- This topic has 9 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated August 18, 2012 at 11:48 pm by DaftFader.
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June 21, 2012 at 3:57 pm #1053308
been wondering about this for a while…
we’ve now had the ability to exchange/download music virtually for free for a decade. the yanks doom and gloom predictions about the total destruction of the industry have been proven bogus, if anything EDM in particular has survived, and now the price of music has been pushed down loads more folk are going back into legitimately buying it (myself included). Also online radio is widespread and allows tracks to be promoted further.
I think that todays business is a lot fairer and gaps between performers and artists disappearing, its a massive boost for a site like this – even when we started it wasn’t common to be interacting directly with signed artists and label management, or to see a post of a tune on here and then be able to buy it in the record shop. Also the net has removed national barriers, even with the best radio equipment of 10/20 years ago I wouldn’t have been able to hear a mix from Canada – DJ Mumbles would have had to send us a CD in the post!
But at the same time it seems way leaner and any chance of making a full time career out of music or other multimedia production is becoming even more distant
Even in nations with more support for this like NL it seems like all the folk running radio stations are about my age at the youngest and also have day jobs in IT / telecoms / networking (as the skills are shared), and its become more a hobby than a paying job, apart from maybe a few lucky young people who can put up with having slightly less salary than in a call centre because the work is more fun…
Ok there is still paying work for live performances but these depend on the licensing authorities of countries permitting them – and often such performances are confined to less well off areas of large cities, even in the more tolerant Northern European nations.
What do you all think? TBH some of this has been going on since the 90s so maybe it now is the future or the accepted way, though I do feel sorry for kids what go up to Uni for 3 years studying creative arts and then find themselves with £27 000 debt and no chance of work, especially if they are led on by badly researched tabloid reports saying that Tiësto is worth €50 000 000 – he may be if you count houses, studios, cars and other businesses he is involved in, but he is a bit older than me and started out when physical media was still common and made money…
Incidentally out of the £2 I might pay for a tune these days (I don’t buy anything below full WAV quality), anyone know how its divided up?
August 18, 2012 at 9:00 pm #1255280bump – given the debates over piracy and that we have loads of musicians, producers and promoters from labels all posting here I’m amazed no-one has given an opinion. Maybe everyone is too wary to piss off a potential customer/funder? 😉
Also read a Grauniad article and other sources claiming now that any creative artist making over £5000 a year from their art is very lucky. I don’t disagree with that assesment, both my sister and her husband are talented musicians too and have to do normal day jobs, and I don’t think there is a rats chance of me ever getting a job in multimedia again what pays the bills in either engineering or production and I don’t even have particularly expensive tastes 😥
luckily at least some music stuff especially DJ’ing can be fitted in amongst the rest of your life but things like video making take way more time.
Still curious about how the 2 quid gets divided up. my personal view is the pirate “activists” have won their battle and made their point but its time for folk to start supporting artists again now the content is at a fair price, or we won’t get any more new talent coming through especially as the economic depression bites and and whole areas of countries adopt zero tolerance policies to live events…
August 18, 2012 at 9:09 pm #1255285I learnt how all the cash in the music industry was divided up in % back when I was at college, but it’s probably all changed now as that was about 10 years ago. I’ve forgotten anyway, but as you probably know it used to be that the artist didn’t end up with a massive % of it. Back then an album would of cost about £10-£15 though as it was mainly physical media sales that made the money.
August 18, 2012 at 9:54 pm #1255281true, although if you attended college in your late teens/early 20s (like most people) things were already changing just a few years later and suspect your teachers might even have known this but didn’t want to tell you the bad news!
I think the demise of physical media has had a lot of environmental gains but its wiped out loads of jobs and also same for studio tech changes. Was reading about some producer (a fairly well known one though I’ve forgot the name!) saying that he did a lot of his tracks on his laptop whilst going to and from gigs in other nations (which surprised me as aircraft seats aren’t the most comfortable places to create stuff..)
the impression I get (albeit as a relative outsider to the inner circles of todays industry) is things are way more democratic than before, for instance I’m seeing people from labels talk about tracks on here and then they are on juno and I’m sure a few posters from here have had releases too… and its thus a lot easier to get a “record deal” but with a fraction of the royalty income…
August 18, 2012 at 10:02 pm #1255286@General Lighting 492116 wrote:
true, although if you attended college in your late teens/early 20s (like most people) things were already changing just a few years later and suspect your teachers might even have known this but didn’t want to tell you the bad news!
The fact that ALL my tutors were ex-producers (or even still producing, but topping up their income with a full time teaching job) kinda spoke for it’s self. One of them even used to borrow kit from the college at weekends as it was a lot cheaper then buying it or renting it :laugh_at:.
August 18, 2012 at 10:22 pm #1255282even thats changed now, college/uni used to be a good way of getting access to resources but I quite often tell young people what want to do anything creative “don’t bother with uni”, use the cash you would have spent to buy equipment and either get a couple of books or research stuff on the net or sign up to here and ask for help..
there is a fairly good 16-18 college and a uni here but there is no corresponding rise in local creative talent you would expect, just the usual high school age bands what split up when everyone gets beyond 19/20 and gets full time jobs, sometimes long term relationships and even parenthood… 10 years ago a town like this would be full of DJ’s, producers, musicians, artists, the lot (OK there are some but you don’t get to hear a lot of their stuff, and the uni doesn’t provide much help finding venues or giving artists publicity, for instance I’m no philistine but have no idea where to find the graduate exhibitions here.
so thats why I think WTF are they teaching people in uni?
August 18, 2012 at 10:42 pm #1255287@General Lighting 492122 wrote:
even thats changed now, college/uni used to be a good way of getting access to resources but I quite often tell young people what want to do anything creative “don’t bother with uni”, use the cash you would have spent to buy equipment and either get a couple of books or research stuff on the net or sign up to here and ask for help..
there is a fairly good 16-18 college and a uni here but there is no corresponding rise in local creative talent you would expect, just the usual high school age bands what split up when everyone gets beyond 19/20 and gets full time jobs, sometimes long term relationships and even parenthood… 10 years ago a town like this would be full of DJ’s, producers, musicians, artists, the lot (OK there are some but you don’t get to hear a lot of their stuff, and the uni doesn’t provide much help finding venues or giving artists publicity, for instance I’m no philistine but have no idea where to find the graduate exhibitions here.
so thats why I think WTF are they teaching people in uni?
Most of it is geared to wards IT and engineering nowadays afaik, besides the stuff that will always be needed like medical students etc.
August 18, 2012 at 10:58 pm #1255283true but the college and uni also has loads of creative arts courses – they must have some students on them – actually some of my younger ICT staff at work graduated from the ICT courses and they had been taught loads about multimedia but not a great deal about things like HTML coding or any programming (thus making their education not 100% useful in the environment I work in)…
August 18, 2012 at 11:40 pm #1255288I think the creative arts courses are the ones you hear about when they talk about students going to uni and ending up in “normal” low paid jobs. Obviously you’ll even get some science, IT, maths etc. graduates not being able to find suitable work as things are at the moment, but I can imagine the ratio compared to arts students is considerably smaller.
August 18, 2012 at 11:48 pm #1255284yep thats why I tell a lot of younger folk to get a “normal” job and invest the cash in equipment now its way cheaper. the lack of creative outlets in East Anglia (which now includes Essex) is a bit fucked compared to what it used to be and the regions potential..
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