Comment by rmason | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rmason | Hacker News Reader

She's got it all wrong about the music business. It used to be that artists made most of their money from records. They toured merely to create more fans that would buy their music.

Now it's flipped 180 degrees. Musicians make all their money from touring. They release records to find new fans who will buy tickets to their shows.

We live in a golden era for the little guy. Before the Internet if you didn't own the means of production no matter how talented you might be you made money for those who did.

Now you can start a SaaS company and bootstrap your way into a living because the means of production have become ridiculously cheap. A musician can release music on the Internet and go from a local following to a regional one and if they're good enough a national one.

I well remember it taking Bob Seger ten years to go from a Detroit artist to a regional success and another ten years until he was 'discovered' and overnight became a national one. Bruce Springsteen did it faster because he was on the east coast and got a Time magazine cover.

The only difference now is that the young want success overnight and that is rare. Are you committed enough to work for ten years or more to reach the level of finding a thousand fans? Sometimes that means taking a lesser paying job to learn. Or to have the time to code or play gigs on the weekend. Thing about the Internet is you find your true talent level fairly quickly and you might not always like what you learn;<).

Do you want to know Vine's biggest problem? They were owned by Twitter! There is room for only one product to succeed there despite its best efforts to continually sabotage themselves. FYI I do like Twitter.

Depends on how far back you go. In the 1800 / early 1900 if you wanted to hear music you had to see it live. Sheet music was sold for home music enjoyment. It wasn't until 8 track / records / tapes / cds were the physical mediums where that changed.

Interestingly enough, sheet music was actually a big industry in the 19th century. There were superstars, artists getting exploited by publishers, the whole nine yards.

I was flipping through a music history textbook, and the author identified the development of movable type for printing music with the birth of the "music industry."

Beethoven major income is teaching and music score sheet, unlike Hayden in concert. He failed very much in the concert music. Still remember the concert where no 5 the fate symphony was doomed.

His sonata was never played (or may be once) in the first 100 years in public. It was meant to be read and played to the score.

If not mistaken his last act is to rewrite his quartet to 4 hand as this is very popular music at home. There is no mp3 and we do not have 4 person at home unlike Schubert.

But the difference is circulation is still a bit limited. Hence some can still survive. Imagine today if Beethoven is here, he would not be struggle and worry about income in his dying bed. (He would not be starved to death or without a drink. The newly formed London symphony society heard about his worry and sent in money for his tenth and later wine. But even he is on ...)

Beethoven was one of the first pianists to survive without a major aristocratic sponsor, so that was an accomplishment for his day even considering his stature. Not only that he was able to accumulate assets, like shares in a bank, that put him in middle class.

However he did have some unfortunate twists - war caused him to lose a stipend income, promised to him so that he doesn't take up a well paid position for Napoleon's brother. Then of course a period of inactivity due to depression.

For the sonata... are you referring to the Hammerklavier? That was simply a monstrosity of a piece, but it was played in concert only a decade or two later by the virtuoso Liszt.

I agree though, the audience that Beethoven could reach today would well exceed what he could from 1800's Europe, even if most people today prefer pop.

> Musicians make all their money from touring

Until this year, when that income source has been largely obliterated.

And, at least for EDM, seems to have been replaced by Twitch. I'd never used Twitch for more than a minute before this year. But now I'm on there all day (I'm watching right now in fact) because you can pretty much find a music artist streaming at any time of day, any day of the week.

I'm watching someone from Germany right now. She's a bit unique in that she publishes her real time subscriber number. If you do the math you can see she makes about $25,000/mo just from subs, and that doesn't include bits during hype trains.

Who is she?

https://www.twitch.tv/anastasia_rose_official

I've been watching Darude do a little set every Friday. No idea how much it makes him but I suspect not a huge amount.

Just wondering, I never understood it.

Especially for EDM, the songs seem to be premixed. The DJs seem to be standing around, pretending to turn some knobs but the sound doesn't seem to be impacted too much.

I understand artists playing a guitar live on Twitch, but for electronic music?

I’d be surprised if many sets are premixed, but many are preplanned (as in, the DJ knows which songs he/she will play, in what order, and how many bars out/in to start the fade).

Of course, that’s still pretty boring to watch, which is why there’s a lot of fake knob twists and styling going on.

I consume a lot of Youtube DJ sets but it’s all just playing in the background, I never watch the video.

Which "he" are your referring to?

The author is a woman.

I apologize, for some reason I totally missed that. Dang shot me a note and I changed it.

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