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Meltdowner 
Special Collaborator 
Honorary Collaborator Joined: June 25 2013 Location: Portugal Status: Offline Points: 10232 |
 Posted: October 02 2014 at 12:44 |
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There are some record stores that sell prog in Lisbon and Porto (not FNAC's definitely) but the money I would spend to drive there, I can buy 7/8 albums online
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: October 02 2014 at 14:06 |
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exactly.
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Windhawk
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: December 28 2006 Location: Norway Status: Offline Points: 11401 |
Posted: October 02 2014 at 16:02 |
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I went looking for a set of official numbers that supports the claims of piracy affecting sales and didn't find the numbers I expected. Hence the question - are there other factors involved that will explain why the Netherlands doesn't have lower sales of music as a free for all download nation - when compared to similar nations? As for the numbers being used in US Dollars, that is a choice by the IFPI. It is also a report, not a study. The edition I have looked at covers the years 2007-2011, but some key stats are for 2011 only. The number of illegal downloads in total and for each country are data I have yet to see accurate, documented stats about. Unknown waters as far as I'm concerned, and not a subject I want to speculate on. Looking at the total reported sales of recorded music in the three nations I selected from 2007-2011, the official numbers from IFPI are as follows (in millions of US dollars): Netherlands: 285 - 272 - 279 - 273 - 240 Sweden: 156 - 145 - 162 - 150 - 155 Belgium: 189 - 179 - 167 - 156 - 140 Roughly converted into spend per citizen in US dollars: Netherlands: 17 - 16 - 16 - 16 - 14 Sweden: 16 - 15 - 17 - 16 - 16 Belgium: 17 - 16 - 15 - 14 - 13 Sweden had The Pirate Bay in all those years. Downloading material for personal use was legal in the Netherlands in all those years (it became a criminal offense in April 2014). This is of course simplistic, but the numbers in the IFPI report are the most accurate available when it comes to the total economy of recorded music as far as I know. And I found the case of the Netherlands a puzzling one. The one nation in Europe that had a legislation allowing it's citizens to effectively download as much free music as they desired, and despite of that they appear to buy just as much music there as in comparable nations. Does that indicate that there isn't a cause and effect relationship between piracy and sales? My answer to that would be negative, that there is a cause and effect but at a more complex level. There are some people that would never buy music anyhow, there are many who have switched from buying to leasing and prefer the latter, and there's a core audience that will continue to buy music physically or digitally. Would a liberation, like the most liberal pro-piracy brigade wants, have a further detrimental effect on sales? That is a question where I'm somewhat more unsure these days. I suspect actual sales will continue to fall no matter what legislation is in use, and that the greater majority will switch to streaming solutions. That development is occurring in Norway and Sweden, and I don't think we're so special here in Scandinavia that what happens here represents something unique to our nations. Surveys done in Norway have seen illegal downloading plummeting as Spotify (music) and Netflix (movies and series) have become available and common. A survey quoted in 2013 documented an 80% decrease in illegal downloading, and appearing to continue downwards at a fairly steep rate. I obviously can't vouch for the quality of that survey, but it was quoted in one of out most factual oriented newspapers. With this I'll refrain from coming with any further primitive and barbarian thoughts on the subject in this thread. Edited by Windhawk - October 02 2014 at 16:03 |
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Websites I work with:
http://www.progressor.net http://www.houseofprog.com My profile on Mixcloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/haukevind/ |
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: October 03 2014 at 06:47 |
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Not sure why my questions should have offended you so much, when you present "a case" then it naturally raises questions, which you have addressed perfectly in your very detailed reply. You are correct that there is an indication of a causation and as you say, since it complex it is not a simple correlation. In fact there may be no correlation at all. We don't know. This is all we can conclude. There is no before and after control data to compare to and there are no actual numbers for the illegal downloads. We can never measure the number of illegal downloads, we can only speculate based upon anecdotal evidence (i.e., the number of people who admit doing it and the number of illegal downloads they will admit to). We can never assume for example that the numbers of "illegal" downloads are different in a country that does not prosecute downloaders to one that does. [Sweden does not legalise the downloading of pirated material it just does not criminalises those that do. This is not a subtle distinction, nor is it clever playing-with-words - the material downloaded is still taken from the owner without their express permission, the record companies and the artists did not sign up to this, the copies downloaded are still illicit copies]. The number of prosecutions for illegal downloading is practically zero. It matters not whether a country criminalises illegal downloading or not, people do not download free albums because it is legal or illegal, they do it because they can, and it is easy, and they won't get caught. Legislation does not change this. The only reason people still buy music is because the artist gets paid for providing it. This is a matter of conscience not legality. Whether taking music without paying the artist is criminalised or not, some people will still pay. When artists offer "pay what you like" most people still pay something. Morality trumps Legislation. Every time. In the UK selling goods this way is called A Honest Box - a farmer will place a table of eggs by the road with a money box bedside them. The public has three choices - pay for the eggs, take the eggs without paying or take the eggs and the money box. People are naturally honest, even when they can take something without paying they still leave payment. The farmer trusts them to do that and the customers honour that trust. If this did not work the farmers would never do it. What we have in the Norwegian study is an example of that "conscience" at work ... whether it is a criminal offence to download pirated material or not, people do have a conscience, they do see that taking the artists work without paying for it is wrong, so when an alternative is presented then they use it. Peace out.
Edited by Dean - October 03 2014 at 06:53 |
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Davesax1965
Forum Senior Member 
Joined: May 23 2013 Location: UK Status: Offline Points: 2839 |
Posted: October 03 2014 at 07:35 |
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A little point here.
I am, of course, a sad old muso. Everything is done on the good old computer, in a box bedroom where if the cat comes in and sits on my lap, I get claustrophobia. (True. ;-) ) I have guitars, saxes, basses, keyboards of all kind crammed into a room, bits on shelves, everything. I am about as "cottage industry" as you can imagine. I can spend some money on musical bits now and again, but.... the revenue comes from download sales. After about 50 sales for this album (excuse me if I plug it again) http://brotherhoodofthemachine.bandcamp.com/album/trip-hazard (shameless advert) - well, I've got very much the same amount of stuff as before. If I was getting more CD sales..... then I'd be building my own analogue Eurorack synthesizer. Which has lovely bitties in it like this  which I would solder up myself from a kit. I would then be doing LIVE gigs. So. No capital, a lot of musicians will go nowhere. No sales, they have no money for amps, pedals, cables, recording, you name it. No more decent music, no live gigs.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: October 03 2014 at 07:53 |
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 isn't that a sequencer rather than a synth Dave?
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Davesax1965
Forum Senior Member
Joined: May 23 2013 Location: UK Status: Offline Points: 2839 |
Posted: October 03 2014 at 11:09 |
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I was going to say "one step at a time", but it's actually 16.
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infandous
Forum Senior Member
Joined: March 23 2006 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 2447 |
Posted: October 03 2014 at 13:29 |
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Sometimes I think the only reason I come here is to read Dean's wonderful posts
 Seriously, Dean hits the nail on the head every time. As a musician whose never made a dime playing music (well, a couple of paid gigs here and there, but I don't think the money did much more than cover expenses and a meal for the band), I am someone who always pays for music. Though I have sampled albums for free, at artists web sites when the artist made them available for listening. Just a side note for anyone that thinks that the "major" pop stars of today sell just as many albums as they did in 70's, 80's, and 90's...........I think you need to look at the sales figures again. The biggest selling acts sell a fraction of what they did back in those days. The criteria for gold and platinum albums has changed and now includes download, ring tones, and videos. It used to just be physical album sales. If you look here, you will note that a ring tone was the only thing that went platinum in 2009 (http://www.riaa.com/newsitem.php?id=c91c40e1-a65a-0f81-ebb3-8fe3b7c0ecea). A ring tone. Obviously, sales are down across the board. Is illegal downloading responsible? Hard to say for certain, but it certainly hasn't had any positive impact. With all the prog artists talking about how they are struggling with sales (some who have had precipitous drops since the 90's), I'm not really sure how anyone can justify illegal downloads anymore (especially with legal options available.......which are not really much better for the artists, though they at least get some compensation, even if it is pathetically small). Here are all of 2013's gold and platinum releases (a video by an old artist and a hits compilation): http://www.riaa.com/goldandplatinumdata.php?content_selector=gold-platinum-searchable-database (you may have to type 2013 into the search bar, as it doesn't seem to retain the information in the link) |
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: October 04 2014 at 05:52 |
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Thanks Mike
The truth about gigs. Getting gigs to play original music is difficult and when you do the attendance is small. If you are in a Prog band playing original music it is highly unlikely that you'll make any money by gigging. If you want to make pin-money then form a covers band and play music that people know. If you want to make a living then form a wedding band, but then you are in direct competition with mobile discos and they have far lower overheads. When starting out you can probably get all your gear in a couple of cars, probably owned and driven by parents of band members so you don't pay for petrol or up-keep of the vehicle but later you will be using your own transport so then you have to pay for fuel and other running costs. As your band grows it acquires more gear, bigger amps, more keyboards, more guitars and pedals, a bigger drum kit and several flight-cases of leads and mike stands. You may want to bring along smoke generators and extra lighting, it gets very hot on stage, so you may want to get electric fans to keep you cool. So now you need a van. To begin with you will hire one, then later one of the band may buy one so as well as fuel that will have running costs to keep it on the road. All this gear fits in the van but there is no room for the musicians and hangers-on, (roadies, people to man the merch stall, girl-friends, friends etc,), so now they need transport too, you can use several private cars or you can hire a minibus and thus the expense keeps mounting up. You will also have to have all the electrical gear safety tested (PAT tested) because most venues will want to see your safety certificates before allowing you to use the equipment. You have to pay a professional electrician to do this, it costs money, and you have to do it every year. Bouncing all that gear around in the back of a van will result in equipment failure when you are on stage, you will need duplicates of most of the essential stuff - even something simple like breaking a string can bring the show to a halt. It's amusing for the audience for the first five minutes to see a musician or roadie faff around on stage trying to fix a problem, then they get bored and eff-off to the bar for a drink - it is always embarrassing for those on stage. Sod's Law says that if something can break down it will, Murphy's Law says if something can go wrong it will and Finagle's Law this will happen at the worse possible moment. Other bands will help you out but don't rely on them to in your hour of need (they have their own set to worry about), be prepared, make arrangements with them beforehand to share equipment, assume nothing. No matter how amateur your band is, the moment you step on stage you are a professional, so you need to be as prepared as any professional band, and this includes all the instruments and back-line equipment you bring with you. I despair at the number of bands who turned up for a gig unprepared - I've had bands that didn't know what songs they were going to play, with insufficient material rehearsed for their set, or not knowing how long their set was. I've had them turn up missing stage amps, leads and mics, and I've even had musicians arrive for a gig without their instruments (seriously), expecting to borrow from other bands on the bill. I've had bands turn up late and still expected to play (sorry chief, if you're bottom of the bill and miss your slot, you don't play), and I've had bands that have refused to sound-check ("we're plug and play" ... erm, you maybe, but our sound guy isn't, if you don't sound check you go on first). I've had bands turn up and spend all their time in the bar before staggering on stage - one drink is fine for a bit of Dutch courage but frankly, if I want to see a bunch of drunks murder a song I'll go watch karaoke. I've had one singer so drunk that they could barely stand and had to use the mic stand for support, which promptly buckled under the weight and collapsed - which was hilarious for the audience but brought the set to an untimely end. Be professional or don't get on stage, these are paying gigs not school recitals. If you disappoint the promoter he will not book you again. When finding one gig is difficult this difficulty increases exponentially when you try to put on a tour. If you are successful in putting on a tour, or even when you have managed to secure a single gig that is miles from home, you need to add in transport costs (fuel), accommodation and food. In an amateur band each band member pays these additional cost out of their own pocket - they will never be reimbursed for these out-of-pocket expenses - if you want to tour, start saving. I was talking about this with Cian Houchin (bass player with Carl McCoy's short-lived Nefilim band) when he was playing a one-off gig with his band Saints of Eden. SoE was a one-man-band so when Cain gigged he needed to hire musicians to play his music, as well as paying them to appear on stage he also had to pay for their transport, accommodation and food. He explained that even with merchandise sales and ticket revenue he lost money on every gig so could not afford to mount a tour even if he could find venues to play. If you dream of getting on a major tour supporting a known band (then dream on), to do that you need representation and contacts into the tour promoters. If you are unknown then they are not interested in you. They want bands who will attract an audience, even if you are at the bottom of the bill they expect you to bring paying punters to the show because they are not in the business of providing a free-ride to unknown bands. To get on the bill you will probably have to pay-to-play and this may not necessarily mean handing over money to the promoter, there are other ways of doing this. The promoter will only book you if you can attract extra attendees so he will ask you to promote the gig and sell tickets, to ensure you do sell enough he will make you buy them from him to sell yourself. He will also probably want a cut of any merchandise sales you make to cover his expenses. When you are low down on the bill you will not be playing to the whole audience (most will still be in the bar, none of them are interested in you, they are waiting for the headline) so even if you are in a 5,000 seat venue you will be playing to a few 100 people, so don't expect to sell loads of merchandise. Making money from gigs is difficult to the point of being impossible. If you are not making money selling CDs and downloads then it is highly unlikely that you will make money from a gig.
Edited by Dean - October 04 2014 at 06:05 |
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Kati
Forum Senior Member
Joined: September 10 2010 Location: Earth Status: Offline Points: 6253 |
Posted: October 04 2014 at 06:08 |
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I am not a musician but now feel even more depressed  
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Kati
Forum Senior Member
Joined: September 10 2010 Location: Earth Status: Offline Points: 6253 |
Posted: October 04 2014 at 06:10 |
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lol Dean  you are naughty
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Kati
Forum Senior Member
Joined: September 10 2010 Location: Earth Status: Offline Points: 6253 |
Posted: October 04 2014 at 06:12 |
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damn how can I quote someone and not post that whole boring stuff? Even I will not read that long whatever it may be.
 my quoted post above looks more like a math's hypothesis Edited by Kati - October 04 2014 at 06:13 |
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer 
Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: October 04 2014 at 06:18 |
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I am confused as to how a ringtone could be included in certifying ALBUM sales, since by definition a ringtone roughly approximates a single. Anyhow, according to Nielsen Soundscan, every one of the top 10 selling albums of 2013 in US exceeded a million, digital, CD and vinyl combined. I don't see how a digital download of an album is less valid for certification than a CD or vinyl, by the way. Further, in 2009, Susan Boyle's I Dreamed a Dream sold 9 million albums worldwide and Taylor Swift's Fearless exceeded 5 million. So I am not sure how that ties up with a ringtone being the only thing that went platinum in 2009. Or do you really mean diamond? There's no doubt, by the way, that sales of top pop artists have dramatically declined. At the same time, they do still manage to go platinum and in that sense are far more successful than artists outside the mainstream. So that seems to go against a claim made earlier in the thread that prog would be insulated against illegal download UNLIKE pop.
Edited by rogerthat - October 04 2014 at 06:22 |
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer
Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: October 04 2014 at 06:21 |
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Interesting what Dean said and in fact Steely Dan, or rather Fagen and Becker, made the same observation after touring on the back of Countdown to Ecstasy. Their bandmates wanted to tour and they saw that they were only losing money on tours after a lot of effort. So it was possibly one of the main reasons they became a 'studio band'. And now the alternative of selling records to make a living has become a lot more difficult than it was for them.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: October 04 2014 at 06:37 |
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I was a band manager and gig promoter for five years and much of it was depressing, but when you put on a good show, or when your band plays a blinding set there is nothing to beat it. Even watching from the wings there is a great deal of satisfaction to be gained when everything works. I don't regret doing it, it was a great experience and in the main I enjoyed doing it, but I certainly didn't love every minute of it... Would I do it again? No. Never.Promoters of small gigs of amateur band do not do it for the money, they do it because they love music. Think about the maths of it all - three bands, 150 seat venue, £5 on the door - that's £750 if you sell every ticket and assumes each band can bring 50 "fans". Subtract from that the cost of hiring the venue (£50/hour for 6 hours = £300), hiring the PA (£300), paying the sound guy (£50), paying for flyers and posters (£50) and that leaves £50 to split between the bands. The name of the game is show business and it is an entertainment. If you can entertain a room full of people who have paid to see the show then that is a cause for celebration and joy. Making money is secondary or even tertiary to that. I only mentioned all this because there is this weird assumption prevalent in this thread that bands can make money from touring so they don't need to make money from selling albums. This is a fallacy that is used to justify piracy and that is the really depressing thing.
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer
Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: October 04 2014 at 06:55 |
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And besides, even if either band or label or both were indeed money minded and making enough from live shows that they didn't need to sell albums to stay viable, that still wouldn't justify illegal downloading of it. I am not sure how many, if any at all, in the generation after mine in my city buy music in any form anymore. We at least used to handle music in physical form regularly so some of us still buy music but it's probably nil, nada for the next gen.
I wonder if the ramifications are fully appreciated by a lot of people. Things are not going to magically work out any more than markets magically corrected the mistakes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2007.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: October 04 2014 at 07:15 |
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If I can interject... it's messy, and searching the RIAA database gives odd results, it also "lumps" albums,singles and ringtones together (but counts them separately). If you search for 2009 Susan Boyle and Taylor Swift do not show up, but if you search for Susan Boyle it says she was certified 3x platinum in December 2009. Similarly Taylor Swift's Fearless was certified 4x platinum in September 2009 but was released in 2008. Other releases went platinum in 2009 but they were also not 2009 releases. What qualifies as gold, platinum and diamond varies from country to country dependant on market size. RIAA figures are only for American sales and do not count World-wide tallies. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_recording_certifications) |
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Meltdowner
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator Joined: June 25 2013 Location: Portugal Status: Offline Points: 10232 |
Posted: October 04 2014 at 07:35 |
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Nice post Dean and unfortunely true
 It's nice to witness the few bands that make it though: I saw a stoner rock band the first time on a small venue and rapidly did european tours and festivals. The last time I saw them was in a festival last year and I couldn't believe it was the same band I once saw on a claustrophobic stage 
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Davesax1965
Forum Senior Member
Joined: May 23 2013 Location: UK Status: Offline Points: 2839 |
Posted: October 04 2014 at 11:02 |
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One light on stage, folks, can be £200 / $250. (I'm thinking "Solar 250 second hand with rotator plus oil wheel"). Most people hire lights and PA - it can be £500 to hire a PA for a night - $750 - for a decent gig. All this eats into your profits until you can afford decent gear.
A decent guitar plus amps plus effects is probably £1750 - 2500. Ditto bass. Drums and keyboards, bring money. And then, as Dean says, the cost of transport, venue hire, the sheer logistics of it is staggering. Hell of a lot of CD sales and downloads. Yes, you can sell merchandise at the gig, but you've had to fork out to get it produced in the first place and there's no guarantee it will sell. Or people will even turn up. |
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moshkito
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 04 2007 Location: Grok City Status: Offline Points: 17497 |
Posted: October 04 2014 at 12:57 |
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I would think there are many groups out there that are not "popular" and they are doing just fine.
I can even look at Djam Karet, who are not a group out there pushing for their sales as a major part of their lives and yet, 25 years later, they are fine. Not perfect, but fine.
Not sure it is about popularity anymore, than it is about your desire and ability to show yourself out there on the internet, now.
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Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com |
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Will piracy kill off prog rock ?
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Dean wrote: