tamijo wrote: First of all i will admit that i havent read trough all 9 pages, so this may allready have been noted.   What i want to say is : I dont belive many bands can survive without going live. And i think the ability to do great live shows have allways been a key-stone in rock. So the critics will still be able to pick out the great live stuff. This just to comfort those that think it will all drown in a flood of selfmade amaturism.

I have not read these 9 pages too. But my view is very much that we are back to year 1880 again where the bands earned their living by playing live. Today or probably in five years time; gramophones can only be regarded as promo material for their live performances. 

The genie (ie illegal downloads) has left the bottle forever. The clock will never be turned back to 1995. There is a new law coming into force next month here in the UK. But it is technically so easy to bypass that this law is totally without teeth. Neither will the telecommunication industry abide by this law either. People are not paying for broadband just to send each other emails. 

I am very glad I left the music industry. An industry not half as ducked as the film industry. That industry is in big danger of being wiped out due to relying heavily on investors who want returns. Not with hundreds of millions of illegal downloads, you will........ 

Mark my words; in five years time, we will be back to 1880.

 

Torodd: A good point about the broadband industry supporting illegal downloads. Well of course they don't actively support them but a huge part of the demand for bandwidth is for grabbing music and movies and games illegally. Without it we'd probably all be able to get by on 1 or 2 gigs a month. Maybe it's the physical matter thing again, that you can break down one industry but it will always be replaced by another, that there'll never actually be greater or fewer transactions occurring than there previously were.

Dean's predictions about the Internet's reliability as a "global library" / storage space of information are getting confirmation at an allarming rate. Just got this:


Dear Google Video User,

Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re removing the remaining hosted content. We've always maintained that the strength of Google Video is its ability to let people search videos from across the web, regardless of where those videos are hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide.

This nice documentary about the (apparently now thriving) "garage" subculture touches the issue of releasing music in the Internet era:



Recommended.

Sorry for posting random stuff that doesn't contribute to the initial blog, I use this thread like a normal conversation thread. I don't know other better places to post such things and I'm not a fan of opening too many threads either. 

I think you just dislike garage and their style. On the contrary I like what I saw in the documentary much more than prog CDs, so I'm convinced this is an issue of taste.

As one of the self-releasing composer/musicians that this posting rants about, I’d like to compliment Epignosis as being one of the few here who “gets it.”  Insisting that a musician’s validity hinges on an obsolete business model (contract, label, publicist, ad nau$eam) has nothing to do with being a music listener, but a product consumer.  I do understand having certain standards for quality, which is why my prog listening habits lean toward the instrumental, and preclude almost any band without a world-class vocalist.  But I find it very, very difficult to take seriously the “criticism” of fans/bloggers who are only interested in clichéd, formulaic (albeit officially produced!) product of the sort that gets advertised on forums like this one: pseudo-Nordic nonsense-named metal bands populated by scowling pale dudes with mullets.  Or the equally-anonymous Porcupine Theatre clones.

I do what I do because it’s more productive than posting blog comments, and because I enjoy it.  Don’t lecture me as a self-releasing artist because my production values differ from Robert Fripp’s (anyone remember “Earthbound”, btw?), or because you only listen to music you review on your ½” computer speakers.  I do what I do because I enjoy the creative process, and because us creative types no longer have to jump through yesterday’s hoops to get our efforts out, free or not.  I do what I do because I’m not compelled by my label to sound like Porcupine Theatre, or anyone else for that matter: the same open fields of possibility that were open to the pioneering musicians of prog’s creative heyday still exist. If one or two people stumble upon it and get it, then maybe they’ll tell a friend. 

I’d say roughly half of the cds I’ve purchased in the past few years were self-released by the artists, because that’s the root source of true creativity: not labels, not critics, not massive voting blocs of fans.  Most of the latter-day Big Names of prog bore me to tears, even if they were once unique, and so as a music consumer I’ve now turned away from mainstream progressive rock for the very same reasons I turned to it thirty-nine years ago—boredom.

Edited by GrayMortuary - August 09 2011 at 16:29

GrayMortuary wrote: As one of the self-releasing composer/musicians that this posting rants about, I’d like to compliment Epignosis as being one of the few here who “gets it.”  Insisting that a musician’s validity hinges on an obsolete business model (contract, label, publicist, ad nau$eam) has nothing to do with being a music listener, but a product consumer.  I do understand having certain standards for quality, which is why my prog listening habits preclude almost any band without a world-class vocalist.  But I find it very, very difficult to take seriously the “criticism” of fans/bloggers who are only interested in clichéd, formulaic (albeit officially produced!) product of the sort that gets advertised on forums like this one: pseudo-Nordic nonsense-named metal bands populated by scowling pale dudes with mullets.  Or the equally-anonymous Porcupine Theatre clones. I do what I do because it’s more productive than posting blog comments, and because I enjoy it.  Don’t lecture me as a self-releasing artist because my production values differ from Robert Fripp’s (anyone remember “Earthbound”, btw?), or because you only listen to music you review on your ½” computer speakers.  I do what I do because I enjoy the creative process, and because us creative types no longer have to jump through yesterday’s hoops to get our efforts out, free or not.  I do what I do because I’m not compelled by my label to sound like Porcupine Theatre, or anyone else for that matter: the same open fields of possibility that were open to the pioneering musicians of prog’s creative heyday still exist. If one or two people stumble upon it and get it, then maybe they’ll tell a friend.  I’d say roughly half of the cds I’ve purchased in the past few years were self-released by the artists, because that’s the root source of true creativity: not labels, not critics, not massive voting blocs of fans.  Most of the latter-day Big Names of prog bore me to tears, even if they were once unique, and so as a music consumer I’ve now turned away from mainstream progressive rock for the very same reasons I turned to it thirty-nine years ago—boredom.

Thanks for dropping by. My rant (and I accept that is what it is) is not a cry for bland homogeneous products, for I am a self-released artist myself and I firmly believe that if you really truly love what you are doing then you should put every gram of effort into creating a piece of art that from the first note through to the final mix, the final artwork and the final shrink-wrap of the jewel case (if hard-copy is your thing) is as perfect as your abilities can muster. As someone who does this to the best of their abilities I don't think it's that much of an ask to expect it from other committed artists. All too often what I hear and see is artist who think that what they do begins and ends with the music, and that's fine if that's what you want; I don't, I want 2¢ more because I know how simple and easy it is to go that extra step and actually finish what you start and produce something to be proud of, and I'm not one of those tight-fists who want it for nothing, I'm more than willing to pay extra for the finished product if I beleive the finshed product is worth that extra cash.