Giving away all of my music for free.

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hydrogen
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Re: Giving away all of my music for free.

Post by hydrogen »

Just because... I see what torque is saying and it makes perfect sense. What is the industry is built on. Selling music. If you see yourself getting into that industry... Certainly then... giving away music doesn't really fit that model does it?
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Re: Giving away all of my music for free.

Post by sublayer »

beautiful tunes

TS's "I have a completed EP almost every week" - some more 'lie down' time for perfect stuff maybe..
Alex Bizzaro
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Re: Giving away all of my music for free.

Post by Alex Bizzaro »

i thought to do this a lot of time but i never had "courage" to do it for real...however you're making cool music..keep on ;)
dyte
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Re: Giving away all of my music for free.

Post by dyte »

Interesting conversation on cdm about something similar recently.

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2012/06/e ... -the-room/

Will check your music out 8)
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Re: Giving away all of my music for free.

Post by Torque »

optX wrote:
Torque wrote: By giving your music away you've basically given up all hopes at making money on any of the tracks you've made freely available by any label of note in the electronic music industry.

Torque : Why should someone want to sell a track on a label when this tracks was intended to be free of charge for everybody? If this person wants to do commercial releases this person can simply produce new tracks. Basically that`s music and fun and art and feeling/mood and no business administration.

A lot of nowadays well known artists have their roots in the netlabel scene. that`s the scene were they grew up. That`s the scene were a lot of very nice things are happening. That`s the scene were a lot artists are returning every now and then. (i.e. unfoundsoundrecords)

I know a lot of artists who would do a netlabel release and who would be ok with the fact that the label gives their music away for free. but they say "ok, I`ll do, but that`s 200bucks for the remix."
So giving away for free can bring some money too. And I don`t think that most of the beatport artists make 200bucks with one remix.

Another aspect is the modern way of using the internet. You can self-promote yourself and do guerilla marketing and whatelse you are willed to do. Are you guys knowing the Berlin based producer Hannes Fischer? He is doing top notch house music, giving away most of his stuff for free, no need of looking for a label or doing releases. He is one of the "hottest" artists in the internet at the moment.
http://soundcloud.com/hannes-fischer

and let`s be honest a second time : What are we doing? Do we think we can get rich with releasing techno? Anyway, there is a very healthy netlabel scene which is growing and growing and growing and guys like Hannes Fischer are showing an additional option for us musician to get well known and well booked in the future. No need for prestigious labelreleases or beatport charts/sales.
If you are good enough and you really want it you can have fun AND make money with the hobby you love.

To cut a long story short, I really like Timothy Dalton`s music and I don´t think that he is shooting himself in the foot. Actually this guy with his melancholy music led us to discussions and a lot of us were saying "good music, i like".

But yeah, different strokes for different folks, I appreciate the commercial way too.
Hold on one second before you go any further. I'm not saying this just be be a dck or anything, i'm speaking from 12 years of experience producing music and about 17 years of being a paid musician. What you're saying sounds very logical to somebody just starting out.
It's true that it's extremely unlikely that you'll become rich making techno or house music. Right now dance music accounts for about 1/100th of the overall music market and EDM accounts for a much smaller section of the market than even that. If you're producing this kind of music to get rich you're straight up in the wrong business. You would be more likely to get hit by lightning standing in the basement of your house. However you can make this music for a living and do pretty good if you're smart but you have to be honest with yourself. One thing is for sure you are never going to make anything if you never charge for it and you can't charge for it without making an initial investment of some sort.
The music business is still a business and people only make it to the next level when they have a commodity that other people can exploit to make money. It goes like this...
You make the EP
you put up the money to manufacture the ep
you sell the ep to shops and distributors
the distributor has to advertise their product in order to make the money off the investment
you get more talk, more visibility
you make more records and sell them
distributors make more money
magazines and writers see that there's interest in you and they think maybe they can get more readers by getting access to you and writing an article
you make even more records and sell them
your popularity starts to spike
then you get contacted by booking agents hoping to make their 15% off of you live fees because people now want to see you
You cash checks and make a living

That's the way the game is and has always been.
It's never changed even with the new technology. It's one of the constants in the universe.
Sometimes however there is an anomaly. Maybe somebody does get enough notice putting out music for free. But that comes down to either having the write look along with the right sound and just luckily the right person randomly stumbling across your music.
Now if you want to you can roll the dice if you think you got all that and the music is spectacular there is a chance you could do it but it is a gamble. Not only that at some point if you do make it you have to contend with all those people that were getting your music for free for so long and now they have to pay, some of them may lose interest. This business is completely brutal and unforgiving to those artists that don't know the game. There are allot of broke and angry individuals with broken dreams as a result. I'm just saying all this out loud to you guys to save you the grief. I'm not trying to be a dck of dash your hopes i'm just saying the truth out loud which sometimes is a taboo in this industry. Just don't walk onto the stage thinking that this sh!t is all love and people trying to have a good time and just around because they love music. Trust me i've seen first hand what happens to people with that mentality here in Detroit where there are allot of broke brilliant artists that just played their hand wrong. The electronic music business is jam packed with criminals and exploiters that would like nothing more than some fresh new meat to throw out there and cheat. Yes the music is all love, blood sweat and tears and is the reason we all make an effort to do this but the business is straight up warfare.
If somebody were to walk up to a top tier dj and hand them a cd so they could listen to it and play it allot of times it would just rot in a pile of demos they have sitting on their desk at home that they have no time to listen to. If you walk up to that same guy with a record with how rare a commodity that is in today's market you have close to 100% chance he will at least hear it once and in order to get any recognition you need people like that to play your music. If you have your music in nothing but a digital format how are you supposed to stand out on a sea of millions? There's also a psychological reason to sell a record rather than give it away. It's in our DNA as human beings that something that is harder to get and costs something is worth more and therefore is better than something that is just handed out. Some people don't operate that way but the vast majority of people do and it's not like they're just shallow people it's just human nature. Dude i've listened to Timothy Dalton's music and i know for a fact that he could get up there and compete in a vinyl market but if he just hand it all away he'll never really know and you'll always wonder if he really could. I don't know about you but that would really bother me.

To answer a few questions no i don't know who Hannes Fischer is. I would tell you why i don't but you can probably figure it out by all the stuff i just wrote.
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Re: Giving away all of my music for free.

Post by Shepherd_of_Anu »

You have some good points Torque. Its pretty obvious by the kind of post I read on forums that materialism and shallowness isn't going out of style any time soon. Giving vinyl away as a promo would probably be much more effective because of the effect that a physical good can have on a persons mind. I don't get it but I recognize it.

I guess what it really comes down to is that there are two kinds of people in this. Industry men and the those of us who are just in it for the music. I definitely fall into the latter category. I couldn't really care much about the industry or anyone trying to make it. Personally I think the financial motivation is partly to blame for the large amount of shitty releases that one can find in any given commercial music store. People just really want to make money but they don't realize they are in the wrong business.

By the way, your beatport links don't work. I was curious because it occurred to me that I have never listened to anything you have ever done. I am sure based on your own post you can figure out why. I am not trying to be rude or anything, see smiley face -> :)
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Re: Giving away all of my music for free.

Post by steevio »

there's good arguments from both sides here, i agree with Torque on many of these issues, but the stuff about the industry being this or that way and it will never change is a bit short-sighted imho. personal i think the way the industry works is all wrong and its time for change. there has to be evolution, in everything.

that whole 'this guy takes 15% here, and that guy takes 15% there and it gets you up the ladder is so outmoded in this day and age, where because of the internet, you can get noticed just by putting one video up on youtube, one track on soundcloud IF ITS QUALITY !!

that is the issue. Quality, plain and simple, if you're good you'll get there.

I really dislke the way the industry works, so lets remove that word Industry, its time for a totally new approach to how our music is delivered to the audience.
I've spent most of my music life doing everything in an underground way, i wont book the big industry names for the EDM festival i organise, i book the underground guys, the independant guys, the guys who do it there own way, the Mike Huckaby's and DJ Bone's, who'll come and play for reasonable fees, and join the party, not the guys who ask astronomical fees with a barrage of industry leeches taking their cut along the way, because 'they'll pull a crowd'

personally i think its sad that musicians give their music away for free, its art damn it, why shouldnt people pay for it ?
but i dont see any reason why it would harm your future career in any way.

i have given music away for free myself. If i think a track isnt suitable for say a vinyl release, whats the alternative, put it on the digital sites ? maybe but you wont get much back from it, its almost not worth it if you're just starting out. but if you're a big established artist you can probaly make a lot of money from digital sales.

my last release is a vinyl only issue, and people say to me why would you not want all the digtal DJs to play it ? why limit it like that, and my answer would be that I'm not interested in my track being played by some guy standing with a laptop in some annonimous club, where nobody knows its my track, and the crowd probably think the guy is making the music himself, but i am honoured when someone who has been an ambassodor of electronic music for years plays my vinyl to knowledgable crowd somewhere, and the best way for that to happen is as Torque says, DIY, start a label. It will cost you money to start with, maybe it will always cost you money, but the alternative is to be swallowed up by the grim digital music ocean out there, and there will be benefits if your music is good enough.

so i suppose i'm on the fence, i dont think there's anything intrinsically wrong with wanting to give away your music for free, but i also feel that musicians are getting a bit of a raw deal in the arts, and digitalisation is not very kind to them, so for me its still vinyl, i love that sh!t, and so do most top DJs in our field of music. out of the 65 artists at Freerotation this year, the vast majority are vinyl or guys playing their own music live, many using hardware. its not a rule, and i would never discriminate against data jockeys, its just that these are people i have the most respect for, so vinyl is not just some outdated medium on its death bed, its still a very legitimate way to put your music out there.
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Re: Giving away all of my music for free.

Post by Barfunkel »

steevio wrote:
that whole 'this guy takes 15% here, and that guy takes 15% there and it gets you up the ladder is so outmoded in this day and age, where because of the internet, you can get noticed just by putting one video up on youtube, one track on soundcloud IF ITS QUALITY !!

that is the issue. Quality, plain and simple, if you're good you'll get there.

Does it really work that way? Maybe my taste sucks, but the kind of music I consider quality always has like a few thousand youtube plays, and when you look at things that get tons of play, it's mostly garbage that has a big marketing machine behind it. Without the money to market your music, you're pretty much never noticed by anyone besides a few connoisseurs.
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