was always the idea that it was the band’s fault.
They had put a couple years of their lives into this, there was dissension, the band broke up, and the amazing lead singer isn’t even singing any more.
On the other hand, just now their new band had their biggest night ever in Winnemucca (on the way to Boise). No one ever goes to Winnemucca, but audiences there are very appreciative.
Most of the musicians I know have no problem with downloading music off the net. They all know stories of bands which worked their butts off, released one or two major-label records, and ended up in debt. “Intellectual property” rights seldom protect musicians. Playing for audiences is where whatever money there is is.
In conclusion, I know that nude pictures are “intellectual property” under the law, but the term does not seem appropriate even if the pictures are tasteful and not hard-core.
And now we’ve come full circle.
Records were originally pushed as a way to promote concerts. Then there was a time when concerts supposedly[1] promoted records. Now we’re coming back to recordings promote concerts.
John Phillip Sousa supposedly said that records would seriously harm most musicians. Records were great for him – he had the best band in the world so he’d always make money. The problem was that people would buy his records instead of listening to the local band.
[1] I’m not sure how true that was, but it was the story.
PS. I obviously meant “Incidentally” rather than “In conclusion”.
By best friend is a musician, and his opinion of file sharing has changed a lot over the years. He now sees the record industry practices as more harmful to music and musicians than music downloading.
I have two theoretically problems with unlimited music/art sharing. It really is an effort to produce the work, and I think that people do deserve to be compensated for it.
Second, editors really do serve a function. There is a LOT of bad stuff produced. If we lose the gatekeepers, then we lose some valuable filtering. Just becasue the record companies currently do a lousy job of filtering doesn’t mean that the concept of a filtering gatekeeper is flawed. The book industry does a pretty good job of it.
Kevin — you mean that some of those Grateful Dead live tapes aren’t quite as good as the others? Yeah, I think I see your point.
I agree with you. Right on.
I’m a musician. I attempted to make a career of it for a while. I don’t really see file-sharing making it any harder for anybody to make a living as a “middle class” musician. Does it make things any easier? Jury’s still out on that one I think, but I’m hopeful that somebody will figure out how to run with it. I think the major labels have a snowball’s chance in hell of being the ones to lead the way. They want to protect the status quo, which essentially involves buying 20 artists as indentured servants, throwing them all at college radio to see which one sticks, spending a gazillion bucks on that one, and doing *absolutely nothing else* to promote the other 19 whose recording careers are effectively over for good after a week or two of this process.
The way the labels are most likely to affect our collective future is by banding together with Hollywood and systematically dismantling our legally-protected “fair use” rights. They’re doing this already – DMCA anyone?
Kevin: “filtering gatekeepers” are indeed useful, and I’d argue that indie record labels do a pretty good job of this.
Andy Freeman: good point. it’s important to remember that the current status quo is well under 100 years old. The concept of a “professional musician” has been through many changes across many years and many cultures. We don’t have to hang on to the current behemoths as if they’re the only way musicians could ever make a living. Far from it.
re editors: Clay Shirky discusses this in his piece “The Music Business and the Big Flip”:
http://shirky.com/writings/music_flip.html
He basically talks about two models for gatekeeping: “filter, the publish” and “publish, then filter”. The record industry (and newpapers, and television, and book publishing, and film) work off the former model, where they decide what gets published. The Internet works off the latter — anyone who wants to puts work out thee, and you rely on trusted editors (webloggers, review columns, word of mouth, automated rating systems) to point you at the good stuff.
Zizka
No, I mean that the one hundredth Boyz 2 Backtreet clones are not worth listening to.
What I am saying is that, for all intents and purposes, infinite choice is no choice. Radomonly trying all the crap that gets produced, hoping to stumble onto somehting good, is not my idea of a rewarding listening expirience.
I am not arguing that the record companies aren’t greedy, monopolistic hicksters. I am arguing that despite that, filters have merit and use.
As a professional novelist writing books that are sold by major New York houses *and* by my own tiny, kitchen-table press, I have to say that I don’t see how freely downloading books could be anything but a disaster for those of us trying to earn a living as authors. At least musicians can sell a commodity that can’t be stolen: Live concerts. But what are authors supposed to do if our books can be freely shared off the Internet? Charge the public to come hear us READ our new work, instead? No.Stealing is stealing, whether it’s swiping a candy bar from the local drugstore or snatching music/books/art from the musician/writer/artist who invested years in creating and promoting it.
But what are authors supposed to do if our books can be freely shared off the Internet? Charge the public to come hear us READ our new work, instead?
Um, actually, that’s how Dickens and Sam Clements made most of their $$; that and serialization…
Look, go read the Bible story of King Canute. Change is here, we have to figure out ways to cope with it.
There will always be a market for physical books.
There will be other markets, which you, as an author, may be able to tap into and use in part to make money directly, and in part to support the market for your physical books.
A.L.