been lurking for years, finally registered.  i've been fascinated and concerned with the music business and the digital revolution over the last 10 years.  mp3's, pirating, deluxe editions, etc.  personally,  what i find interesting is that the prog scene hasn't been hit to hard by all this turmoil.  prog fans like physical product (and lots of it) so the artists we love can make a living off selling CDs.  this is in contrast to the indie and corp. scene that has all but imploded as a result of pirating and the need to play live to make money.  any thoughts?  i'm thinking in particular of artists like roine stolt and neal morse.  they keep putting stuff out every 6 months because we will buy it.  neal doesn't even play live that much.  anyway, wondered what y'all thought :-)

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It's just so much easier to surf itunes or amazon and find a great new band instead of paying for a whole album and getting burned. There's about 1-2 fantastic bands for every 5-10 bands that should never have gotten a recording contract.

When i started collection King Crims (about 76-77) took me 10 years or so to get them all.

Offcourse that was also fun, but remember KC is by far unknown, with less known acts, you had to be very luck'i.

Today i can by my music from online stores, having access to almost everything.   

 

Fortunately, there are still a few good record stores in my town, but they are not that reliable when it comes to Prog.  Still, I can almost always find something of interest.  And I can special order almost anything.  There are also a couple of mail order outfits I go to.

 

Despite how it may sound here, I think the digital revolution to be progress - it enables more artists to produce their music less expensively.  The risk there is, of course, that there are fewer checks and balances to help guarantee quality.  For the most part, though, I have not found this to be a problem.

 

It seems to me that the brick and mortar store fell to the wayside due to digital downloads.  The biggest blow there was the demise of Tower Records, one of the giants of the industry, and since I live in their hometown, their flagship store was not too far away from me.    This particular store was second only to famous Sunset Blvd. store where big stars often came in after hours and shopped away.  I think Bruce Willis set the record for spending $30,000 in one night.  I think a lot of us on this site could do that too if we had the money.  I know I could.

Sure I like to buy an mp3 here or there of some song or something. I sometimes get mp3 albums (but not often). But I will always support the physical any day. And used cds are always cheap.  Or I buy from the artist or record company site giving them 100% support.

i always wonder how these guys do it.  i mean, does neal mores have a day job?

i'm down with the digital revolution.  i still like physical product though...liner notes, art, etc.  one thing i am concerned about is with all these reissues and new releases is the loudness wars.

thanks for the comments.

I don't mind mp3's, when I download though I look for high quality lossless, I stil buy cds and copy them on to Ipod in uncompressed format.

Totally agree as well.

And you, my friend, have done more than most to alert us to these goodies!!

Merch desks at the gigs are the best opportunity to sell CDs, and these are often not very busy.  I guess for every 100 people at the gig, maybe 5 or perhaps 10 buy the CDs.

CD sales  - Unless you are lucky to get signed to a label with a half decent marketing budget (almost none of them) good luck being in any store, getting any airplay, etc.

The fact is, that many of our favourites have to be in more than one band, and often hold down a day-job to pay the mortgage.

The only reason they do it is... THEY LOVE THE MUSIC.

And fortunately for us that is the case

Prog is, even with the recent resurgence still very much a niche market. Albeit a loyal one that still recognises the value of the album format.

Just a final anecdote.  I noticed a tweet from John Mitchell of It Bites, Arena and Frost, The new Arena album has only been available from the band directly on their recent europe mini-tour, not being released properly until this week

During that time a 'fan' had bought the album and uploaded it to a torent site for free downoad. The band were of course, far from impressed - I suspect the 'fan' thought they were being really clever.

Wow!!!! I just found a clone of me. I do exactly what you do, including listening to the CDs in my car. Nice to know I'm not alone.

My guess would be is that most active prog musicians have day jobs of one kind or another. The exceptions would be:

- People in very successful bands who can afford to be professional musicials. Even then I think they'd have to play live regularly to sustain themselves but I actually think this is no bad thing.

- People whose "day jobs" essentially consist of being a musician in some other context. Session musician, writer of TV/radio jingles, that sort of thing.

- People whose "day jobs" involves serving the prog economy. For instance, Mick Pointer of Arena fame is Clive Nolan's business partner in Verglas and spends a lot of his time handling the paperwork and logistics side of running the label.

ditto.  morse is a great example of the prog niche.  he puts stuff out all the time b/c people will buy it.  he really doesn't have to play live that much :-)

right.  since dream theater has gone to a bigger label, their music is way too compressed and clipped.  too bad.

 

Too right. There used to be a brilliant record shop about 15 miles from me in York - Track records, it was called. It had every type of music and a large vinyl selection, with many 180g special repressings which were awsome in their sound quality. They'd get you anything you wanted.

 

It closed down about 4 years ago because it couldn't sell enough albums against the competition from a combination of piracy, the big stores and digital downloads. From the York Evening Press Jun 2007:

 

"IT'S the end of the track.

Track Records, the independent York shop on which three generations of youth have converged for their top-of-the-charts hits, is to close its doors in Goodramgate - defeated by the internet downloading revolution.

"People simply are not passing through the doors," said owner Keith Howe, who in January closed his Doncaster branch with the loss of five jobs after sustaining a year's losses.

Now he will make another six redundant, including himself.

He plans to call in the liquidators within six weeks to formulate the exact extent of debt, but reckons he owes about £100,000.

His house in Boroughbridge Road, put up as collateral on a loan, is already on the market.

Mr Howe said he hoped insolvency would mean the personal guarantees to suppliers would be honoured.

Only last May, ten truckloads of stock and office equipment were transferred to the Goodramgate shop from High Ousegate, where it was based for 15 years.

It is a particular tragedy for 47-year-old Mr Howe, who said: "This business has been my whole life."

He first sold jukebox seconds on York's Newgate Market in his schooldays, before opening his shop, aged 19, in a dry cleaner's premises, in Fossgate, in April 1979.

Track Records then moved to the Coppergate Centre, in 1985, and High Ousegate, in May 1992.

The boom for Track Records and other record shop retailers reached its peak in 1996, but now, said Mr Howe, the industry was on its knees as websites and supermarkets undercut dedicated record retailers.

He said: "Anyone downloading a top album from play.com does not have to pay VAT, because it is based in the Channel Islands.

"Customers can get it, postage paid, for about £8.97, whereas it costs me about £9, that is £7.68 plus VAT, before I can think about making a profit - and that amounts to pennies.

"Most kids are downloading. Our student population in York is expanding, but I see very little evidence of it. There seems to have been a massive exodus of younger people aged from 12 to 24."

Mr Howe claimed, he was not alone, with many of the high street stores suffering, including HMV which had announced 100 redundancies after profit warnings.

The likes of Amazon, play.com and Tesco supermarket were taking their toll, he said. "It's the new reality of the market place," he said."

Higher quality mp3s do sound as good, but your output source does not. An iPod will never be as good a source as a CD player hence poorer audio quality, it's not the actual MP3s that are the problem...

 

Jazz music presents an observation for me. It derives from the "Black Community" and was developed through their bloodline. Their bloodline into the creation of new music....Blues, "Rock N' Roll", Jazz, Gospel and to minus all that inventive music from the western culture ....it would be scary to imagine what would have developed instead. I am very thankful they developed this music in America. 

 

So many positives and negatives in music culture and obviously within all walks of life...but more extreme with the emotional side to being a musician and struggling for that serious life. I believe that an ego should shut itself down every so often  like hitting a switch. Musicians who struggle with their lack of talent to master something new...yet are talented enough to be great writers often become discouraged over themselves and desire to be egotistical for power. A great player who is humble will struggle with a difficult piece of music and not think of themselves and only focus on the art. I'm not sure why great musicians have ego's. There is a personal history of composers centuries ago who were put under extreme pressure to write the perfect composition. They seem to have a different upbringing where the evidence of ego driven ideas begin at age 13. One kid who is multi talented tells the other kid (who is quite talented at only one particular instrument)....that he must be a moron because he does not know what a rudiment is. Every child or teenager travels through the identity crisis ...but one day they will be sitting in music college hearing some devoted musician playing the most inferior pieces in the world. They either have to wake up then and realize that the possibilities are endless in music and that the smart thing to do would be to remain humble or become a nasty ego inflated baby. Which is how a lot of great musicians turn out because their parents were not musicians yet forced a macho attitude upon them that doesn't work well in the development of an instrument.

You already have hours of hard devotion on an instrument.....letting your ego stand in the way is the last thing on earth you want.  Parents will force the wrong kind of encouragment or support to the child. My dog is better than your dog or my son can pitch a baseball finer than yours. Then the kid is excepted into music college at 18 and some respected music professor teaches him a thing or 2 about music and about what dedicated musicians define as practices. Now the kid thinks to himself...."Why was my father teaching me all this nonsense?"  Why do that to your kid? Why not tell them the truth in the beginning and then prepare them for the trials in music college Parents do not want their children to lack confidence yet their macho method of raising them will shatter into pieces when their child is faced with the realization that he/she must study more..... and that alone is quite a larger blow to a full blown ego well developed at age 18 than any honest step in life they could have taken to prevent the nightmare itself.     

 

If I care enough about a band to pay the bucks to see them in concert, chances are I own at least all of their studio albums at least. I'm by no means a collector of even my favorite bands. I don't own all the special editions, special live albums, singles w/an unreleased B-side, etc unless I find it for cheap, but I'll have all of their 'standard' releases almost guaranteed.

 

Therefore, I almost never buy cd's at concerts. I'd bet alot more are like me, too.

I guess I was thinking of a different kind of gig, the kind of cellar club with a couple of bands, each with one or two indie releases, each scaring up 20 or so mates and hoping that their leafleting of the area and hopefully the noise on the street outside will entice in some extra punters, as might the happy hour bar prices.  I'm really talking the long-tail end of the business not the 1000 seat city venue tour with trucks and a tour bus. But where you can have a beer with the bass player and lead vocalist...

I go to quite a few of these type of gig, bands with tiny followings who have outlaid several grand of personal money to get their music recorded, who might get some positive noise on sites like this and are trying to get heard.

And as far as I can tell much of the prog scene is exactly like I describe.

 

TS if you were out in the boondocks where the only music played was country or greatest hits music

CDs were a  poor substitute for the joy of a double gate-fold sleeve anyway and I don't really miss them.

LPs were great until they scratched or had a poor quality or filler track that you couldn't easily ignore.

I like the artwork and I like the physical product that an artist delivers.

The effort the band put into creating a product needs to be acknowledged, one feels.

I know how difficult it is to create something like that, the time it takes and nights lost fearing about your business future...so why would you want just collection of O's and 1' bleeping on your laptop, when you can have a glorious colour booklet to peruse, while you spin the CD?

Sure, by all means...rip to your computer or I-monkey (whatever)...but I insist on lossless copying or I reject it out of hand.
Hell, I even get annoyed about having to share 320kps, 44'100 Hz MP3's with people as a means of promo.
I miss the older days for sending a CD in a slipcase...but convenience and money rule now.

 

For a band in the position we are in, we NEED sales or we get dropped, simple as that....and thus, here is a my argument AGAINST piracy and such.
If you buy the MP3's, then great...cheers, you're a pal.
If not, then you're kind of scummy really.

It is theft and there isn't any other way to argue the case.
I discuss this subject quite a lot with people I meet on the road and it's always interesting to hear poeple opinions.

The fact the industry took SOOOOOO long to embrace the 'digital age' is their own fault and as such, a lot of labels have gone down the drain or 're-structured'.

 

I could go on for hours about this subject...but alas...it's hometime from work and I have a bottle of beer to consume.

 

I dunno, I'm not an industry whiz, but i do miss the Album/CD art that seems to be faing away.