i joined the PRS in the UK inthe early 90's. For the first few years i got cheques for £50 each year - i got the impression that all members got a split of what was left over. Then it stopped. I still get sent the PRS magazine where it announced that from then on only the top earners were going to get a split of the left-overs. It seemed to imply that it would all go to Elton John.
i don't know how sci-fi, or is it syfy now, but i have always though that it would apply to all businesses.
Take the Toaster. Probably already there is a group online devoted to producing the best toaster. As open source. So we can all, when the self-replicating printer becomes a bit more existant, produce the best toaster ourselves. Cutting out the Toaster manufacturer.
And this applies to pretty well everything?
Lots of Res but no sunshine.
terrible joke sorry.
enough money - give up day job? i my youth yes, now i'm freelance anyway.. don't know. impractical.
Would there be more music if there was more money? Obviosult lots of people do music for money. i began at 15 becasue wanted to be a Ramone, more S, D and RnR than the money. But i undoubtedly woudl have liked it.
But now, having once had experience of almost being signed over a 2 year period and the irrationality that that brought with it, and a desire to make music for the wrong reasons ( and therefore to my mind it was less good) (ie trying to make the music more poppy to ensure a signing). I'm not sure - you might want to follow the money - as many bands have tried to do. and thats lead to some seriously awful 2nd and 3rd albums etc..
Sure if the music was earning money, then my wife would be happier for me to do it more during the day (instead of when she goes shopping).
But this is of topic isn't it?
Free means i am getting heard when otherwise i would not. Getting heard means there is more possibility of making money than when i am not heard at all. (blah blah money not object, high values blah).
Music is a godawful business to be in and always has been, so much competition. Everyone wants to be in it, like writing and art, so there are millions of us and we are all shite. But now its free we are all getting a heard a little bit and actually no music is shite, not even madonna or liberace ( i believe to top earners in their categories), just niche.
oh i love ranting
i think its fairly likely to happen to a degree. THere will always be management that do a good job of promotion for a few but there will be more and more unassisted successes. I think the money spent on music will be spread thinner amongst more artists. And free is what has started this. Most of us wouldnt be getting heard at all if it was still just 1 national radio station (who played stuff for free - that i would dutifully record, i had 100 c90s with 200 albums taped for free during musics supposed heyday), now there are thousands of ways of getting your music for free, and i am slowly finding more bands that i buy cds from, instaed of the 10 bands that radio 1 would play in rota. Just becasue i haven't made any moeny yet (ever) doesn't mena i won't. Nor do i particluarly think money is important to music making. in fact the removal of money fo art could be very good.
So sure most small bands make no money but the never did, but at least there is more chance now than there was and thats becasue of free.
the above may not make much sense, apologies.
you do seem to be misreading what i am saying here.
I am having success, by my standards, much more than i could ever have had before 'free Internet'. I have lots of listeners, i make a few sales. It costs me nothing to make music or the cds ( as i print them myself). this is far better than pre-internet when it cost thousands to make a cd that sat under your bed, got no plays on the radio, costs hundreds to practise in practise rooms and recording studios. So my 10-20 dollars is actual profit. I am very happy with this situation so please dont use me as some sort of proof of your anti-free stand. Free is good for music, for my music and for everybody who has free music on myspace or tunecore, last fm, bandcamp, wherever. What i am looking forward to is the demise of poepl who are in music for money alone. That should free up the market a bit and make popel a bit more adventurous. could be decades away yet.
On the contrray i am getting something from free - i make 10 or 20 dollars a year. More than i would get if i did nothing. I get thousands of downloads a month - more people listen to us now than ever could have before. Maybe we are crap, i wouldn't know, we get some very good but fairly rare reviews, can i call us niche? Anyway, i am very happy with free, i have been making music since i was 15, 30 years ago, and never made any money, so its not really a problem. But maybe, i'll come up with an idea for making moey, a popular tune, or in a thousand year be used in a film. i don't care. Making music is the fun bit, the business side is boring beyond belief.
i have been selling and giving away music online for 10 years. i've been with tunecore for 2 years. though i have about 20gbs of downloads a month from our site, i only sell about $10 per year on tunecore. i agree with all the free/music/p2p stuff ( i long to find us on TPB) that BestNetTech talks about. but i don't play live and its pretty difficult to make money from music. luckily i just do it anyway. it is very boring thinking about ways to make money from music, and for most of us its impossible (using either the old model or the new free model). Much better just not thinking about it.
We set up our own label for ourselves and a few other bands and only sell albums from the website. But at best we only sell about 10 albums a year.
Despite good reviews.
So why do we not sell many cds?
we're crap? ( we only need 5000 people to like us in the world)
people do not notice the poor qulaity of mp3s
or people only buy what has been marketed to them?
we've been offering our music for free since 1998 with various mp3 sites and from our own site since 2002. We currently have about 1000 attempted downloads a month, about 700mbs downloaded a month. Its difficult to say how many full tracks that is. We don't sell much but who cares? It doesn't cost much to host the site and it is great having people downloading your music which otherwise they would never hear. The sooner the music business goes bankrupt the sooner we will be left with musicians who make music because they have to rather than for the money. Maybe after a few years they will start making enough money to live on. in the mean time: work less, earn less, spend less, and do more. And well done to George Michael for saying he's earned enough and will now give his music away for free. Apologies, a bit rabid.
BestNetTech has not posted any stories submitted by Tom Fraser.
PRS in the UK
i joined the PRS in the UK inthe early 90's. For the first few years i got cheques for £50 each year - i got the impression that all members got a split of what was left over. Then it stopped. I still get sent the PRS magazine where it announced that from then on only the top earners were going to get a split of the left-overs. It seemed to imply that it would all go to Elton John.
Re:
i think he does like 'better business models'. perhaps he meant 'they' not 'we' make a mess of other industries.
Toasters
i don't know how sci-fi, or is it syfy now, but i have always though that it would apply to all businesses.
Take the Toaster. Probably already there is a group online devoted to producing the best toaster. As open source. So we can all, when the self-replicating printer becomes a bit more existant, produce the best toaster ourselves. Cutting out the Toaster manufacturer.
And this applies to pretty well everything?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 9 cds is difficult to achieve
Lots of Res but no sunshine.
terrible joke sorry.
enough money - give up day job? i my youth yes, now i'm freelance anyway.. don't know. impractical.
Would there be more music if there was more money? Obviosult lots of people do music for money. i began at 15 becasue wanted to be a Ramone, more S, D and RnR than the money. But i undoubtedly woudl have liked it.
But now, having once had experience of almost being signed over a 2 year period and the irrationality that that brought with it, and a desire to make music for the wrong reasons ( and therefore to my mind it was less good) (ie trying to make the music more poppy to ensure a signing). I'm not sure - you might want to follow the money - as many bands have tried to do. and thats lead to some seriously awful 2nd and 3rd albums etc..
Sure if the music was earning money, then my wife would be happier for me to do it more during the day (instead of when she goes shopping).
But this is of topic isn't it?
Free means i am getting heard when otherwise i would not. Getting heard means there is more possibility of making money than when i am not heard at all. (blah blah money not object, high values blah).
Music is a godawful business to be in and always has been, so much competition. Everyone wants to be in it, like writing and art, so there are millions of us and we are all shite. But now its free we are all getting a heard a little bit and actually no music is shite, not even madonna or liberace ( i believe to top earners in their categories), just niche.
oh i love ranting
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 9 cds is difficult to achieve
i think its fairly likely to happen to a degree. THere will always be management that do a good job of promotion for a few but there will be more and more unassisted successes. I think the money spent on music will be spread thinner amongst more artists. And free is what has started this. Most of us wouldnt be getting heard at all if it was still just 1 national radio station (who played stuff for free - that i would dutifully record, i had 100 c90s with 200 albums taped for free during musics supposed heyday), now there are thousands of ways of getting your music for free, and i am slowly finding more bands that i buy cds from, instaed of the 10 bands that radio 1 would play in rota. Just becasue i haven't made any moeny yet (ever) doesn't mena i won't. Nor do i particluarly think money is important to music making. in fact the removal of money fo art could be very good.
So sure most small bands make no money but the never did, but at least there is more chance now than there was and thats becasue of free.
the above may not make much sense, apologies.
Re: Re: Re: Re: 9 cds is difficult to achieve
you do seem to be misreading what i am saying here.
I am having success, by my standards, much more than i could ever have had before 'free Internet'. I have lots of listeners, i make a few sales. It costs me nothing to make music or the cds ( as i print them myself). this is far better than pre-internet when it cost thousands to make a cd that sat under your bed, got no plays on the radio, costs hundreds to practise in practise rooms and recording studios. So my 10-20 dollars is actual profit. I am very happy with this situation so please dont use me as some sort of proof of your anti-free stand. Free is good for music, for my music and for everybody who has free music on myspace or tunecore, last fm, bandcamp, wherever. What i am looking forward to is the demise of poepl who are in music for money alone. That should free up the market a bit and make popel a bit more adventurous. could be decades away yet.
Re: Re: Re: 9 cds is difficult to achieve
On the contrray i am getting something from free - i make 10 or 20 dollars a year. More than i would get if i did nothing. I get thousands of downloads a month - more people listen to us now than ever could have before. Maybe we are crap, i wouldn't know, we get some very good but fairly rare reviews, can i call us niche? Anyway, i am very happy with free, i have been making music since i was 15, 30 years ago, and never made any money, so its not really a problem. But maybe, i'll come up with an idea for making moey, a popular tune, or in a thousand year be used in a film. i don't care. Making music is the fun bit, the business side is boring beyond belief.
9 cds is difficult to achieve
i have been selling and giving away music online for 10 years. i've been with tunecore for 2 years. though i have about 20gbs of downloads a month from our site, i only sell about $10 per year on tunecore. i agree with all the free/music/p2p stuff ( i long to find us on TPB) that BestNetTech talks about. but i don't play live and its pretty difficult to make money from music. luckily i just do it anyway. it is very boring thinking about ways to make money from music, and for most of us its impossible (using either the old model or the new free model). Much better just not thinking about it.
Re: The music industry
if only.
We set up our own label for ourselves and a few other bands and only sell albums from the website. But at best we only sell about 10 albums a year.
Despite good reviews.
So why do we not sell many cds?
we're crap? ( we only need 5000 people to like us in the world)
people do not notice the poor qulaity of mp3s
or people only buy what has been marketed to them?
free music is profitable
we've been offering our music for free since 1998 with various mp3 sites and from our own site since 2002. We currently have about 1000 attempted downloads a month, about 700mbs downloaded a month. Its difficult to say how many full tracks that is. We don't sell much but who cares? It doesn't cost much to host the site and it is great having people downloading your music which otherwise they would never hear.
The sooner the music business goes bankrupt the sooner we will be left with musicians who make music because they have to rather than for the money.
Maybe after a few years they will start making enough money to live on.
in the mean time: work less, earn less, spend less, and do more.
And well done to George Michael for saying he's earned enough and will now give his music away for free.
Apologies, a bit rabid.