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Comment by williamcotton | Hacker News Reader

These articles are pointless. This guy knows nothing about being a professional musician.

The investment money is gone. Record labels functioned as venture capital firms. Their bread and butter, the physical audio disc, is no longer. No other entity has yet stepped in to provide mentorship and investment capital for young, bootstrapped musicians.

The schedules of musicians do not align with the modern working world. Employers do not look highly on people who take 8 weeks off to tour. In order to make money touring, you have to be pretty well established.

Also, unlike software development, there is no 'day job' that musicians can work while saving to bootstrap their own venture. Their only option is are low-paying temp jobs, mainly in the service industry, that they must frequently quit in order to work on their craft.

And if concerts and not recorded albums are their craft, they will need to spend lots of time on the road perfecting it. But how? Practice does not make you a good stage performer. And you can't play 10 times a month in your home city and expect fans, promoters, or clubs to think nicely af you.

Sure, there are still new music artists that emerge, but nowhere in the numbers that they have in the past. It is ultimately a dying art form and those that don't see that and in fact argue the opposite, don't have any inkling of what is actually going on.

View on HN

Are you claiming that music is a dying art form? Really?

The music industry is at best a 100 year old historical anomaly compared to the at least 4000 year history of music. The life of musician has pretty much always been extremely unlikely to be financially rewarding. Even at the height of the modern music industry maybe 1 in 1000 aspiring musicians ended up being signed to a major label. Musicians by and large have always made the bulk of their income based on in person performances. The only difference now is music companies now are losing out on record sales and starting to design contracts where artists have to split show and endorsement money with the label as well as record sales.

Honestly its a moot point, the technology has changed, and the music industry has to change with it or die. The whole music industry was created by the technology of the record, and will change or die with the advent of easily copyable media.

I don't think music is a dying art form, but the age of larger 'alternative' music having a look-in versus the lowest-common-denominator dross on the radio is definitely on its way out.

Of course music will still be around. I'm saying that music as we know it, music that has been made as a result of the industry and technologies of the 20th century, is dying.

Claims that it isn't are false and misinformed.

What is ALWAYS missing from the "new solutions" is the investment in emerging artists.

Sure, you see companies like Live Nation/Roc Nation setting up these 360 deals. There is definitely some promise to these new approaches, but the investment money is WAY lower than what it was. I don't know the figures, I can't find the numbers online, but I will talk to people I know in music to see if I can track down some facts and write an article on the subject.

My point stands, however. The author of this article doesn't know what he's talking about and the data he presented is useless and doesn't contain enough information to come close to accurately representing the music industry.

BTW, there is a great opportunity for "music venture capitalists".

Music as we know it? What does that even mean? Really I dont understand what you are getting at? This isnt snark I really want you to explain.

Perhaps you mean the phenomenon of popular artists that are so big that they are household names across all demographics across the globe/nation. If so then your probably right. Probably we will see less new justin timberlakes/drakes/britney spears level superstars, and more local/regional/niche stars.

as far as the investment, really labels/mangement companies will continue to invest in whatever makes them money... the size of the investments will probably diminish, but realistically the breakdown of record label investment is 90% marketing/promotion. And realistically if your projected to sell 50% less you should cut your marketing budget appropriately, that has very little to do with the music as an art form at all.

> Probably we will see less new justin timberlakes/drakes/britney spears level superstars, and more local/regional/niche stars.

This is being parroted around here for a while, but that does not make it more true. Big artists are less affected than small labels. See also: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/20/business/fi-cotown-i...

This is kind of missing the point, which is that fewer artists will get to that level, not that artists already at that level will suddenly be forgotten.

Music as we know it. Rock and roll and popular music as an art form. Albums, 3 minute songs. Things that were designed to fit on to a plastic disc and be played on the radio between commercial breaks. This is what made up the "music industry". Touring was a loss-leader to sell plastic to people up until about 10 years ago. You had to go out and make your sales! Come to town, have the local paper and radio do your marketing for you, people maybe come to your show or maybe go buy your album at a record store. That is going away. Hence, the art form will die along with the changing media landscape, because well, you know, The Medium is the Message.

I'm not crying about this, BTW, I'm merely pointing out that the death has started. For fucks sake, I don't even really LIKE making records as much as I like writing and performing music with a group of people, so personally I'm enjoying these transformations.

The point I'm making is, is yes, the music industry is dying. Something else will come along and replace it. Music won't die, but whatever we've become accustomed to over the last 80 years is quickly disappearing.

Again, claims that this isn't happening are misinformed.

> a dying art form

> music as we know it...is dying

> the music industry is dying

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

> You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Both you and hacker news would be better off if you read this article and then commented to the parent with your rebuttal rather than what you think is a witty one liner with no substance.

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

The rebuttal is obvious from the graph (the central point in the article, which was hyperbolically disputed above): Music isn't dying - the industry around it is evolving.

That's what happens when new technology is introduced into an existing business model - the industry changes. Existing players may exit the market (some may even "die"), some struggle, some adapt to the change and thrive, and other new players enter.

> a dying art form > music as we know it...is dying > the music industry is dying

Music as an art form is largely unchanged, especially the more artistic, less "pop music"-focused forms.

The music industry is refocusing on live performance and the long tail, and less on retail sales of pre-recorded physical media.

Adapting, evolving, changing, transforming.

Maybe declining, shrinking, endangered, troubled.

Maybe broadening, renewing, refreshing.

"Dying" doesn't describe it well at all. I don't think it means what you think it means.

All of your examples have to do with minor minutia of the day to day life of a musician, but you give no examples of how the actual landscape of music has changed. And I find it baffling if the point is that the focus and work required by an artist today is more different compared to one 10 years ago than it was for that artist compared to one 50 years ago. Television, music videos, global marketing, magazine specialization. These things didn't alter a musicians life more than the current decline in retail sales?

Please expand and explain, because Albums, 3 minute songs, radio play with commercial breaks and touring are all very very similar to 10 years ago from a consumer perspective despite the proliferation of other choices and the changing landscape.

Dude, we haven't seen the landscape change yet because no one knows what the fuck is going on.

Let me put it this way. Should I make my art in the form a 180 minute long atonal sound collage that can only be heard by buying a custom piece of machinery that is installed in your house OR should I make my art form 55 minutes of music that can fit on a Compact Disc?

Think of shipping containers. Should I make my own custom shipping container or should I go with the modern, modular standard?

The medium affects the kind of art that is made. The reason we even ended up with the three minute single and the LP have more to do with the physical limitations of vinyl than anything else. An entire industry and culture sprung up around this. It is prohibitively difficult for a musician to go outside of the well established path of the current industry to make and share their music.

Music isn't about 3 minute songs, it isn't about albums, or anything of the sort. It conforms to the momentum of culture and technology as much as it inspires the technology and culture.

It will survive, but the current culture and industry will of course go away, and with it, the entire art form.

Think about that phrase. ART FORM. Roll it around in your mouth, taste it on your tongue. Art will always be made, but it's shape is constantly in motion.

Hey man, shameless but on-topic plug. I believe I am on to the solution.

http://gralbumcollective.com/about.html

Mmmmmm 180 minutes of atonal 'sound collage' hell, otherwise known as complete and utter self-absorbed wank. 99% of the music listening public aren't interested in hearing it.

There are plenty of examples of the non-3 minute song and generally they've been done by masters of their art, the reason songs are 3 minutes long is because that's our attention span for average music.

Records, your plastic limiter, haven't been popular for decades, eons in pop music time, entire generations of teenagers have gone and past, and yet most songs are still 3 minutes long.

So there's your pet theory out of the window.

My point with the "sound collage" wasn't with the CONTENT, rather the MEDIUM. It makes more sense for me to ship a stereo recording across an established channel like a Compact Disc instead of coming up with my own proprietary medium. If I make an art form known as an "album" and I make it available on Compact Disc, I can plug in to an existing industrial infrastructure. Sound engineers, mixing engineers, networks of distribution, journalism, marketing... EVERYTHING has been built on top of the little plastic disc. If I forgo the little plastic disc, the album, well, I can't tap in to this industry. You literally can't get someone to review or promote your work as a musician unless you have a little plastic disc.

If you're interested in my "pet theory" of the medium being the message, I highly recommend you check out Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan.

>There are plenty of examples of the non-3 minute song and generally they've been done by masters of their art, the reason songs are 3 minutes long is because that's our attention span for average music.

That might be your attention span, as you have been conditioned into, all your life.

Plently of cultures cherish much larger popular music forms.

So long there is a commercial need for 3 minute songs, there will be 3 minute songs.

Piracy as the article talks about is non-commercial p2p kind of piracy. That means when a theater group want a song, or a company producing advertisements, or a movie, or a game, or a bar or any other commercial entity want a short song, they will have to buy one. With commercial interest, musicians will produce music to full fill said demand, and 3 minute songs get produced. It might be a smaller market than the one during the 80s, but a smaller market is still more than none at all.

>> Perhaps you mean the phenomenon of popular artists that are so big that they are household names across all demographics across the globe/nation. If so then your probably right. Probably we will see less new justin timberlakes/drakes/britney spears level superstars, and more local/regional/niche stars.

No, the big artists will only get bigger, because those are the artists that can afford to tour and have the backing of their labels. It'll just be harder for smaller acts to become bigger acts.

let me clarify, justin timberlake, drake, and britney will be fine, but the next generation 'justin timberlake' wont get the kind of massive funding necessary to make him a superstar across all demographics, social classes, genres.

as far the local/niche artists, i should clarify i don't think they will be doing 'better' than they do today.

i am instead looking at it from a fans point of view, instead of 100 next gen justin fans, i think they will be say 40 gen justin fans, 10 next gen r&b fans, 10 next gen power ballad fans, 10 next gen lounge crooner, etc...

I dont think the amount of music listened to is going to change, the margins for the companies and artists income will probably go down... but 'quality' of music will be the same as it always was

There will always be money for the justin timberlakes, drakes, and britneys. But none for the Nirvanas , Pearl Jams or radioheads.

Is this sarcasm? I see no shortage of non-mainstream pop bands achieving more than their fair amount of success.

edit: a quick example off hand, The Arcade Fire

Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Radiohead made some of their best music without any major label deals or marketing budgets.

Extraordinary music does not require or benefit from commercial-scale budgets. It's always been made, and always will be, regardless of the economics.

Die Antwoord was a band nobody wanted or heard of until they uploaded this video to youtube http://youtu.be/cegdR0GiJl4

10 years ago they would've remained in obscurity in South Africa unable to tour because nobody would've backed them. Now they are playing stadiums. Being successful has nothing to do with funding anymore. Radio is gone, no longer need to grease the palms of every radio DJ in the US to get popular or bribe MTV.

What's the driving factor for local stars? I'd think that, as in many industries, big will get bigger. If you become a regional star, you'll probably go multi-regional. I'd be surprised if there'd be any major decline in huge pop stars. Even if they start off indie, one they gain enough traction, they'll be able to out-market others.

There's no reason e.g. YouTube couldn't have music competitions and new huge stars every year.

Please explain what exactly musicians need significant investment money for? Studio time is a small fraction of what it used to be and simply practicing as a band is really cheap. You can argue that advertizing is still expencive but quality band can get the word out far more cheaply now than they used to.

The real issue for most band is there is a huge catalog of great music out there so standing out is simply harder now than ever before.

> Please explain what exactly musicians need significant investment money for? Studio time is a small fraction of what it used to be and simply practicing as a band is really cheap.

How about rent? Also food, gas money to get to shows, merchandise (t-shirts/posters/hoodies/whatever), CDs (yes, you do still need to have these.. telling someone at a show who saw you for the first time ever and wants to hear more to "go look us up on facebook/soundcloud/twitter" isn't gonna cut it), gear (and gear repairs), advertising (including things like printing flyers out to promote shows), etc. Stepping it up a bit, if you're serious about touring, you'll need to bring additional crew besides the band itself, such as sound/lighting/merch people, roadies, etc. all of whom need to be paid, fed, and transported.

Even being able to practice as a band can get pretty expensive, if you consider that many neighborhoods/cities have really strict noise ordinance laws these days. So if you're trying to start even a moderately loud rock band, your options are a) try to practice in someone's house/garage and risk having to deal with $350+ noise violations on a weekly basis every time one of the neighbors gets cranky, or b) rent a practice space somewhere, which most places I know of start at $400/month upwards. Also note that in smaller towns where there isn't an abundance of unused commercial property, these spaces are either non-existent or have waitlists over a year and a half long.

Most musicians/bands out there don't have label support and get by paying for these things out of pocket (to a point, most bands are seriously skimping in one or more of these areas because they simply don't have the money or the manpower to make it happen). Not saying its impossible, but it certainly is extremely difficult to make it to the level of world-class musicians when the majority of your productive hours have to be spent in an unrelated field for the sole purpose of paying the bills.

To williamcotton's point, the business behind music promotion is alive. The business of music as a product is what is dying.

The fact that there is no product left to monetize the music means that there will be fewer musicians being funded. Only a few musicians will be chosen to promote and this will selectively be done such that they have a huge reach.

The mass marketed products like JT, Kanye (barf), Miley, etc will continue to be a part of the music business, as they always have, But the Luna's, Feelies, Grizzly Bear's (http://nymag.com/arts/popmusic/features/grizzly-bear-2012-10...), and myriad of other, small appeal bands are going to have a hard time sustaining themselves for the longterm with out a product to keep them afloat.

The live performance is the product now, but the problem is, is that this is actually hard work. This is why you see EDM musicians having a good time in the new music economy (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/09/30/130930fa_fact_... - paywal) - they are able to put on a show with minimal effort, to large crowds (i.e. big $$$).

I've seen so many awesome musician friends throw in the towel after a few years because they can't keep justifying theier profession. It's sad, but unfortunately the way its going to be.

Edit - this was the Grizzly Bear link I meant to use: http://www.vulture.com/2012/09/grizzly-bear-shields.html

Exactly. The music industry was never long for this world in the grand scheme of things. If you want to see a real threat to music as an art form, look to the trend we've seen over the decades of local governments trying to put a damper on busking. The good news is that technology will continue to create new ways for musicians to make a living.

Music will never die, and music is a form of mating display, so being a musician is good from a mating standpoint--it gets you laid. But the economics if the business have always been poor since the dawn of recorded music. If recorded music went away completely musicians would make a lot more from live shows.

>music is a form of mating display

Hm, then why did I start learning the piano at age 6? Music is a form of communication and expression, and humans just tend to gravitate to people who are good at stuff we like (which make for good mating displays).

I'm not sure about the mating display thing but you probably started learning the piano at age 6 because your parents thought it was a good idea.

In this case, very strongly my idea. No-one really knows why we play music - even musicians don't know. But I think it's about a form of expression, much like for many people they are compelled to enter conversation at least part of the day or week. I've yet to read a scientific or psychological explanation that fits but I have some pet theories that sound nice (that I wouldn't bet the bank on though).

>In this case, very strongly my idea. No-one really knows why we play music - even musicians don't know.

A lot of musicians I know, would not hesitate to mention "the opposite sex" as a major reason.

Communication is a little iffy as many artists don't write be understood; their lyrics are intentionally opaque so as to seem mysterious, and allow the listener to project onto them. Agreed that music is a form of expression, but so is smiling; the question is, why do human express themselves through music in first place, or through smiling? Why not express themselves through cartwheeling instead?

Darwin argued that both human song and bird song evolved as mating displays [1]

[1] ftp://ftp.repec.org/RePEc/els/esrcls/draftfin.pdf

I can't find the article to reference so take this with a grain of salt: in ancient times it is believed that song was a form of letting people know you were there, as in mothers cooing to their babies while grazing. That's a really pleasant idea to me, but I believe it's far more complex than that and music/sound can't be simplified down to a single evolutionary cause. As someone who loves sound is all it's glorious forms it's distasteful to me. Why would I be content to play the piano to only myself all day if it were something as base as for getting a better mate? It goes way deeper than that.

> the question is, why do human express themselves through music in first place, or through smiling? Why not express themselves through cartwheeling instead?

Humans do express themselves through cartwheeling, they aren't mutually exclusive.

>Hm, then why did I start learning the piano at age 6?

Because your parents made you.

If you had made the decision to learn an instrument yourself, later in life, chances are "mating display" would play a huge role in that, and that the instrument would have been a guitar. Can't argue with statistics.

Are you all assuming I'm a guy? Geez, there are really of lot of typical assumptions made here perhaps all based on pop/rock music (which I still think isn't so clearcut). I'm a trained classical pianist, which is usually something done by children well before the consideration of finding a mate is even part of the psyche and I insist that it took quite a matter to convince my parents that I was committed - not every classical musician comes from a middle class family and some of us had to work hard to achieve what we did. There is something extraordinary and powerful about playing and writing music, deeper in the way it affects me than anything else - and I love programming for the results-oriented buzz you get but when you play/write music? It's like getting right up close to the universe. This is a really personal issue for me and it's hard to think that people are looking at musicians on stage thinking it's a simple matter of fluffing their wings.

Kim Gordon had a fantastic quote: "People pay to see others believe in themselves." http://www.amazon.com/Lipstick-Traces-History-Twentieth-Anni...

Amplifying this point...

Even the greatest of musicians through history have had to struggle to survive, it wasn't always about rock supergroups skipping across the world in private jets, screaming groupies ready to service their every desire.

I'm reminded of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, which are some of the greatest works by one of the greatest musicians that ever lived. These works were not a platinum hit at the top of Billboard's charts. Heck, Bach didn't even get paid for them! These compositions were sent on spec to the mayor of Brandenburg (hence the name) in the hope of stirring up some sponsorship so Bach could continue his work.

If you're like me, you picture the hopeful rock star as struggling along, trying to supplement his income by giving guitar lessons to locals. This also describes Beethoven - he was frequently hunting for commissions to keep himself afloat, and had to earn money by giving piano lessons.

The idea that musicians should somehow be above all this stuff is a modern invention. Most of the greatest works in history were not done by people enjoying easy financial prospects.

Slaves did not get paid for their work too , what's your point? are you ready to code for free ?

The point is that people are so passionate about music that they will make it, even for free, and the results can be outstanding.

The same can't be said about the type of jobs slaves used to get.

Yeah, programmers never do work without getting paid. They would never think of working a job to support themselves financially but also do programming after work just because it's something they're passionate about. Every programmer is a rock star and will either make a billion dollars or go do something else.

Open source and side projects don't exist in this world, of course.

Yes. It is, just because the idea is unthinkable doesn't make it untrue.

http://gralbumcollective.com/about.html

>Are you claiming that music is a dying art form? Really? The music industry is at best a 100 year old historical anomaly compared to the at least 4000 year history of music.

Well, we care about "popular recorded music" as last century knew it and that's a dying art form.

I'm sure Gregorian Chants and Peruvian Flute Music will continue to be written.

That's not what people complain about dying. People want Elvis, Beatles, Iggy Pop, Talking Heads, Madonna, Beastie Boys, Metallica etc -- with all the externalities that the way of them producing and selling music had.

Grad students looking to do research for a living face a bleak existence. There are very few decent paying jobs with security available if they can't land one of the very few tenured professor positions. Fail to do that, and it's a nomadic life, moving from post-doc to post-doc until they give up and get out of academia for the sake of their family.

Acting is almost a pyramid scheme. A small number of actors at the apex make millions in Hollywood, but it's hand-to-mouth for the majority. Most actors can't even rely on their profession for a living!

You can pen a best-selling novel and still need a day-job. Few authors make a living by writing. Only a steady stream of best-seller after best-seller will let you start to rely on your writing. Forget about making a living off of magazine short-stories and articles!

You should get my point by now. There are many noble professions that add to the knowledge and culture of humanity that must be done out of love, because the money is piss poor. Most of these professions require tremendous investments in terms of time and money to get good at. The music industry was an odd beast. It never really invested money freely in artists, preferring to put them into debt so that they would have to be wildly successful before ever seeing a cent of return. It was sort of like supplying student-loans to grad students with the caveat that wages would be garnished until they leave academia. Without the record labels, musicians are largely in the same boat as actors, authors, etc.. Namely, they have to invest in themselves out of love for their art, or forget about it.

The notion that one has to suffer for art or science is not new. What bothers me is that we so blindly accept egregious rewards being handed out for the dubious virtue of "being close to the money". Bankers, traders, managers, etc.. People who are close to the money still make out like bandits despite the fact that their jobs are really about supporting the people who make and do. You can't fault them for being greedy and taking what they're able to. That's what anyone would do in their position. We should, however, be angry with ourselves for granting them that power.

This is the direction in which I was immediately thinking. As a software dev by day and musician by night/weekend/days off with experience living, working, and playing in several major east coast US cities I can say that the musician's job has gotten significantly more difficult as the physical medium dies.

Record companies used to provide a lot of money up front for prospective bands - this created much of the rock star persona the world came to love. Now, unless you simply luck out on connection or blatantly craft your music as a sale, it's prohibitively expensive to practice, play, and tour without living in squalor.

Without the capital from record companies willing to take a risk, the returns on personal (band) investment in their own recordings are dim.

A prospective band that caught their attention and was willing to sign the contract received: - an advance - studio time, advertising, packaging, etc. at whatever rate the label charged them - maybe help with touring, while paying whatever rates the label charged them

If they were really lucky/good/smart, they weren't in debt to the label when it came time to negotiate a new contract. Then they could hire a decent contract lawyer and get something more than 2 cents an album (before paying back that advance), build their own studio, etc.

Most of those "rock star persona"s have stories of what their lives were like before they signed those contracts. Some of them have some pretty interesting stories of what their lives were like after they signed them, too. Very few of them would believe that major record labels were taking a lot of risks with their money.

If the money has dried up at all, it's simply because the industry has become less predictable/more fragmented. Minor labels have become bigger than ever, and the majors are letting them take the risks (or leverage market expertise to gain a profit where the majors could not).

On the up-side, the costs of making a decent demo (or even album) and distributing it to an international audience are lower than ever, making it much easier for bands to do all of the things rock bands always had to do if they wanted a label rep to show up with a contract and an advance.

> there is no 'day job' that musicians can work

"Fronting a band that gets airplay" is a narrow version of working musicians do. Those just happen to be the most prominent and famous musicians in the US right now, but they're a tiny, tiny slice of working musicians.

Some people show up at advertising firms and write jingles. Some compose arrangements for films. Some studio musicians show up every day, provide background drums or bass for a hundred different singers, without really getting any credit. The most reliable "gig" players I know play weddings, and they make a decent amount of cash. Others play jazz four or five nights a week, often with different fellow players every session. Almost every major city has a symphony. Many working musicians I know also teach.

We need to stop analyzing the music industry by pretending it consists entirely of Trent Reznor and Carly Rae Jepsen.

Are we better off with one entity that offers horrible funding terms and exploits/chooses artists for maximum profit? Or are we better off with an industry of smaller players that compete to offer the best terms to the most talented musicians?

Decentralizing the funding while messy, scary and potentially hazardous is a better path for all.

I also think there's room for both the traditionally funded musician model and the self-service or smaller label models. The problem is when there is no choice which leads to abuse.

I'm guessing that you have never and will never have to deal with the consequences of your suggestions and your statements are nothing more than empty posturing, am I correct?

The local indie acts do fine where I live. They all rent a place together and work at coffee shops or, longshoremen some of them because they can take off whenever they want to.

I know plenty of bands like Hooded Fang, Gold & Youth, and Lightning Dust that do fine for themselves without major labels and are able to tour worldwide and still come back with money.

The big acts now are really, really big. Jay-Z, Timberlake, U2 they're all approaching billionaire status. Just there are less middle men siphoning it off to feed the 'industry'. The old music industry was a closed club you couldn't get into but now anybody can be in a band and get exposure or record cheaply. If the music biz is so dire, why is there an explosion in small recording studios. They are all booked solid too one of my friends had to go out of the city to record because the 23 studios (there used to be only 4) were booked including the night shift well into next year.

The punk bands def make more money now. They can actually afford to tour instead of stealing all their equipment like in the old days and pushing a broken down VW across the country and nearly starving to death in the middle of nowhere Arizona. Now they can fly to Brazil, or do shows in Iceland. That never happened a decade ago. These are local tiny acts without labels too.

There is also ~40 live venues where I live now. 15yrs ago there were only 2 legal venues for smaller acts, and everybody else had to illegally play in warehouses and hope the police didn't show up. Even worse, some music industry A&R parasite was in charge of one of the clubs and refused plenty of acts that went on to be successful here because he didn't like them, or thought they wouldn't be good for business.

I'm glad the industry is dead. Let it die. We've never had so much music

Hence the popularity of coffeeshops and other low-paying, transient jobs with musicians. I have a number of friends who work crap jobs so they can get away with touring. When I look at my financially stable but locked-in life, it's not a bad trade they're making.

I remember reading an interview with Nels Cline, the lead guitarist for Wilco, where the interviewer was surprised to find out that he had coffeeshop jobs until he joined Wilco. After all, Cline was a fairly well-known and respected musician even before Wilco. But frankly, being a well-known experimental jazz-rock guitarist means working in coffeeshops to pay the rent.

I don't think it has anything to do with "schedules" - if that were the case, there would be no book industry, no training industry, or any industry in which it takes 6-18 months to churn out a product. Besides, with the rise of 360 deals in the past decade [0], the labels can get a chunk of touring/merch/etc.

Also, unlike software development, there is no 'day job' that musicians can work while saving to bootstrap their own venture.

Musicians for hundreds of years have used teaching, selling musical services/instruments, and wedding/event gigs as a day job.

Practice does not make you a good stage performer. Practice does exactly that. Bands practice having "stage presence". They rent out massive venues, build their stages, and they practice the #($% out of their shows.

It is ultimately a dying art form and those that don't see that and in fact argue the opposite, don't have any inkling of what is actually going on.

Where's that "scratches head" forum icon I see so often elsewhere when I need it...

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360_deal

>And if concerts and not recorded albums are their craft, they will need to spend lots of time on the road perfecting it. But how? Practice does not make you a good stage performer. And you can't play 10 times a month in your home city and expect fans, promoters, or clubs to think nicely af you.

Not to mention that this "just make money through concerts" thing is a US-centric, narrow view, of the musical landscape.

Not all artists are rockers/jazzers, enjoying touring and playing to crowds with their guitars and stuff. And even fewer are like Phish or some heavy metal touring band.

Some don't even have the kind of material that would draw a crowd at a concert (e.g ambient music writers), but they still managed to make money in the record era.

E.g you could sell 40,000 records worldwide and make a decent living (know several artists who did), but still not have enough fans in more than 1-2 cities to make a concert possible.

So this whole concert thing mostly works for either huge familiar brands (like the Stones) or pretty, trendy musicians that can manage a wider following of younger people, like Amanda Palmer and such.

For most bands, historically, concerts were a loss leader for album sales.

And, no, selling t-shirts is not a musician's job. That's like "pivoting" your web 2.0 startup into a fast food franchice. It might make you money, but it's not what you wanted to do.

> Sure, there are still new music artists that emerge, but nowhere in the numbers that they have in the past.

Let's see some numbers then, I don't believe this at all.

The investment money is gone. Record labels functioned as venture capital firms.

Who cares? Venture capital won't make you practice every damn day. Venture capital won't make you suddenly sing in key. Venture capital won't inspire you to write compelling lyrics. Venture capital doesn't have anything at all to do with musical talent and I think most people would agree that the overwhelming majority of "VC" supported artists are chosen by record companies based on ROI, not based on their musical merit. Today more than ever, the cost of producing and distributing quality music is easily within the range of most serious musicians; the software available to musicians today is staggering and quality recording equipment becomes cheaper all the time.

Give me a break. If you're not big enough to make money touring then sorry, you have to get a job like the rest of us; this is not something unique to musicians, how do you think employers feel about a 6 month sabbatical dedicated to working on your ultimate app idea? It's not gonna happen. The majority of startups don't have access to VC money, and the capital going to many successful early stage startups are (relatively) paltry sums that a determined individual could absolutely accumulate.

Also, unlike software development, there is no 'day job' that musicians can work while saving to bootstrap their own venture

There is no law that says musicians have to work low-paying temp jobs. There is no reason why musicians are any more economically disadvantaged than any other individual who has to work full time while building towards their personal goals on the side. The implication seems to be that musicians generally have no other useful skills besides waiting tables, but that is obviously false.

Practice does not make you a good stage performer.

What? Every good performer practices within an inch of their life, even Beethoven had to put in the hours, the debatable exceptions are too rare to be worth consideration.

It is ultimately a dying art form and those that don't see that and in fact argue the opposite, don't have any inkling of what is actually going on.

That's a pretty presumptuous and condescending assertion. I'd argue that you don't actually know what's going on since music is more alive than ever; in fact, music is so alive that the flood of new music that has exploded onto the internet has driven the cost of music way down. It turns out, music is really cheap to produce when you're rolling studio quality equipment out of your laptop (with mastering/mixing/sequencing software that is rampantly pirated by musicians, I might add)

How's the view from the armchair? You comfortable over there?

Practicing in a room, without an audience, does NOT make you good at anything other than practicing in a room without an audience. The stage is completely different and it takes hundreds if not thousands of performances to master.

If musicians are expected to make money ONLY from touring, that is, traveling from town to town and getting up on a STAGE (not just going from town to town and setting up in rehearsal studios), they must already be really good at it. Do you not see the conundrum here?

When the music industry was functioning record labels would advance money for a tour in the hopes that the venture would result in more money made from record sales than it cost to keep the van full of gas and a roof over everyone's heads for 12 weeks.

How's the view from the armchair? You comfortable over there?

Your reputation for presumption precedes you. I know exactly what it's like to perform on stage, it's not exactly a difficult opportunity to come by, even my teenage niece and all her siblings have performed on stage for years... and yes, just like everything else in life, the more you do it the better you become.

Practicing in a room, without an audience, does NOT make you good at anything other than practicing in a room without an audience.

Contrary to what you might believe, practicing your instrument/act/set/speech/flow/delivery always improves your public performance, that's simply an indisputable fact and you come off as foolish arguing otherwise. Your logic is akin to suggesting that you'll never get better at programming by building applications that you don't sell or push to github. It's true that exposure to a live audience presents unique challenges that sharpen your edge, but it doesn't matter how many times you've been up on stage if you don't spend the lion's share of your time refining the technical skills that produce the art. As any music fan will attest to, the stage performance is secondary to witnessing your favorite musician flawlessly assemble their headlining composition, live in front of your very eyes.

Musicians aren't expected to do anything, they should make money any way they can. Yeah, these days it's hard to sell strings of ones and zeros for money since computers make it trivial to store and transmit those strings, but that's the nature of reality, it's the same reason why nobody is willing to pay a person to organize paper documents in a filing cabinet... the world has moved on. Even if we accept your assertion that you have to get up on stage in order to start making money getting up on stage, you do what everyone else does: invest in your product (your music) and take a loss till you're good enough to start turning a profit. You don't need a VC to be successful in the music industry, period.

Yeah, and there was once a time where the VCs would dole out cash for every other mobile/social/local iPhone app in hopes that the venture would result in more money made from app sales than it cost to keep a van full of college students fed on ramen for 12 weeks. Now that technology has caught up it's become trivially easy to produce apps that would have been game changers when the app store first debuted. Nobody wants to invest in that. The world moved on.

Your reputation for presumption precedes you

Troll much? But I'll bite anyways...

Where did I ever say that you don't need to practice alone? I've been performing on stage for decades. No matter how many hours I put in alone on my instrument, it still won't prepare me for playing with other musicians. No matter how many hours I put in practicing in a rehearsal room with other musicians, it still doesn't prepare me for playing on a stage in front of audience. The only time I notice that I'm getting better at performing on a stage to an audience is when I'm... I mean, for fuck's sake, do I need to continue? What is going on here?

This entire discussion we're having is completely irrelevant.

Back on track:

The author of the article at hand is making a blanket statement of "look, record sales are down, but concert sales are up, so there you go, there's the solution! there's no problem!". I'm countering, using real world experience, that he is completely ignorant as to how the music industry has been functioning, how it is functioning today, and where it is heading.

The music industry is currently in a state of epic dysfunction. There is no point to an art form that was developed for shipping plastic discs around when the industry that led to this art form is being dismantled. Music and musicians will change. The industry and the current art form are dying. New art forms will emerge to deal with the changing landscape of the marketplace and culture.

> The industry and the current art form are dying.

The record selling industry is dying, correct. Music as an art form dying? What the heck are you talking about and/or smoking?

The record selling industry latched onto music, the art form. Now that it fails, it will fall off like the bloodsucking tick it always was.

Trying to draw conclusions form that for the art form itself is ludicrous.

Dude... there are MANY kinds of musical art forms... pop songs, concertos, symphonies, ballets, operas, musicals.... our current "music industry" is based completely around the art form known as the "pop song".

I'm sorry I didn't make myself as clear as I thought. I'm now realizing that most people do not have a functional definition for the word "art form".

No, granting for a second that you are indeed just a little mixed up on the terminology: what you need to realize is that you completely messed up your whole argument by phrasing it in a way that only you yourself could clearly understand. Otherwise known as a failure to communicate. Paddling back now makes it seem like you want to change the history of how this discussion went down instead of admitting that you might have started on a wrong premise.

Own your mistake instead of blaming everybody else and accept the very valid arguments that people are having with your position. It's called "learning".

Troll much? But I'll bite anyways...

No, it's not a troll, you called me an armchair musician when you know nothing about me, that is presumptuous. In your original post you concluded that anyone who disagrees with you "doesn't know what's going on", also presumptuous.

Where did I ever say that you don't need to practice alone?

To quote you verbatim: "Practice does not make you a good stage performer."

I think that statement pretty clearly asserts that practice does not contribute to performance quality. If you want to retract that statement, go ahead, but don't pretend like you didn't just say it.

Practicing in a room, without an audience, does NOT make you good at anything other than practicing in a room without an audience.

Another stellar quote, but ultimately a meaningless tautology intended to downplay the role of technical discipline in favor of experience on the stage. Once again, nobody cares about your stagecraft if you get up on stage to perform Little Brown Jug.

No matter how many hours I put in alone on my instrument, it still won't prepare me for playing with other musicians.

Right... but playing with other musicians will. What is your point? You don't need a record label to practice with your band.

No matter how many hours I put in practicing in a rehearsal room with other musicians, it still doesn't prepare me for playing on a stage in front of audience.

I apologize if English is not your first language, but you need to research the definition of the word "rehearsal" before you argue that many hours of rehearsal with other musicians doesn't prepare you for a live performance. Practicing in preparation for a live performance is the literal definition of rehearsal.

This entire discussion we're having is completely irrelevant.

Your central argument is that piracy has made record labels scared to invest in risky music, and this is killing the music industry because the only way to become a good performer is to use an infusion of record label cash to tour till you become good enough to make a profit touring. I rejected this claim as bullshit because any intellectually honest person will admit that the most critical part of a concert is the actual music (you know, the primary product a musician is tasked with producing), something that has zero connection to VC money.

The trouble is that literally everyone is a musician. The pie is not only smaller, it's sliced more thinly.

This is great for culture, so-so at best for aesthetics and shit for working musicians.

http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-aesthe...

> Record labels functioned as venture capital firms.

Record labels acted as industry gatekeepers who hoovered up talented young performers, paid them gas-station wages then spat them out once they'd finished exploiting them. Now, a youngster can learn their craft from youtube videos, record in a home studio using affordable equipment, and distribute their music worldwide using BandCamp.

I personally know two people who have quit their dayjobs (in music equipment stores) to create music fulltime using this model. And this is in a sparsely-populated backwater city.

It's a frigging beautiful time for the artform yo'. I'm jealous of the youngsters!

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