"Thanks to technology and Internet-enabled services, more music is being purchased, more music is being heard, and artists are getting paid."
Some encouraging perspective from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: link
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Electronic Music discussion: EFF: Life is good for artists, not so great for labels
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Written December 01 2010
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i love the EFF...they do great work...what with trying to keep the intarwebs neutral and what-not.
I dunno... More music is being heard, but the crap:quality ratio is ridiculous compared to before every 13 year old had a cracked version of FL/Live and their own netlabel...
IMO from the listeners perspective it's become much less enjoyable to go exploring really far-out realms of music... I find I tend to stick to guides and recommendations more because if you go too far off the beaten track it just becomes a process of sifting through an entire beach-load of sand to find a single flake of gold. cartesia said: "I find I tend to stick to guides and recommendations" No shame there, that's how the old model worked too though right? I'd be really interested in seeing a study - if it would even be possible to take halfway accurate sample - of the increase (if any) of musicians in the internet age... My assumption would be that there aren't more, it's just easier to hear more. I can't figure a way to make that out as a bad thing. There are still writers writing, still labels curating. You can still build up your own collection of resources for recommendations you trust, etc. I think the only new thing is that those recommenders and guide-writers can do their job better by being able to stumble on some random but awesome myspace page with music from someone who might have remained totally invisible in 1995. This seems like a great thing! Don't mean to be a negative nancy, I'm just a little tired of the "hey there's too much junk out there" sentiments I've heard for years... hecanjog said: " Don't mean to be a negative nancy, I'm just a little tired of the "hey there's too much junk out there" sentiments I've heard for years..." On that point I honestly did a search - "netlabel music" the first thing i found following links for new releases was link A track called Home taken from the album "humping The Leg" by Metanoiax hecanjog said: " cartesia said: "I find I tend to stick to guides and recommendations" No shame there, that's how the old model worked too though right? I'd be really interested in seeing a study - if it would even be possible to take halfway accurate sample - of the increase (if any) of musicians in the internet age... My assumption would be that there aren't more, it's just easier to hear more. I can't figure a way to make that out as a bad thing. There are still writers writing, still labels curating. You can still build up your own collection of resources for recommendations you trust, etc. I think the only new thing is that those recommenders and guide-writers can do their job better by being able to stumble on some random but awesome myspace page with music from someone who might have remained totally invisible in 1995. This seems like a great thing! Don't mean to be a negative nancy, I'm just a little tired of the "hey there's too much junk out there" sentiments I've heard for years..." I'm not saying it's a totally bad thing, but it has effected the way I look for music.. I used to sit down a few times a week and literally listen to every new vinyl release in X or Y genre that I had an interest in.. It doesn't really work anymore because vinyl is no longer supported by alot of people/labels. Now these days I KNOW i'm missing good stuff because I just dont have time to sort through it all.. From that perspective it seems like it might be good for DJs - less chance of all randomly finding the same gem... except that because everyone relies more on recommended playlists/etc, the DJs who dont sift through it all, all have exactly the same songs for the most part. I think there would have been an increase in the number of people trying to producie electronic music - simply because EM has become much more popular over the past few years.. people that were paying out dance music 3 years ago now think they are the scene the six-part article linked off of the OP's link is especially enlightening: link
There's definitely a higher crap:good ratio, but that's what happens when recording is so easy and cheap to do with a computer.
It's not that there are more crap musicians out there, it's that crap musicians don't have to work their way into expensive studios to record anymore. Also, the crap recordings are no longer isolated to a few local record stores, or a circle of friends - they're making their way around the world as soon as they've been edited and mixed. That said, music will evolve quicker if more people are out there making more mistakes. Also, there's so much good stuff going on in all corners of the world that we'd never be exposed to without the internet. So, the crap:good ratio is higher, but also there's more good than before (there's just far more crap). As for finding the good stuff, I like forums like this. Blogs and review sites are good too, but that's just one person's opinion.
" life is good for artists"
I know so many "artists" and they are all struggling... Life is not good for artists or labels or americans for that matter.... We are all fed Mcdonalds and are told life is good. There was a time when sony bono made millions from a song called " I got you babe"....crappiest song I've ever heard. Point is, back in the day you could get rich easy becasue thats when the musical "stock market was up and eveyone could have a peice of the pie....even sonny Nowadays, there arent any crumbs left. Signup to comment
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