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Guldbamsen View Drop Down
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Points: 23104 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 01 2015 at 12:12
I'm very impressed by the way you always seem to take a lot of the same stuff that I've been mulling over and turn into something clear and concise. It's uncanny really.
The manner in which you've presented this helps along my jumbled scatter-brain to comprehend what it's actually been brewing over the past year or two. Thank you Doctor Phil. I feel much better now.
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 01 2015 at 10:51
Part The Fourth - Every Day Another Hair Turns Grey.

[note: this post was originally penned as a response to Dave Francis's 'When will the album format disappear' thread, but I decided that it had moved far too off-topic to post there]

The problem with [album sales today] is the pool contains more or less the same volume, as the surface area gets greater the depth gets shallower. As I have said before, the number of albums (and that includes a selection of random tracks) that people buy hasn't changed a great deal but the choice has increased so each one sells fewer than it would have done in the past. Compound this with the situation where you don't have to buy the whole album and the total earnings per album drops off considerably. Back in the day selling 20,000 copies would be thought of as a failure, today it is seen as roaring success.

At present, I cannot see a way of combating this since it is a natural consequence of how music is made available through the internet. Supply has exceeded demand simply because more people can release their music into the world easier and more cheaply than ever before. We cannot apply the old business models because the game has changed and new models are required, the old strategies just don't work anymore. 

The challenge is not how to make money in this market, because that part of the business model hasn't changed at all, it is the same as it always was - produce something that appeals to the widest possible audience and market it extensively. The challenge is how to finance those niche albums that sell in low volumes, and this has to be tempered with the reality that most of those albums will never make a profit. That latter point is not something new or unique to the modern era either, it too has always been that way. The difference now is the low selling artist does not get his production costs paid for by a record label from the profits of their higher selling artists. Now the artist funds his own production and most can never recoup those costs.

So at present, there are two clear winners in this - the music buying public who have a wealth of music to choose from, and the middle-men who cream off a fixed percentage of each sale. Neither of these has any incentive (or inclination) to change, especially the middle-men (i.e., soundcloud and bandcamp) who are in a win-win situation, it makes no difference to them whether one artist sells a million copies or a million artists sell one copy apiece, the net profit is the same. The same is true with selling one track from ten different albums or ten different tracks from one album - either way works for bandcamp just as it does for iTunes.

This situation is as grim as it first appears. It's pretty dire if you intend to make a living out of making 3-track 80-minute albums, but at the risk of repeating myself, this is nothing new. What was not so long ago hailed as being a liberation of music and musicians alike has not heralded a golden age utopia, nor has it levelled the playing field or decreased the gap between unsigned amateur and the signed professional.

Perhaps the solution lies in creating ad hoc cartels of like-minded artists who can pool their resources and thus lessen the individual financial burden. Something akin to the split-albums of yore where two different artists would share the manufacturing costs of a CD or vinyl, or the musician's collectives who would embark on joint-venture marketing and touring campaigns. [Remembering that the success of Charisma artists in the early 1970s was as much due to the Charisma bandwagon tours as it was to Stratton-Smith's advertising budget]

Of course that ad hoc (or otherwise) cartel would operate like a record label, fulfilling many of the functions that a record label would have provided to a signed artist (which brings us full-circle to the OP of this Blog 11 pages hence), and there are many who still regard the "Record Label" and the music industry in general as being an unnecessary evil that we can do without.


Edited by Dean - February 01 2015 at 12:50
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Points: 8856 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 15 2014 at 13:45
Originally posted by leonalvarado leonalvarado wrote:

This is quite an interesting thread. There seem to be several comments directed towards unsigned-bands as being mediocre or so bad that no labels would sign them. I'll like to give my personal view on that very point. I won't disagree with the fact that recording music today is much more accessible than ever. This in turn, causes for a lot of people that perhaps shouldn't be recording music, to be recording music. The same goes for illustration, graphic design and photography. Just because the price of admission has gotten cheaper doesn't mean that the show is for everyone.

Having said all that, I have had some experiences with record labels on various levels (and even through different departments). The labels do provide with very useful resources like proper promotion (and hence better exposure), distribution and an overall respected image (most of the times). A good example of something labels are better than the bands they represent have to do with the quality of the packaging. Many artists who used to be with a major label but now release their own albums suffer from bad packaging. Bands that once had great record covers have now photographs that look as if they were taken with an old mobile phone. Or perhaps they use an illustration done with the best skills an eight-grader could muster. They are out there, I've seen many of them. Having a bad package doesn't constitute having bad music inside of it but, it does make it harder for people to perceive it in a positive manner, much less listening to the album itself. The bands that I'm talking about (I won't mention any names because I know most of these people personally), rely on their name recognition so they can still manage to sell some records here and there. But if you compare the look of the sleeves form the past with their current ones, you get the sense that something drastic has happened to their income so therefore they can't afford a real album cover (and you'll be right because without the money from a major label behind it, the artist is forced to pay for the cost of the artwork out of their own pockets).

Another advantage of having a major label working with an artist is their ability to pair the artist with the right producer. Big name producers work with big labels and so on. But it is not all peachy regarding the dealings with a record label. First, you end up giving lots of creative control and then many costs associated with the project. Depending on the deal, you most likely end up owning nothing but a royalty fee from the recording which is a very small percentage from sales. The hotels, limos and arranged parties are all part of the persona that the label pushes upon you. They will give you a false sense of wealth based on their projected numbers. They may even give you a ridiculous advance on royalties that makes you feel like you have made it (but keep in mind that it is an advance which works more or less like a loan using the potential sales of your album as collateral). What if their projections are wrong and the album doesn't sell as much as they expected to? That's when things can go very bad very quickly. Before you know it, you are now indebted to the label without even the option to record somewhere else under your name (unless you square off the debt plus purchase the remainder inventory of unsold records plus the cost of warehousing them). Furthermore, the recording industry is much like many other high-exposure industries. For each signed act that makes it, there are thousands that fail.

If you are planning to tour the album, then the record label and the management company make it their responsibility to put you in the best possible light. Your continued success is their continued success. After all, concerts make the bulk of the money for the artist which will keep them satisfied and away from trying to get a bigger percentage from record sales. Not all the dealings with major record labels are "satanic" though. If you are a well-stablished name that have already past the peak of your sales, the record label would usually be the one behind the re-mastering of your catalogue, special reissues, "best of", etc. They want to keep your music relevant so that they can sell more of it and that usually helps you with some extra income, keeping your name around and that sort of thing.

But, if you are the little unknown man, none of the major label stuff will be much benefit to you. The label takes a gamble when signing a new act but , the act itself is the one that takes the greater gamble because the consequences of not making it could be demoralising at least and financially catastrophic at worst. So, unless your cup of tea is ultra-commercial music, a big label will not be doing you many favours. I know a few groups that had to disband because at the end of it, they couldn't even perform under their original name (due to the contract with the label). In short, they couldn't even have the opportunity to come up with a solution to make the money that they owed the label back.

The financial situation is one of the reasons why many artists (and I do mean artists) are choosing to by-pass a major label. On top of that, there are many pending lawsuits going on as I write this, regarding the ownership of the intellectual property of the music itself. The labels claim that because they forked over the initial cost of the recordings, manufacturing and distribution, they should be entitled to profit on the product forever (they own most of the music out there). The artists are saying that after 35 years, a label has made more than enough on the music and therefore the copyrights should revert to them according to a provision in the United States copyright law. Of course, the labels are battling this one out.

When your album is released through a record label, the gross receipt gets "chunked" into various payments from which a smaller portion belongs to you. Usually your take is between ten cents and two dollars per unit. When you self-release an album through something like CDBaby, you make anywhere between $8 and $12 bucks per unit depending on how you cost your record. That's a huge difference! Of course, self-promoting is not for the average folk. It takes lots of work and looking for inventive ways to spread the word, etc. Not an easy thing.

So, regarding the quality of the music being released independently. Some of it is bad and some of it is brilliant. Most musicians would opt to go this way if it wouldn't being for the promotional benefits that labels offer. Does it have to be amateurish because it is not on a major label? I don't think so. I got into recording music through the back door, sorto of speak. I used to do album covers for labels such as Atlantic records. I also have done may touring materials for big-time promoters like Live Nation as well as directly through the bands themselves (Jethro Tull for example, and many more). So when I decided to make my own music, I already had the graphic background to handle the packaging and the ancillary materials (shirts, posters, advertisements, etc). Seeking the best bang for my money, I researched and came up with the necessary people that I wanted to help me complete my project. People like Ty Tabor (founding member and guitarrist for King's X), Bill Bruford (Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, Earthworks), John Goodsall (Brand X, Fire Merchants, Atomic Rooster), Billy Sherwood (Yes, CIRCA), Andy Walter (worked with Paul McCartney, Roxy Music) and Tony Cousins (worked with Genesis, Peter Gabriel). I also worked with Abbey Road Studios and Metropolis Mastering (both in the UK) as well as Alien Bean Studios (US). As a matter of fact , the least known person in my albums is me. But that doesn't mean that I didn't try to produce a substandard product. I tried to do the best I could using the limited resources that I had. I think overall I did pretty good and hopefully I'll get to keep on doing it.

The biggest problem seems to be how to make yourself visible in today's sea of new music. I think the solution is in word-of-mouth. Just tell your friends whenever you hear a band you like that you never heard before. What can be the worst that can happen? More music you would like?

For those who may be interested, here are some links to my stuff:
As a guy who's considering self-releasing, I found this super helpful. Just curious, do you have any insight into larger independent labels like 4AD or Merge? Are those only made out to be better situations or are they truly a better situation?
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Points: 262 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 15 2014 at 13:31
I don't want this to spiral into a "What is Prog" debate so I'm going to try to tread carefully here.
 
Progressive-ness has always been quite a bit of a 'sliding scale' and in the ear of the beholder. 
 
But in general, in a world where big music labels served as gatekeepers to production, distribution, and promotion, and the ability to fit into one of a handful of pre-defined genre markets was important for visibility and radio promotion, there were business pressures forming a kind of normative box from which artists sometimes strayed far enough to be considered boldly creative in some manner or form.  A certain type of music fan was delighted to discover these albums and bands whenever and however they managed to break their way into the distribution process.  (Of course, during prog's glory days, it became a niche market of its own.)  But in many respects, the bar for what many casual rock fans would consider artsy or semi-proggie was vastly different than it is today.  Does Alan Parsons even seem proggie at all to anyone today?  Electronic symphonic concept-based beautifully crafted, produced and mastered easy going pop-rock music seemed to stand out at the time as 'artsy'. 
 
In other words, in a world where there seems to be a lot of pressure for most bands to fit into one of a few cookie-cutter molds, even modest deviations from that mold were more noticable.
 
Today's music scene is so very different.  There is a plethora of opportunities for artists and hobbyists alike to create and distribute music independent of any such normative pressures.  Production costs are low enought for people to almost release an album on a whim!  There is so much sub-sub genre hybrid cross-pollination now that nothing is very shocking stylistically.  The mere fact that something is unusual or different is no longer refreshing.  It is to a large extent the normal state of affairs.  Bands that would have been an exciting discovery for me in 1986 are rather 'ho hum' to me today because I am no longer sailing on a sea of conformity in search of precious coves of independence...  Furthermore, today's young music listgeners have no recollection of those old days when creative or ambitious rock was unusual or 'progressive'.
 
To some extent, the democratization of the music business has integrated certain elements of 'prog' (to varying degrees) into increasingly muddied waters of varied sub-sub-sub genres.  The most creative elements of progressive rock have been untethered from 'Prog' and are now free to thrive or to be neglected anywhere and everywhere in musical cyberspace.  Prog still exists - of course - but in many respects as a descriptor referencing the classic Progrock of old and modern music specifically influenced by that era. 
 
But today's rock music fans no longer need to think in terms of 'progressive' or not.  There is no 'big brother' trying to squeeze the creative box smaller and smaller.  The oppresive flood waters are not those of conformity.  The challenge is now an impersonal tidal wave of unregulated production.  Even when I'm not feeling overwhelmed by the flood of product, I still kind of feel like I am paddling a tiny boat across an intimidating ocean of variance - variance in style, variance in form, variance in how much effort is put into making the music, variance in level of talent playing instruments, variance in level of talent producing and mastering music. 
 
And so new gatekeepers of music recommendation add value.  They sift through mass quantities of music and make recommendations to overwhelmed listeners.  They refer me to the bandcamps of the world.  I don't just randomly wander around SoundCloud.  Friends and websites and magazines send me to specific artists with music on SoundCloud.
 
It isn't really such a bad state of affairs.  Just a very different one.  One in which many artists are so free to be creative that they no longer even need to think in terms of 'prog' or 'not prog'...  Hence the "decline" in Prog Festivals. 
 
When Rush pleaded to convince themselves that 'all this machinery making modern music can still be open hearted - not so coldly charted it's really just a question of your honesty...", they were speaking of the conflict between commercial pressures and artistic integrity.
 
Today, we have no shortage of musical artists with the freedom and the willingness to proudly wear their open hearts on their proverbial sleeves.  We just have an overabundance of product on the market. 
 
Getting noticed isn't easy?  Who said promoting your music would be easy?  It wasn't easy in 1964, 1975, 1984 or 1994.  It is actually comparatively easier in 2014 - but even if it isn't, I far prefer the overabundance of free choice to the oppression of limited options from days gone by.
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Points: 9869 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 15 2014 at 09:35
Hmmm...I just thought of posting here because I just completed a transaction to buy the digital download of a jazz quintet...through bandcamp, which you discussed here IIRC.  How did I know it was worth checking out and paying up for (for me)?  Because Popmatters had done a best of 2012 list (yeah, I am late Ouch) where they included an album of this group.  By combining with bandcamp, the label could directly sell me the digital download.  Otherwise, I am forced to go for Itunes if digital is the only option, which I can't add to all the devices where I store or play my music and therefore don't like.  I would of course prefer the CD but with overseas shipping costs, it's too much, especially if I can get a 320 kbps rip and am not an audiophile either.  

So I think bandcamp can have a role to play in facilitating e-commerce of music products IF there are good information aggregators and reviewers.  Popmatters did a good job of their best of list by writing fairly informative descriptions for every album (including, of the artist in general) and also providing a youtube sample so that listeners could decide if the selection piqued them.  I would not be able to buy this music otherwise (or find it very difficult) due to geographic constraints.  These new internet tools can indeed allow listeners from across the world instead of just the location...if media too adapt appropriately.  We'll ultimately need to go back to a bunch of websites that are held to be fairly reliable in alerting us to new good music (just as people once relied on magazine/newspaper reviews). There's no point in pretending all websites are sh*t and we have to do all the sifting ourselves, that's virtually impossible with the amount of music being made available.


Edited by rogerthat - March 15 2014 at 10:35
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Points: 23104 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 16 2014 at 10:09
Very nice post DeanClap

Would you believe that this is the first time I've ever stumbled over this blog of yours? (Shame on me. I am looking forward to reading it back though)

The issues you address are very poignant and furthermore highly important seen from the viewpoint of this site. Over the last couple of years PA has slowly moved towards being a listings site such as Discogs much credited to a certain few who believe every new and old bandcamp artists with the progressive tag are deserving of a spot on here. Roughly 1 percent of these artists ever receive reviews, and much of the time it's either from the result of the bands themselves doing the PR. And then most of the time it'll be the local fan based army doing the reviews: "5 Stars! A masterpiece of progressive rock - rivalling the earthshaking power of Foxtrot and Close to the Edge alike!"Ermm
I know I am diverting this subject into the area of PA, but for the time being I think it is a very real problem. 

I do however believe there is quality to be found out there, but the times I've come across brilliance in the deep and murky bandcamp jungle, it has been related to acts who's presence has been noted in other areas of the internet. Quality and that ever so elusive gift of having something to say - something interesting to say even - gets diluted in this jungle that never ends and in the end has a strange way of overshadowing the small glimpses of light that actually are there in need of our ears and hearts. 


Edited by Guldbamsen - February 16 2014 at 10:21
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 16 2014 at 08:56
Part the Third - The Concrete and The Clay...

Prompted by a recent Facebook status update by John Fortuna (jplanet) where he announced that Shadow Circus will cease to be a live band, I've bumped this Blog after a three year hiatus to reflect on some of my doomsayer predictions made in this thread and to (perhaps) rekindle this debate in light of some of the comments made by John on FB. It's not my intention to comment on anything John said on FB, that's for FB and that particular discussion is best conducted there where we can give him our full support and encouragement for whatever direction he decides SC should take.

In the intervening period since the last chapter (Part 2 - There Goes My Everything) one of my predictions came painfully true for me - when the FBI closed down MegaUpload my entire back-catalogue of self-released albums disappeared from the internet without warning. (Waht? 11 pages in and you've only just twigged that this whole Blog is nothing more than a cheap plug for The Cacophony Of Light???). This was eventually rectified by uploading everything to MediaFire, and for the moment that is still available. Soon after that the DynDNS link to my CoL website broke, and I've neither had the will nor motivation to fix it. But this emphasises the point I was making on Part 2: nothing on the Internet is permanent. Whether that is at the whim of the service provider, the Feds or the artist themselves, the "consumer" cannot rely on something that was here yesterday being here today, or something that is here today will be here tomorrow... Tempora Mutantur. 

For me this was no great loss - The Cacophony of Light was a short-lived phony *band*, (the pun was there in the name for all to see), a momentary diversion, a table-top hobby; there was never any intention (or desire) to play live, or sell albums, or make money, or be famous for fifteen people; it was initially set up as a learning aid to teach me how to record and produce real music on a budget after trying (and failing) to secure a recording contract for a real band, and to that end it served its purpose: we recorded a real album with real musicians and people liked it; I am rightly proud of my small contribution because with my dabbling in the world of self-recording and self-releasing we managed to produce something to be proud of:

File:Seasons end failing light cover1.jpg
(my original artwork for the demo release of The Failing Light by Season's End).

Not that the Cacophony of Light was ever a joke, it was an earnest endeavour, the music produced was real original music by any definition of the word, I just never took it seriously, never promoted it and never had any ambition for it other than to see if making music and producing albums was in anyway difficult or beyond my capabilities. If people happened to like it, all the better for making it, but that was always a secondary consideration. Anyways... that's all water under the proverbial bridge, making original music isn't difficult, recording albums is not difficult and with the advent of the Internet, making it available for all to hear is arse-numbingly simple. The hard part is all the nonsense I've been harping on about in this Blog (and in my earlier Live Prog Rock Is Dying Blog) - getting it noticed.

Something else that has blossomed since I started this Blog four years ago is Bandcamp (and SoundCloud). I've posted at length in other threads about Bandcamp and never in a positive way, to the extent that some would believe that I see it as some kind of pariah of the music business. And here misunderstanding runs rife, with people seeing this as "a good thing": that Bandcamp is not part of the music business and this signals a sea-change for the artists and consumers alike, where "musical freedom" and "artistic control" rules and that in itself marks the end of everything that is bad about the industry. But I suspect (nay predict) that is so very wrong and even go as far as to say it is misguided optimism wishful thinking. What we see in Bandcamp is everything I ranted about in Part 1: all it has done is reduced some of the effort (and responsibility) in self-releasing an album. In making trivially simple something that wasn't particularly difficult to begin with all it has achieved is a glorified mess, and one driven by one simple goal - to make money from the artists who use the "service". Love it or loath it, Bandcamp is part of the music business, it is as much a part of that nefarious industry as EMI or Sony or the plethora of Indie labels, just with considerably less idealism (and zero quality assurance). This doesn't make Bandcamp inherently bad, it is merely a resource, just as Mediafire or iTunes and Amazon's CreateSpace are just a part of the artist's toolbox of toys to get their product into the market-place, one that should be used wisely and - dare I say it? - responsibly.

In Prog Rock we have a niche product. The market for that product is small and very selective, casting the net wider to encompass a wider field of artists does not help the cause, it does not boost the recognition of those who would be a fish that swims in the pool of Prog Rock, it merely dilutes the waters (enough of the pond metaphors methinks). Contrary to popular belief, we are not living through a resurgence of this genre we love so much, the interest in the genre remains unchanged in recent years (as we can see by the web-traffic to the PA and the number of active users on the Forum); the number of Prog festivals is dropping, the attendance at Prog gigs is no better now than it was ten, fifteen years ago - these are not indicators for a resurgence in Prog Rock regardless of how many bands and artists tag themselves as "Progressive" on Bandcamp. 

What we have is market saturation, there is more product than people to buy it ... even if the product is free-issued we have reached the point where it is just as difficult to give something away as it is to sell it .... it is now physically impossible for any one person to listen to every so-called Prog album that is put out there. Now more than ever it is how well a album is promoted that determines its popularity, and that puts us back into the world of the PR guys of the record labels that we so despise, except now the artists themselves have to dirty their hands in the mire. 



Edited by Dean - February 16 2014 at 09:00
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This is quite an interesting thread. There seem to be several comments directed towards unsigned-bands as being mediocre or so bad that no labels would sign them. I'll like to give my personal view on that very point. I won't disagree with the fact that recording music today is much more accessible than ever. This in turn, causes for a lot of people that perhaps shouldn't be recording music, to be recording music. The same goes for illustration, graphic design and photography. Just because the price of admission has gotten cheaper doesn't mean that the show is for everyone.

Having said all that, I have had some experiences with record labels on various levels (and even through different departments). The labels do provide with very useful resources like proper promotion (and hence better exposure), distribution and an overall respected image (most of the times). A good example of something labels are better than the bands they represent have to do with the quality of the packaging. Many artists who used to be with a major label but now release their own albums suffer from bad packaging. Bands that once had great record covers have now photographs that look as if they were taken with an old mobile phone. Or perhaps they use an illustration done with the best skills an eight-grader could muster. They are out there, I've seen many of them. Having a bad package doesn't constitute having bad music inside of it but, it does make it harder for people to perceive it in a positive manner, much less listening to the album itself. The bands that I'm talking about (I won't mention any names because I know most of these people personally), rely on their name recognition so they can still manage to sell some records here and there. But if you compare the look of the sleeves form the past with their current ones, you get the sense that something drastic has happened to their income so therefore they can't afford a real album cover (and you'll be right because without the money from a major label behind it, the artist is forced to pay for the cost of the artwork out of their own pockets).

Another advantage of having a major label working with an artist is their ability to pair the artist with the right producer. Big name producers work with big labels and so on. But it is not all peachy regarding the dealings with a record label. First, you end up giving lots of creative control and then many costs associated with the project. Depending on the deal, you most likely end up owning nothing but a royalty fee from the recording which is a very small percentage from sales. The hotels, limos and arranged parties are all part of the persona that the label pushes upon you. They will give you a false sense of wealth based on their projected numbers. They may even give you a ridiculous advance on royalties that makes you feel like you have made it (but keep in mind that it is an advance which works more or less like a loan using the potential sales of your album as collateral). What if their projections are wrong and the album doesn't sell as much as they expected to? That's when things can go very bad very quickly. Before you know it, you are now indebted to the label without even the option to record somewhere else under your name (unless you square off the debt plus purchase the remainder inventory of unsold records plus the cost of warehousing them). Furthermore, the recording industry is much like many other high-exposure industries. For each signed act that makes it, there are thousands that fail.

If you are planning to tour the album, then the record label and the management company make it their responsibility to put you in the best possible light. Your continued success is their continued success. After all, concerts make the bulk of the money for the artist which will keep them satisfied and away from trying to get a bigger percentage from record sales. Not all the dealings with major record labels are "satanic" though. If you are a well-stablished name that have already past the peak of your sales, the record label would usually be the one behind the re-mastering of your catalogue, special reissues, "best of", etc. They want to keep your music relevant so that they can sell more of it and that usually helps you with some extra income, keeping your name around and that sort of thing.

But, if you are the little unknown man, none of the major label stuff will be much benefit to you. The label takes a gamble when signing a new act but , the act itself is the one that takes the greater gamble because the consequences of not making it could be demoralising at least and financially catastrophic at worst. So, unless your cup of tea is ultra-commercial music, a big label will not be doing you many favours. I know a few groups that had to disband because at the end of it, they couldn't even perform under their original name (due to the contract with the label). In short, they couldn't even have the opportunity to come up with a solution to make the money that they owed the label back.

The financial situation is one of the reasons why many artists (and I do mean artists) are choosing to by-pass a major label. On top of that, there are many pending lawsuits going on as I write this, regarding the ownership of the intellectual property of the music itself. The labels claim that because they forked over the initial cost of the recordings, manufacturing and distribution, they should be entitled to profit on the product forever (they own most of the music out there). The artists are saying that after 35 years, a label has made more than enough on the music and therefore the copyrights should revert to them according to a provision in the United States copyright law. Of course, the labels are battling this one out.

When your album is released through a record label, the gross receipt gets "chunked" into various payments from which a smaller portion belongs to you. Usually your take is between ten cents and two dollars per unit. When you self-release an album through something like CDBaby, you make anywhere between $8 and $12 bucks per unit depending on how you cost your record. That's a huge difference! Of course, self-promoting is not for the average folk. It takes lots of work and looking for inventive ways to spread the word, etc. Not an easy thing.

So, regarding the quality of the music being released independently. Some of it is bad and some of it is brilliant. Most musicians would opt to go this way if it wouldn't being for the promotional benefits that labels offer. Does it have to be amateurish because it is not on a major label? I don't think so. I got into recording music through the back door, sorto of speak. I used to do album covers for labels such as Atlantic records. I also have done may touring materials for big-time promoters like Live Nation as well as directly through the bands themselves (Jethro Tull for example, and many more). So when I decided to make my own music, I already had the graphic background to handle the packaging and the ancillary materials (shirts, posters, advertisements, etc). Seeking the best bang for my money, I researched and came up with the necessary people that I wanted to help me complete my project. People like Ty Tabor (founding member and guitarrist for King's X), Bill Bruford (Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, Earthworks), John Goodsall (Brand X, Fire Merchants, Atomic Rooster), Billy Sherwood (Yes, CIRCA), Andy Walter (worked with Paul McCartney, Roxy Music) and Tony Cousins (worked with Genesis, Peter Gabriel). I also worked with Abbey Road Studios and Metropolis Mastering (both in the UK) as well as Alien Bean Studios (US). As a matter of fact , the least known person in my albums is me. But that doesn't mean that I didn't try to produce a substandard product. I tried to do the best I could using the limited resources that I had. I think overall I did pretty good and hopefully I'll get to keep on doing it.

The biggest problem seems to be how to make yourself visible in today's sea of new music. I think the solution is in word-of-mouth. Just tell your friends whenever you hear a band you like that you never heard before. What can be the worst that can happen? More music you would like?

For those who may be interested, here are some links to my stuff:
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Points: 262 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 09 2011 at 16:58

<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 hope nothing I wrote sounded like a wholesale indictment of the independent artist. 
 
I look forward to checking out your music when I have time to give it my undivided attention. 
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 09 2011 at 16:41
Originally posted by GrayMortuary 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.
 
We are in an era of a renaissance in music production and distribution, this should be a period of change and progression away from the restrictions and constraints of the big labels without sacrificing the integrity and value of what is being produced.
 
So yes, I too probably have more than half of my recent purchases from self-released artists, and all of those I have paid for, or donated to, because I believe in the products, the artists and the methods they use, and without an audience, and without a platform to annouce their arrival and without a body of internet fans to endorse and praise them, they might just as well record their music onto a single C90 cassette, seal it in a shoe box with duct tape and hide it in the back of the wardrobe in their spare bedroom for all the good it will do.
 
btw my computer speakers are 10" since I stream my PC through my hi-fi when listening to music, but hey-ho.
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Hi Gray!  It is nice to see Dean's blog thread still kicking up a little reactionary dust even after all this time.  It certainly pulled me in the first time I read it - and I see it has proven a bit provocative for you too!
 
I've now come to the conclusion that it was originally written from a viewpoint of exhausted disillusionment the likes of which typically befalls only individuals who review albums or films as a vocation. 
 
Imagine a scenario in which, despite having already recently reviewed hundreds of CD's, you glance over at an ever-growing tower of jewel cases in your "to do" stack at your work-desk.  (I know, most press kits are digital these days but I don't think that was as much the case back when Dean originally wrote the post...)
 
If I'm correct, his frustration was probably exacerbated by a nagging suspicion that in many cases, he could arguably have been investing more substantive time and effort into the process of reviewing some of these CD's than the bands had invested in the creation of a professional product.  While I don't think that is quite accurate, I can certainly see how one could get that feeling...) 
 
With monetary and qualitative barriers to self-released entry to the marketplace all but obliterated, many artists rush to market with at least some aspect of their "album" less carefully crafted than ever before.  Composers are not always the best performers.  Neither of them are the best visual artists, none of which are the best marketers and packagers.  Furthermore, considering that objectively distancing oneself from your own work is a notoriously difficult undertaking, is it really any surprise that many self-released artists overlook or even neglect at least some aspect of the "entire product package"?
 
There are - of course - tremendous benefits to having broken down conventional barriers to the release of a new album.  We now have a lot more choices available to us at much lower prices than ever before.  Personally, I would never want to go back to the days of fewer gatekeepers serving only the largest target markets. 
 
I understand that the typical prog-entries bore you.  Here are a few questions designed to test whether you and Dean may - in fact - have more in common than you had at first suspected...
 
Might it be highly likely that - were you were to undertake the task of reviewing a few hundred randomly selected self-released "prog" CD's - that many of those CD would "bore you to tears"?  Might not some of them seem to fall into the category of "Porcupine Tree clones"?  Might some even strike you as raggedly packaged, poorly mastered, less coherent versions of Porcupine Tree clones?  Is it possible that you might begin to wonder how many of these albums had been mixed on 2 inch computer speakers?  
 
Sorry to sound so negative.  I actually love the new independent music marketplace.  I'm just "seeing both sides" of the coin - so to speak.
 
Mark Stephens


Edited by progpositivity - August 09 2011 at 17:16
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Points: 3 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: August 09 2011 at 15:46

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
http://musaphonic.bandcamp.com, http://powerofprog.com/profile/TonyArnold, http://www.myspace.com/graymortuary
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 24 2011 at 20:24
Originally posted by harmonium.ro harmonium.ro wrote:

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.

I don't dislike garage, it's just that I've seen it before so many times over the past 30+ years and frankly it hasn't got that much to offer that can sustain it for that length of time. It's a short lived novelty, which is why every generation has their own garage bands that will be boring and derivative to all the previous generations. However, none of that has anything to do with any comment I have made regarding DIY self-release, so taste is immaterial
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Points: 22989 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 24 2011 at 20:14
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.

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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 24 2011 at 20:01
Originally posted by harmonium.ro harmonium.ro wrote:


As for your comment, I don't see the opposition. I don't think a garage band's MySpace/Bandcamp/Facebook is any less "quality" than a prog band's. Or their discs. Actually most prog CDs I usually see in music shops are conventional jewel-cases with boring booklets; I'd rather have a more DIY approach/ethos instead of that. 

I see I failed to express the point that this blog is trying to convey once again. Ouch I don't know how I can get the thoughts in my head out onto the page in a way that I can be understood more clearly.
 
Anyway,
 
The quality of a generic web page is the quality of a generic web page, following on from the Facebook template even MySpace now has become homogenised generic background radiation such that all band pages look the same so they fit in with the corporate image of whoever owns MySpace/Bandcamp/Facebook this week. Whatever MySpace/Bandcamp/Facebook is now-a-days is no longer in the creative domain of the artist and the content of the page is merely an excuse to sell advertising space to some other corporate selling machine so they can peddle their wares to you.
 
DIY Is good, but it does not have to be lazy half-arsed generic stereotypical crap - every single disc sleeve in that video was more boring and more conventional than any shop-bought Prog CD because they required zero thought and zero effort to make them. They conformed to a well-trodden stereotype of what a punk sleeve should look like and they could have been produced at anytime in the past 30 years for any one of a million punk bands across the globe. Garage and Punk as music, as an image and as an art-form became DIY-by-numbers 30 years ago and nothing has changed and nothing is new.
 


Edited by Dean - May 24 2011 at 20:03
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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. 

As for your comment, I don't see the opposition. I don't think a garage band's MySpace/Bandcamp/Facebook is any less "quality" than a prog band's. Or their discs. Actually most prog CDs I usually see in music shops are conventional jewel-cases with boring booklets; I'd rather have a more DIY approach/ethos instead of that. 

I genuinely enjoyed the documentary very much, if I knew that's just me I would have specified where exactly do they start talking about their promotion. LOL
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I am a "like, cynical older people" ... every generation does this crap like it's never been done before, but I must confess this awful mess is such a crashing bore... resurgency. (with apologies to 999).
 
Anyway, an irritating documentary that was 1 hour too long and the brief section on self-release and the internet was the diametric opposite of everything I've been trying to say here, but for garage and punk that's pretty much the entire ethos of what "the scene" is all about so that's hardly surprising. However, my original point some 18 months ago is that this garage style blueprint is not what self-release should be aspiring to when the style of music that self-release artists are trying to promote isn't "garage" - it works for punk and garage bands because the music they are making does not benefit from a more polished and professional approach in the recording, production, packaging or marketing, if anything those would actually be detrimental. For Prog (regardless of subgenre) it does not work - the quality of the product should equal the quality of the content.
 
 
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Points: 22989 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 24 2011 at 11:40
This nice documentary about the (apparently now thriving) "garage" subculture touches the issue of releasing music in the Internet era:



Recommended.
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 27 2011 at 10:13
Originally posted by harmonium.ro harmonium.ro wrote:

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.


Angry
I have no wish to be a doomsayer, but as someone who works in the "technology" industry I tend to look at where things can develop rather than where I would like them to develop. Not that I always get it right - in 1984 I had a letter published in The Guardian predicting the demise of the mouse as a peripheral ... Of course I was right, just 26 years too early LOL. Having said that, with the Internet things can move a lot faster, as the past 12 months since my last post in this Blog has shown, take for instance this post from the New decade, end of the CD? thread:
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by Mr ProgFreak Mr ProgFreak wrote:

Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by harmonium.ro harmonium.ro wrote:

So have you guys decided on the new format (if any)? I need to know if I should keep buying CDs, as I have a few planned purchases ahead. And we're quite ahead in the new decade. 
Hmm. Flipancy and irreverence... I like it, if you can dice up some sarcasm I'll take a kilo.
 
I don't think there will be another hardcopy media to replace CD - solidstate was tried and never caught on - it's going to be download and stream - local "storage" will be much like the Kindle model - temporary licence only and managed by the vendor not the buyer. The big push for *cloud* computing (or the Internet as I still like to call it) is heading everyone down this path whether we want it or not - we will dumbly handover control of our data to one of the three or four major megacorps that own the software we will need to listen to it and the concept of "owning" copies of any album or film will be but a memory.

Currently the music format of choice remains to be mp3 ... without any digital rights management. I think we'll see a similar change for ebooks, eventually.


I don't think so - various ebook and ereader formats have been around for many years, yet it is the Kindle and its somewhat primative HTML format that is dominating. There is no impetuous for ebooks to go the way of mp3s - it is in neither the publishers nor the retailers interest to allow it to happen, which is why the Amazon model is so attractive to them.
 
It is not so much the format that has "won" but the delivery system and I predict that music delivery will follow that. By limiting the transfer of files from a controlled source to a controlled receptor all DRM is unnecessary. The majority of music-buyers (who are technologically illiterate) will receive their music from Amazon or ITunes direct to their wifi music player, (or *cloud bubble* or whatever they'll call your remote storage facility) then stream that locally by wifi, 3G or bluetooth to where ever they want to hear it, be that their hi-fi, pc, portable mp3 player, car-head unit or smart-phone. Since the supplier will own and control the software on the receptor it will not be possible to copy this file without hacking into the stream, but without a means of playback for that hacked data there wouldn't be much point anyway. Of course this won't deter the determined, but the megacorps don't need to - all they need to deter is the masses.
 
The technology of this system is already here, and the "mentality" to adopt it is already with us. The speed at which the wide-eyed public is willing to accept a piece of hardware with no external I/O is bewildering, and the headlong rush to *the cloud* will be equally as stagering once that killer App that renders *the cloud* as indispensible has been produced/invented/discovered. By the time people realise they don't actually own anything they've paid for it will be too late.
Quite where this leaves the budding musician who self-releases their own music I'm not wholly certain. A colloquialism that rhymes with "lucked" springs to mind because as the Internet heads ever commercially oriented, places where you can deposit your mp3's for free will shrink as they become blocked or subscription only sites. Rebranding of The Internet as *The Cloud* is not a good move in my opinion because eventhough the content may be still present, its means of access and delivery is not controlled by the user. That is a strong contender for the killer-App I mentioned above, once the current method of downloading (ftp) is removed (they use the euphemism "deprecated") by the people who control the OS (Microsoft & Apple) - and I believe that is "when" not "if" - then free access to free downloads on free storage will be impossible.
 
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Points: 22989 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 27 2011 at 09:19
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.


Angry
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