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In this Discussion
- 1234 March 2014
- Andrew December 2012
- Cherry_Pie February 2013
- Death August 2012
- distant_shoe March 2014
- Dr_William_Hayward March 2014
- joey October 2012
- kdawg March 2014
- Leland February 2013
- Loose_Thread February 2013
- Lucy July 2012
- Marcus September 2012
- Matthew February 2013
- MirandaJuly March 2014
- Schlabe February 2013
- swamp_knobbler_mahan March 2014
- the_owls September 2012
- ThickeningAgent February 2014
- UncleBoatShoes2011 October 2012
- YoursTruly February 2013
Musicians Making a Living: What's Coming That Works?
I know some of you are deep in this. I'm not, though I took a class on it once. Philosophical musings, examples - working/non, or references to great thinkers, articles and stuff.
First, I think eventually all aesthetics will be social. The music press, critics will start to be social network mediated, as they fade into nonexistence. The music press is supported by advertising, which will become individualized, so no need for mass publishing.
Second, came across this Portland startup who were webcasting PDX Pop Now. They have a revenue model: ad split with the bands. Hope they pop. www.stagedive.com
Third, heard this dude at Portland Creative Mornings: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-entrepreneurial-generation.html?pagewanted=all Eventually the video will be on Vimeo. Everyone as small business.
First, I think eventually all aesthetics will be social. The music press, critics will start to be social network mediated, as they fade into nonexistence. The music press is supported by advertising, which will become individualized, so no need for mass publishing.
Second, came across this Portland startup who were webcasting PDX Pop Now. They have a revenue model: ad split with the bands. Hope they pop. www.stagedive.com
Third, heard this dude at Portland Creative Mornings: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-entrepreneurial-generation.html?pagewanted=all Eventually the video will be on Vimeo. Everyone as small business.
Comments
Did he define the new youth culture at all?
I don't think this argument takes into consideration any possibility of future economic tightening. The article feels like it could have been written ten years ago. The writer says that the hipster rose during the real estate boom, but mentions nothing of the bust. What, for example, about the coming generation of youth who find that college isn't worth the money. I think the shoe hasn't dropped on this one in a big way yet, but I can see a future where you can't rely on the cultural fruition that occurs in college. I mean traditionally hipsters come together in college. So either less hipsters will self-identify as students, or else if traditions continue those who get a hipster education will be the small class who go to college.
Personally I think that punk values and aesthetics will come around again as the middle class loses ground.
Different classes of people can adopt this language. Therefore, I see that this time precedes a further fracturing of hipsters. Those who go to college but also have non-capitalist values will be the new yuppies. Those who don't "make it" in the mainstream economy will be punks. Each group will have anti-capitalist values, but will differ on how they can cash in using the aesthetics of hipsterdom. Punks will beg for pennies (Kickstarter) to pay next month's rent, and yuppies will use the same system in a venture-capitalist model.
I think we expect these social media technologies to change how art is funded. But I don't think we are there yet. Social media eliminated the opportunity to make money by selling CDs. But I don't think the same methods will put the same amount of money back on the table. Kickstarter isn't it. Personally I am interested in how the subscription/membership model can somehow be leveraged. That's my two cents for the future.
2) Thoughtful progressive arts and culture foundations could give up on propping up giant outmoded new urbanist institutions and just subsidize leaner and more decentralized and more experimental outposts such as, say, independent record labels. Labels will still have a hugely important curatorial role to play. Few of them are turning profits anyway.
3) Consumers could be made to realize the impact their choices have on musicians. There have been few well-designed efforts to communicate with consumers about what the material reality of musicians' lives is like. "Fair trade" music could start to be a thing.
4) Punk's definitely not dead. Punks could get more adept at fighting the real enemies. I like to think we will.
This capitalistic music system has given us the illusion that even the most indie bands have to grow to giant beer festival levels, hundreds of thousands of online listeners, tour buses and sponsorship offers. This vibe is basically erasing all true options of independence. The only way to make it now seems to "depend", to rely on heavy management and publicity.
I think the future will be a lot more bleak before it gets better again. I think more bands are going to contribute songs to corporate advertisement, it already doesn't seem that ridiculous to most of us. I think fewer people are going to pay for music. I think music is going to become more and more social. Bands will have to play live to survive, and they will rely on selling wearables (garments) rather than music in record form.
There will always always be punks. There will always be people who want to do everything themselves on their own terms. But as truly DIY bands compete with booking agents for dates at the finest music venues, the punks will be faced with more and more house shows. I have sort of given up on booking tours for myself. A bunch of kids' basement is not the place where I think my music sounds the best, but if I want to go on tour, then I have no choice but to take those opportunities. And while I am fully aware that what I do is not the easiest for the masses to enjoy (foreign language, repetition, poor musicianship) I watch other awesome artists who have a lot going for them fail at gaining people's attention over and over again.
its fucking stupid to be a musician for a living. its an extremely bad bet. it was bad, then shit got fucked by the digital world or whatever and now its an even worse bet.
and that's it.
those that choose to play this game despite the odds are either incredibly stupid, incredibly egotistical or so dedicated to music as an artform that it leaves them no other option but to dedicate their lives to it, regardless of the shitty payback.
also tho, as a second generation musician that is currently struggling to eat, etc, i generally don't listen to or read non-musicians opinions on the matter.
I DREW THAT LION AND OCTOPUS FIGHTING
I was paid $3,000.00..... I got to live on that for two seasons
Art Direction by Dr. YT
(Thanks, boss)
Remember how on the inside, there was, like... a ghost fighting a pizza
I paid you literally no dollars, can you believe that? What a different time it was, for me. I would not consider such a thing today.
I apologize for my past self
but seriously, that artwork is so good
but this whole musicians (can we just say artists?) making a living discussion- spilled over from other threads- is somehow important and ridiculous at the same time. While I'd surely take a grant or two, I don't believe that more government involvement is what we need. Every experience I've had with government funded arts funding organizations has been very mediocre. so much money wasted in bureaucratic mess, such bland and politically correct art being funded.
The problem, ultimately, in terms of the idea of making a living, is that there are simply way too many of us artsy types trying to make a living out of this. We've turned it into the ultimate buyers market- we simply have made way too much art/music/film/etc, and greatly devalued it as a result. we can only blame ourselves for that.
the plateauing career thing is so real. with a little luck, a good product and the willingness to work, it seems quite possible to eek out a humble living as an artist. but where everyone gets stuck is at that semi-pro level, where we have pretty much sacrificed our real life professional potential to follow our art dreams. but then we reach middle age and realize that A we are not really making enough money to truly live on, and B we have made ourselves relatively unemployable in the process. Who wants to hire a 40 year old who hasn't had a real job in the past twelve years? and even worse, imagine going back and getting that coffee shop job as a failed 40 year old artist. harsh.
Being an artist is being a business. and like most start-up businesses, most artists fail- at least in terms of making a living. what complicates it, however, is the immense value of all the non-monies stuff. friends, experiences, being part of amazing communities, making work people think is important and the exhilaration of micro-fame. That is where the real wealth is, and we have to remind ourselves of that. (EDIT: but we can't confuse that wealth with making a living)
if i died today i'd like my headstone to read "i may have died poor, but i showed at fucking MoMA"
but then again, i won't have any money to leave for a headstone, so fuck it.
Ultimately, the reason why I make stuff is because I can't help myself. Shit just comes out.
Even at my darkest hours of poverty I felt compelled to take on large projects and pour my heart and soul into them.
When I feel the need to vent about how finalizing a project is hard I will sometimes get advice from mentors who tell me stuff like "The most important thing is you love what you do." and as much as I agree, there are times when I feel slightly offended because yeah, I love doing the things I do, but a little recognition goes such a fucking long way sometimes. I am fine with things as they are now, but I would hesitate to tell someone else "The most important thing is to love what you do." because all cases are different.
To be the type of musician who has mastered their instrument and crafted hundreds of songs and still struggle to get attention must suck. I feel empathy. I think making a living from music should not be that ridiculous of an idea, I just think that some people need to redefine what a "living" means.
I also think that "making it" is different for everyone.
It's weird to see people who spent twenty, thirty years playing in influential bands put out a solo record which makes them go back to playing shows to three people in an empty bar.
Fans cannot be taken for granted and the interest increases and decreases in very mysterious ways.
I like the essence of what Mikey said. Without thinking of myself as a business person, I do think it's essential to have your hands in many pies. I have a few artistic back-burners going on and I do hope that in the future I will not feel like it is beneath me to paint houses, wash dishes, make food, sweep floors, teach classes, sell shit at stores, because who knows how long anything lasts.
Style isn't a layer you drape you over yourself. Style is like sweat. It is drawn out of you over time after much effort. It's singular and unique and even if someone said that all sweat smelled the same those with a better sense of smell (sorry Meg!) would know the truth. To dismiss style and lump "skinny jeans, the retro hats, the wall-to-wall tattoos" together as a tribe who worship at the singular alter of Hipster is a proclamation of his own ignorance and frankly I didn't read much further.
On the other hand, dude was fucking in the the New York Times and teaches and writes for a living… so… you know, maybe he has a point later in the article I didn't read.
"i may have died poor, but i showed at fucking MoMA"
"headstone sponsored by KmikeyM.com"
I should point out that I totally didn't read the article this whole thread seems to be about. I am not really interested or curious, I would just rather talk with you guys about it.
The use of the word "hipster" at this point should be left to blue collar dudes who hang out in the dingiest bars and don't give a fuck about "culture". It's just a dumb word people use to say "people like them, not people like me". I hate the word but if I take a look at my life, I am pretty much what people call a hipster, so I don't feel the need to call anyone else it.
On the Saturday of our festival a few of us went and had a drink at this place here called "the Anchor Inn" which has been around for decades and is the place where people who want no fancy bullshit drink. As we left a regular sitting at the bar made a joke about hipsters without turning around to make eye contact, it was obviously aimed at us and I was like "Fair enough, dude. You probably come in here every week and here we are nonchalantly walking into your zone discussing the zodiac, tarot cards, touring the West Coast and obscure music.".
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/anomalisa/charlie-kaufmans-anomalisa
Charlie Kaufman! Dan Harmon!
The Venus Project.
They are back with a worldwide petition to make everything free. This would be a good development for musicians.
http://www.freeworldcharter.org
Among other things, 'hipster' seems intended as a negative marker of privilege, so it would follow that those identified would tend to come from the dominant social groups in a racially stratified society.
It is interesting that this contemporary racial value is consistent in certain ways with the term's original usage in the generally dissimilar Jazz contexts of the early to mid 20th Century.
-----------------------
Next exercise:
Who's cooler? Warhol's Factory or the Harlem Renaissance?
But it's well accepted that the film industry will eventually follow the music industry in declining profitability. But until then, if the current contract regime holds up, musicians receive residuals for music in films, I think.
i sorta like working on this sort of commissioned production music, but its hardly art when they generally give you a song and tell you: we don't want to pay for this actual song, please make a cheap quick and dirty song that sounds as much like this as possible without it being that song and we'll give you a couple hundred bucks.
anyway, i just finished another track like that for another friend. im crossing my fingers they think its ok, but really its hard to completely get the vibe of a song you are directly ripping off, do it on the spot and make it fit into 1 minute or less, which is basically what i've been asked to do when doing these things.
if i could churn out library/production/stock music and get it put up in some stock music catalog and make money doing it, i think i would choose that route rather than direct commission
there's a great article about library music in this believer magazine i just got 10 copies of (which also includes a cassette tape comp curated by calvin with a track i made on it)
some other funny stuff in there. i dont think i've ever read the believer (because it seemed mostly about bland twee indie rock white people with sweaters oriented) but it has some cool stuff in it.
anyway if anyone wants a copy i will sell them for $10 (thats $2 off cover price!), but you will have to pick them up from me.
or whatever, you could probably just have one.
certainly not warhol's fucking factory
jesus christmas
Could one argue that the Harlem Renaissance was a response to a positive economic climate? It grew during the "Roaring Twenties" and ended with the stock market crash of 1929.
Would it then be fair to draw the conclusion that economic prosperity creates an environment for great art? Thus, as proponents of a more creative culture, we're actually proponents of a political strategy that promotes economic prosperity. Not that anyone is pro-recession, but perhaps less thinking about the arts and more thinking about economics would be a better approach.
Also, it started in the twenties, so that was not a great time for $$.
Started in a depression!!!!!!!!!!
The Harlem Renaissance was born out of emancipation of slaves and their northward migration to escape the still-oppressive culture of the American South.
There were things going on like the emergence of an African American middle class, and continuing shifts in African American family structures, but a lot of the movement came out of people simply having the freedom to live as citizens, gather in groups, and freely examine their lives and history.
The Harlem Renaissance had little to do with overall economic prosperity and much more to do with community and discourse.
Not that general statement is wrong for right now- I don't know what we freakin' need to make this world right! Seriously, someone should tell me.
But honestly I just the wikipedia... I don't know shit. My theory is that everything good comes from capitalism (The piano was invented by a man who was sponsored by a Medici, the rich banking dynasty that famously used double-entry bookkeeping as a competitive advantage!).
There were economic factors, of course, but going from SLAVERY to living independently in a semi-middle class black community is a different kind of economic change than what was up with capitalism at the time. Yes? No?
Mikey loves $$$!
I'm PRO Andy, CON Factory-ites
But: like, France's system is pretty good! even if all we did was catch up to what other countries are doing in public funding of the arts, the ecosystem would be WAY HEALTHIER.
the reason I can't get on the train of "there's just too much supply and too little demand" is that there is still the mass society/misallocation of attention issue. There's still this fundamental reality that a small handful of corporations are actively, violently controlling everyone's attention. Less visible in big cities, but more visible elsewhere. There'd be way more people interested in weird gorgeous arty movies about ghost towns and landscapes and tugboats and stuff if there weren't massive ideological apparatuses convincing people that they should be watching stupid sequels and Real Housewives. Yes there's an incredible amount of media/art out there. But people consume media 10+ hours a day. Film and music is still a 100 billion dollar industry. The problem is still that too many people are consuming the same kind of (usually shitty) media. It's all about how that attention/money pie gets sliced. That's a structural problem, and I don't think it's naive to say that structural problems can be fixed, difficult as it may be.
And it will be difficult. Things are getting worse. If the UMG-EMI merger goes through, 2 corporations will control 74% of the domestic music industry. One of the most surprising things I've learned in the last few months is how viciously the big media corps fight to keep professionally produced indie content away from consumers, or to create revenue models that make indie models unsustainable. (This is one reason the majors, rather than being threatened by Spotify, actually are investors in it)
@the_owls Of course the end of slavery was a massive part of it. You can't really participate in economic prosperity if you are a slave, that doesn't make sense. But check this out...
The 13th Amendment was adopted in 1865... clearly shit was still pretty fucked up. But it wasn't until 1914 to 1920 that the Great Migration of 500,000 black southerners headed north. Why? WAR! The industrial economy grew significantly because of World War 1 and the war machine needed more labor. ECONOMIC PROSPERITY!
Of course shit was still fucked. African Americans ended up being segregated to their own units (the 93rd Division was "loaned" to the French). And there wasn't great progress after the war... but there was also a seven month recession from August 1918 to March 1919, then another more recession/depression in 1920. Bad economy = no cultural progress. 1921 the unemployment rate was 20%.
What happened?
President Harding proposed to reduce the national debt, reduce taxes, protect farming interests, and cut back on immigration (he died, but that shit mostly happened) The income tax on the wealthy was rolled back (it had been raised during WWI) and President Coolidge blocked any attempt at govt intrusion into private business. Harding and Coolidge's managerial approach sustained economic growth throughout most of the decade. Mass production kicks into gear and makes all kinds of shit for the middle class affordable: cars, films, radio! CULTURE VIA BUSINESS!
BOOM! ROARING TWENTIES! BOOM! HARLEM RENAISSANCE!
EXACTLY, AND THEN RIGHT AFTER THAT.... THE GREAT DEPRESSION! GOOD WORK HARDING/COOLIDGE!
on an emotional level, i agree with much of what you are saying. but there is just no denying that lots of people love mass produced entertainment. getting the masses interested and invested in art, while a worthy fight that we are both engaged in, is clearly a losing battle.
@bigmacattack No one knows what caused the Great Depression. But I can tell you what solved it... WAR, and the ECONOMIC PROSPERITY that soon followed.
(It turns out that you can make a country RICH by destroying another country and then having them pay you to fix it. Note: This is not guaranteed to work, see also Iraq.)
Exactly, like an ocean, and sunlight!
Right?
I think you are missing the crucial element that converted those stimuli into the middle-class colossus that, even in its withered state, has made our lives relatively luxurious and 'free'. I mean, of course, The Labor Movement.
That's also the crucial element that has been missing in discourse around the current crisis. There is nobody at the table any longer making sure most folks get a cut. Instead, the money mostly flows to banks and 'financiers' who mostly use it to finance more finance. Who needs a 'public' in such a circumstance?
So instead of building public institutions, government is nowadays called on mainly to preside over the excruciating task of shutting them down.