Pirated again !

Oh, I'm sorry, did I read that as 

"I am not a musician but I have a great big opinion and therefore am right ?" 

flyingveepixie wrote: I think the message here is clear enough : Mr notaproghead endorses pirate websites and probably uses them himself - maybe even runs one of them... and also thinks that musicians who spend a year at a time creating albums should shut up about being ripped off and just take it with a smile. Am I missing anything out mr notaproghead..?

Davesax1965 wrote: irrelevant wrote: Music is cheap. People are going to find a way to download it for free. If your music is first and foremost on Bandcamp, I'd say most are going to find it that way first.  I just think taking down streaming on your page is a useless move. They lost, you lost.  Sorry, Irrelevant. You are equating MUSIC with MONEY. They are two totally separate subjects.  Music is not about money, it's an art form. However, if you put up a painting in a gallery and someone just walked in, hoiked it off the wall and walked out with it, you would be justifiably upset.  If you don't understand someone getting upset about continuous copyright violation, I think you might have to sit down and think about it for a while. If there's no copyright, no ownership of music, no respect and no rules, musicians will just play amongst themselves and the only free music out there will be stuff with zero value, produced by people who don't care about it for people who don't know any better.  Also. Music is NOT cheap. Music has been made cheap and devalued by ..... a few greedy people and a lot of very greedy and shortsighted "fans".

As for "two to tango", well, by my mathematics, "me plus other musicians" seems to fit the totals there. 

Really, there have been some quite ridiculous suggestions here. Let's look at the big picture. 

Non musicians tend to make all kinds of assumptions about musicians - with no real knowledge, just opinion. why do musicians make music ? In the vast majority of cases, it's not to be rich and famous and adored- that's for people who do "commercial" music. Even in that case, very few commercial musicians are successful enough to do music full time. If you're doing anything like prog rock, you back yourself into a commercial dead end. You will - almost guaranteed - never make enough money to solely do music, you'll need a day job. I have a day job. I've no problem with not making a guaranteed living from music. 

Am I bothered about it ? No. Never have been. If I was bothered about it, the only route I'd be able to go down is a commercial one. This means "live gigs". 

Another non-musician assumption is that you can make money off live gigs, with merchandise sales at those gigs. Not any more. Used to be the case. Those days have completely gone as, to promote a gig and get tickets sold, you have to be able to devote massive amounts of time to marketing. See "I have a day job", above. 

So you essentially have one major problem, which is that you're playing non commercial music to an audience who aren't there, unless you live in a major city, and because you've got to hold down a day job, there's no time for practicing and rehearsing with other band members, doing publicity etc etc - even before you get to the mathematics of hiring out a venue, PA, engineer and lighting rig. 

Another assumption. Musicians love playing live. I hate it. I really don't need an audience to massage my ego, I don't need all the hassle of setting a gig up and I really, really don't like playing live. Oh, some musicians do, good luck to them. I get more pleasure playing with other musicians and an audience isn't really necessary. If I was being brutal, I'd say that they were necessary to pay the bills, but - as we've seen - "day job" above, I don't need the bills paid and one way of reducing them (and the headache) is not to play live gigs. Frankly, if an audience isn't paying or buying your music and actually supporting you, they're not needed. 

And no, I keep saying - I'm not in it for the money but the love of it. Love is a two way process and needs to be reciprocated. 

Last assumption by non musicians - "musicians need an audience". Not all do. Mentioned that above. What musicians need is a bit of respect and not to run around chasing fans who just refuse to pay but hoover up free downloads when you make something available for £0 on a trial basis to see if that generates sales. It doesn't. They also don't need to spend a depressingly large proportion of their time playing whack a mole with people who just pirate their music. 

There is almost zero respect and support coming from most "fans" - water finds it's own level - non musicians, don't bet on good music being around forever, as a lot of prog rock is experimental, people going out on a creative limb for you. If there's no reward for it then don't assume musicians will make the effort forever. It's a two way street. 

^ Dave, your point is clear, but I hope you agree that it's very untypical, most of the artists (even if they make their music for the love of music) want bigger audience, want to be known. I think it's natural to be pleased when you see that what you're doing is interesting to other people too.

chopper wrote: NotAProghead wrote: Want it or not, the time of studio projects is over. The only way to get some money from your music is playing gigs and selling CDs (LPs and merch) at concerts. Am I wrong? How do you make the CDs without the studio projects? Are you saying you should only sell live CDs?

^ OK, for example, in 1966 The Beatles stopped playing gigs and only recorded albums, i.e. became what I call a "studio project". And lived quite well with album sales.

NotAProghead wrote: Davesax1965 wrote: That statement above says "We non musicians can tell musicians what to do and play, otherwise we won't buy your music". But you non musicians *don't* buy the music, anyway. You generally either scoop up the free downloads or pirate it. So you've actually lost any bargaining power there - not that you had any with proper musicians, who'd just ignore you in the first place. And please don't forget - actually we, non-musicians, buy music.

That would be like not knowing how to actually gracefully lose an argument. ;-)