Giving away all of my music for free.

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

Post by steevio »

Barfunkel wrote:
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.
exactly.

do you really want to be one of those money oriented garbage assholes ?

when you say 'connoisseurs' you mean real music enthusiasts right ?
plenty of musicans make a living from the support of the 'connoisseurs'
ray parry
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Re: Giving away all of my music for free.

Post by ray parry »

plenty of musicans make a living from the support of the 'connoisseurs'
they are becoming few a far between though.

people say not to base everything on money, but its really hard when its money thats needed to quit the job you hate to focus on the passion.
steevio
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Re: Giving away all of my music for free.

Post by steevio »

ray parry wrote:
plenty of musicans make a living from the support of the 'connoisseurs'
they are becoming few a far between though.

people say not to base everything on money, but its really hard when its money thats needed to quit the job you hate to focus on the passion.
but the problem is that not everybody is good enough to focus on the passion. at one time almost everyone in the village was a musician, it was really common for people to be musicians, but they didnt live off it. its no different now. there are millions out there like you.

i believe there is a middle ground where you can keep your head above water and focus on your passion, not everybody has to be a bedroom musican or a megabucks super star, the majority of musicans as well as most artists, have always struggled and 'just got by' thats the nature of the beast. i for one dont mind it, all that matters to me is that i stay true to my beliefs and passion about music. selling out is not an option in more ways than one. (meaning i dont have anything thats in demand)
Torque
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Re: Giving away all of my music for free.

Post by Torque »

There is a middle ground here it's not 100% black and white. You have the ability now to start a label with digital and vinyl releases at the same time. If you're not going to charge anything 100% digital is the way to go because there's no manufacturing cost so you don't lose money. There's a perception out there that back in the day you had producers that would make a track and either send it to a label in hopes of getting it picked up which demanded your music be of a high quality both musically and mix/production wise. There was a second option that was more of a gamble to start your own label and slug it out for about 10 releases pumping your own money into it slowly getting returns. Back in those days manufacturing a record was allot cheaper so the risk was less but if your music wasn't good enough to compete you were pretty much ass out on all that money.

Today there are some changes because of the option with digital. You can release digital only and collect the peanuts that brings you only for a short period of time until your public has bought your track. The downside of digital is that everybody that buys only buys once. If you have a good piece of vinyl any dj with some sense will buy 2 or 3 copies at once and perhaps more later when that wears out.

Today the middle ground is actually much better for the artist. You can manufacture the vinyl and sell it to the vinyl collectors and djs as well as release it digital at the same time. The reason this is good is because you can collect money on the digital release before the money comes back from the vinyl distributors thereby funding your next release before the profit from the last one comes in. You can fire out releases really fast if you're smart getting the benefits of both markets.

The alternative is to just give it away for free. I don't know about you but i work hard as hell on my music and i think it's at least worth a few bucks. This is my absolute life love and passion and i put everything i got into every piece of music i work on. It hasn't made me rich but it's provided some of the most amazing life experiences. I've worked with some of the most amazing electronic music artists of our times, i've learned so much. It has totally enriched my life and saved it in many ways.
I won't lie to you i've been lucky and blessed in many ways. I grew up in a small village about 50 miles north of Detroit around farms and pickup trucks. Now i live in the building where Submerge distribution is housed here in Detroit. I've worked with Underground Resistance for years as well as doing work for all of their sub labels as part of the final production team. I do this kind of thing because i love it. That being said I don't know if i'm fit for any other pursuit in life. If i go and do something else for a living i would just spend the whole time thinking about the next track and the next studio trick with no way to execute any of it because i'm tied down to something else, i've done it before and it made me miserable. I much happier now in life than i've ever been. I'm not rich or always comfortable but i'm happy. I find extra money by taking engineering jobs on the side and mastering jobs here and there. I spend my free time studying under Dr. Ed Wolfrum (PHD Electroacoustics) in order to learn more about my craft. This kind of thing is not a job it's a calling where doing anything else for a living is not even an option for happiness. The only way to do this is to charge otherwise you starve to death. It's too easy to sit there and think that everybody charging or the idea of charging is just greedy and not for the love of the music. Does somebody call a carpenter building a hand carved piece of furniture greedy? Do you call a top tier chef at the finest restaurant who has dedicated himself to his art greedy? Does somebody call an architect who designs the next tallest building in the world greedy for charging for his services or skills? All of them pay better than what the typical electronic music producer would make from selling his art to the public. Without a form of income there is no way for an artist to be able to dedicate their art to their craft and in order to make real progress there are going to have to be people to who can throw themselves 100% into their art. Even Leonardo DaVinci had to be funded and supported by monarchs in order to have time to dedicate to his craft, otherwise there's no telling how he would have ended up, he might of digged graves for a living in order to eat. Your art is worth something no matter who you are.
jackbrazzo
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Re: Giving away all of my music for free.

Post by jackbrazzo »

Some great posts here.
Just one question here though - Isnt it only a recent phemominion that people paid for music - that i mean the EMI's of this world etc. Most people started buying records I guess en masse in the 50/60/70's I suppose it was only the hedonisitic 80's where people were smashing up the Credit Card and going into HMV and Our Price and buying stuff.

What happenend before? People were paid on live performances - there wasnt really any recorded medium to buy. So people used the expression of music around the camp fire or village at its most primitive form

What I am saying is things change - Certainly we are going through an exicting if slightly worrying digital age. The Net was and is still a game changer...Perhaps we should just use merchandising and live performance as a way of income for a pro musician now using the music as a form of advertising and now these days perhaps that should be free?

(*)

Some very passionate posts on here and thats real good to see.
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optX
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Re: Giving away all of my music for free.

Post by optX »

deleted (quoting problems)
Last edited by optX on Thu Jun 28, 2012 12:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
steevio
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Re: Giving away all of my music for free.

Post by steevio »

Torque wrote: This kind of thing is not a job it's a calling where doing anything else for a living is not even an option for happiness.
yes.
if this is you, you must make money obviously. but it doesnt have to be from sales of your tracks, infact i doubt that any serious musician apart from those at the top of the pyramid these days makes much money this way.
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optX
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Re: Giving away all of my music for free.

Post by optX »

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.

just a short quote/reply, don`t have a lot of time at the moment.

First of all : I agree most of what you`ve said. Over the years I`ve read a lot of your comments here so I know that you know what you are speaking about.

Second : Yes, what I`ve written is more or less for someone who`s starting out. Timothy Dalton is on his way, not actually at the beginning, but on his way. If somebody wants to make a living out of the hobby there`s no doubt from my side that it must be charged for the work - some day.

I do think you can get some recognition the way I`ve described and I do think you can get into the commercial way due to this. And, here I agree with you and Steevio, it`s better to release music on physical formats like vinyl than digital. If my label would do vinyl releases I would pick out just the best music I can get. Not everybody makes music which I think would fit the best ...
But I think it isn`t very good releasing tracks on unknown and not so good digital beatport labels, at least that`s what some guys told me. Some well known labels told them "Yes, absolutely good music, well done, but your first releases on that shitty labels are good but it`s gonna be looking strange when people know of your "unprofessional" past life".
Anyway, that`s a random story. I personally would have a better feeling when I know this or that guy released digitally on an unknown label but he/she didn`t charged for it - because : he/she is just on his/her way!

It seems to me that the industry thing and the (free-of-charge) netlabel thing are living in two separate universes which don`t react too much with each other regarding to exclusion criterias.
But rather I think releasing on (digital) labels of poor quality reacts more to the exclusion of the possibility of doing quality releases on big or better (hardcopy) labels. But that`s just my personal feeling...

(sorry if some sentences are hard going - this topic requires me to go to the limits of my english-grammar-capacity. no native speaker here)

cheers!
Last edited by optX on Thu Jun 28, 2012 12:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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