Where Are The Musicians?

the fans do like signed cds, as lovespirals can attest to! some like to actually read the album credits, as well, which itunes et al cannot provide. i think digital sales are best when you only want 1 song from an album, but if you want the whole album, you should take the time to buy the physical product.

as far as all these conversations about music from non musicians, sheesh! there are so many different permutations in the music industry it is silly to try and give one model. i mean, sure there are some bands that make a living from tours, but others that go broke putting on tours, and still others that don’t tour at all.

in my case, lovespirals is really a recording project, not a live performance band. we buy expensive gear to create our albums, then spend a lot of money pressing the cds, so there really isn’t a lot of money left over to tour on when we’re done. we need to sell the finished product to pay off our credit cards. if i were independently wealthy, i’d probably be happy to give it all away free, but i’m far from rich…

anyway, who knows what kind of band would end up on TWIT or what their scenario would be like. doubtless they could not represent every type of musical act in the solar system.

I still love CD’s. Gotta have the plastic. Maybe it’s my age, but my 21 year old brother feels the same way. I don’t trust my computer, even with backups, not to eat it when it comes to my music collection, although I listen to music from my MP3 players or laptop, and never directly from the disk.

Some songs are novelties (Britney Spears anyone?) and I’ll flip the $0.99 for it on iTunes, and if my system crashes and I lose it, no harm done. Most music that I choose to own I prefer to buy on disk if possible, and directly (or as close as I can) from the artist themselves. I purchase only one “mainstream” artist’s music, and even then feel guilty about not much of the $$$ going to him directly.

I agree with Anji. I **LOVE** signed CD’s. Something about personally connecting with the artist, even for a moment, to get the signature is a treasure. I’m too old to plaster my room with pics of musicians and bands anyway, my husband would get creeped out.

I think Matthew is dead on here. But this problem isn’t a recent one… it’s been going on for ages. For those of us who do (or have, in my case) toured… how many rooms have you been in that were “designed” for entertainment, but there’s not enough outlets on stage… or lighting… or wait staff… or whatever!
Somebody sold somebody else an idea… sales is where it is… every minute of every waking hour an entertainer is trying to make a sale… of him or her self.
It’s all they’ve got. The CD’s are mandatory to the musician. Touring or not. Use ‘em for promo… Use ‘em for door prizes… hell… use ‘em for drink coasters if it sells one of ‘em!

Like everything else in the media world, we’re prepared to believe what we’re being told by the media moguls. If US currency is going to hell in a hand basket, then, by golly, it must be so. Katie Freakin’ Couric said so!

So… if the new media drive by podcasts host say the CD is all but gone… then some day, it will be. Because we’re gonna believe ‘em! I think that digital downloads have their place in the new music media. They are as valuable as the CD itself these days. After all… You want somebody to hear what you do… go the my MYSPACE page and listen to a few songs… but you have to buy them if you want to listen away from your computer. (or Iphone technical thingy)

Matt, Angie and Lynette are right. Everybody that has favorite bands or artists are gonna HAVE to have that CD… and if it’s autographed: Even Better! But… musicians better get together on this and support each other. Write Leo, CC, Ariel, Adam Lewis, Kevin Greenstein and Matthew Wilkening… send them emails and let them know that they are wrong about this. They don’t know unless they’re told otherwise because Katie told them so!

Matt says things out loud that I sometimes think about. And then, I’ve shouted my comments time and again to people that step on the soapbox stating they are “supporting musicians”. They often don’t have a clue about what it is the proclaim to be supporting. Or… they don’t have a clue about what it is they claim to be “reporting.”

I agree with Jim. Let’s ALL (musicians) get together and start messaging/communicating to those persons that are doing what Matthew has identified. Perhaps if we build a “coalition of concern” we can get them to start asking us what we want/think.

Bear in mind, of course, that this isn’t just about the future of CD’s. I used that as an example- Jim cited a few more examples (many of which I’ve run into… a set of Bose computer speakers is NOT a PA system).

What needs to happen isn’t emailing a bunch of people on specific issues, just reminding them to involve the musicians in the conversation. The musicians, after all, are the people most closely connected with the fans whose technology and taste drive the market.

Ok, I’m pulling the nostalgia card. I don’t know about you but I love the feeling of going through a family members old record/tape/CD collection. For some this family member is a parent or grandparent. For me it was my older siblings. Being able to see their albums, ticket stubs, and autographs allowed us to pickup the conversation about these bands years after the events they represented had past. They created a bridge between a generation gap. During family get togethers we’re always talking about the latest artists we’re listening to. Music and the history of our tastes has been one of the was we’ve bonded as brothers and sisters. (Cue violin music)

So I suppose I’m a bit worried for the “iPod Generation.” Individuals like myself and many others are able connect to family members through these plastic and vinyl relics of music from yesteryear. I simply cannot see how the same feelings invoked by this could be recaptured in digital form. Call me a sentimentalist, but generations from now I want to hear the sound of grandchildren going through Papa Mothman’s plastic collection.

I’m glad some people are talking about this.
The Industry is going to HAVE to change. For better or worse. It has only really existed for the last century. I’m worried a bit for musicians and writers, but they will likely adapt. Distribution and Management is what is chan ging the most.

A century ago, to make money in music you had to write or perform. Management and Distribution goods bearing music allowed the Industry to exist. Now that (unfortunately) most people no longer care about a physical product, chances are that music will return to something very near to its previous historical state, where performers make money for performing (in person) and from some avenues of distribution where people can be trusted to offfer money for a copy of their performance. And writers will still make money for their services.

But there will be far less room for chaff, like heavy management and related services (like RIAA). So RIAA and the like are furiously flapping their arms to stay afloat and scam all the funds they can for themselves before their inevitable death.

It isn’t a very happy thing in the big picture, especially coming to grips with the reality about what people think about music itself. There will be less money to go around than in the last century, ….but I guess at least one comforting thing is that (hopefully) more will go to the performers and writers again, which is essentially what music is about as a true industry.

At the root of it, we need to find a way to inculcate society of the value of music, and remind people what is important.. that people should appreciate the source of music they love by letting the artists reap the income of their works. There is a terrific article in a recent Newsweek (October 29th issue, page 20) called “How much is music worth?” The most painful yet true quotes in the article are, “Music is the source of incalculable pleasure for millions of people, but yet many have concluded that one needn’t pay for it. Musicians have worked hard to craft tunes people love, yet hundreds of thousands have looked their musical heroes in the eye, snatched the goods and left the collection plate empty.”

It’s heartbreaking, but we can’t let it beat us down. We have to remember that there ARE good and appreciative people out there. We can still give, and hopefully the amount of appreciation we get back will be enough to keep us inspired, and fed.

… don’t worry: while the music industry is busy with itself, the musicians have enough time to leave the sinking ship…

– Coke

Well, you -can- sign an iPod, it’s just not the same. Fans will continue to buy CDs for two reasons:

1. The ardent fans buy them as tangible symbols of their support and love for the musician. I think either you or Mitch Joel called them totems of support.

2. The data nerds like me will always buy CDs because hard drives crash, backups fail, and that round piece of plastic usually comes at a higher quality bit rate than a download from X Music Store.

Christopher-

Well I can actually foresee music stores offering HIGHER quality downloads than CD’s in the near future. As digital music does take a larger role, people will look beyond the 44.1khz 16-bit quality.

Heck, even Garage Band records in 24-bit now, assuming the hardware can handle it. So the digital distribution may someday be a better product than the CD’s we know today… but replace that with the next physical medium (DVD? HD-DVD? Keychain?) and you’ve got yourself the same problem at 96khz, 24-bit.

I have no iTunes. I use quicktime only with reluctance. And I had a nightmare the other night about using an iPhone. I’ll take the CDs, thankyouverymuch.

But seriously, the greatest benefit of CDs is that they survive random EMPs (like a power surge) and have a sort of permanence that iTunes and other mp3 formats do not. Sure, it’s a lot easier to load up my playlist and listen to a hundred different artists at once, but CDs have a portability that my hard drive does not, and why would I want to spend hundreds of dollars on a player, when everyone has a CD player and I can take my disks with me just as easily?

Besides, in three or four days, I’m going to have not one, but TWO albums signed by none other than Matthew Ebel! Have you heard of him? He’s a great artist…. *Grins*

Have the best

-=Kiyoshi

I’m not decreeing that CDs must go. I’m stating that we’re selling more and more digital downloads and less CDs, and that the cost of getting those CDs into stores is harder and harder to afford for smaller labels as stores disappear or reduce shelf space. Where would you spend your energy? Telling people they’re wrong and they need to go back to CDs?

Matthew W-

Thanks for joining the discussion! As was mentioned earlier, this isn’t a discussion only about CD’s but about perspective. I, as an environmentalist and a geek, am happy to see round pieces of plastic take the back seat to downloaded media. You must have read someone else’s blog if you think anyone was advocating going “back to CD’s”.

Can you, however, come up with another means of selling music in a bar? Something the artist can put her name on?

However- and this is where the discussion was intended to be -not one of these panels I’ve seen so far has ever asked a real working musician for their input. Labels, PR, podcasters, radio, etc, but not one musician so far has been invited.

You didn’t form the panel at PCB2, so don’t take this personally, but hopefully if you have the opportunity to host one in the future, you’ll remember someone who’s actually making the stuff people are buying!