Good News! CD Music Sales Down 20% from 2006
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Also, any band already relies on live concerts for their means of money. This is nothing new. What is happening is that major labels are getting a bigger piece of the pie when it comes to merchandise(which used to go straight to the band). I just think a new means of selling music must be created that benefits all parties.
The film industry will do it's best to stay ahead of the bandwidth: 3D projection, better surround sound, etc, but will also need to adapt to make formerly secondary revenue streams (product placement, franchise merchandise, etc) more primary. That and they're going to have to find ways to get their costs down, significantly, to compete with a fast approaching internet and independent film community.
There's no reason, with hundreds of aspiring producers and engineers, that a good band with limited resources couldn't cut a great album for $1k instead of $100k. Given, of course, that the band could find a producer willing to work for the same reasons they want to play.
Not sure if the post is trying to be offensive, or if it's simply trying to help (though not clearly) the conversation.
"There's a lot more to recording a band than having an expensive microphone."
Indeed there is. Great point. Really great. Having _multiple_ good microphones is just one tiny necessity. It's just one tiny expense compared to everything else, and so that is why I linked to _one_ item. Do you want me to provide links to mixing boards, high-end reel-to-reels, synths, pianos, rental prices on orchestras, estimated costs of studio musicians, singers, engineers, producers, etc, etc? Because all of those things cost more than even very expensive microphones.
Hope I've cleared up the bewilderment.
But you've obviously missed the idea: the gap between what you can make with mediocre equipment and top-notch equipment is closing fast. In the old days, you needed good mics because analog equipment needed high quality input. With digital processing and recording, you can get close with a mic that costs $200 (which, if you had a good marketplace for borrowing/sharing equipment, you might only pay $5 for the weekend).
No. In the old days, home equipment had one track, and studio equipment had one track. Sgt. Pepper was recorded on a 4-track--what distinquished them were the things that you just can't get in your garage: Studio-quality accoustics, a vast array of equipment, world-class instruments and studio musicians, producers, arrangers, etc.
Yeah, if you want to be the next White Stripes, okay, maybe you can pull it off. But then you aren't dealing with "great albums" by any measure.
Sorry about all this; it just bugs me when people think things come cheap when they don't.
Production costs will never reach zero. It makes no sense. You're always going to have good producers out there, better engineers, a genius mastering person and great studios that people will pay for. Anyone right now could make their own movie with a home camcorder but I'm sure they'd rather go with some professionals.
The point is that what you could do at home for free (or with some help from smart people for cheap) now is orders of magnitude better than 3 years ago, and is still improving.
Some people will always be willing to pay. But everyone else won't HAVE to.
I wish I was going to the startup school. It'd be nice though if I was cause I'm sure this conversation would have been much better. I didn't realize it was a free event until it was too late.