Steve Albini on the state of music industry

[xNiMiNx]

Agreed. If youre getting into music for the 3 F's, the odds are against you. If youre doing it because you enjoy to do it, you have already won, and if you get any of the 3 F's along the way its just an added bonus.

Also, if you decide to go the route of teaching, you may want to take the 'lemonaide stand' approach Mr Albini speaks of. In other words, teach people in person, and avoid the digitalization format.

[tapper mike]

Sadly good luck with that.

There are very few who can make a living teaching anymore. Because most of it is widely distributed for free on youtube and other places. The standouts lets say... Justin Sandercoe https://www.youtube.com/user/JustinSand ... s/featured
Or Willie Myette https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCashDL ... rjkyoYkMcQ
Go beyond the limit to draw even local people to teach.

Many guitar stores have stopped offering lessons because there isn't a market anymore.

[jancivil]

"There's a lot of shade thrown by people in the music industry about how terrible the free sharing of music is, how it’s the equivalent of theft, etc. That's all bullshit...

Free sharing and theft are indeed different things. Nice straw man.

From my part, I believe the very concept of exclusive intellectual property with respect to recorded music has come to a natural end, or something like an end. Technology has brought to a head a need to embrace the meaning of the word "release", as in bird or fart. It is no longer possible to maintain control over digitised material and I don't believe the public good is served by trying to.

For this to be a real argument, 'the public good' = 'no one can be compensated for their creation'. So 'the public' is represented purely by consumers. The creators of content are non-entities, apparently.

Music has entered the environment as an atmospheric element, like the wind, and in that capacity should not be subject to control and compensation.

This from a guy who makes his living from people that can afford to pay for a recording engineer/producer? None of this makes any sense at all, really. Maybe he doesn't actually need to work anymore? It's all fallacy through being circular to this beautiful premise of 'free as the wind', which I think is a dodgy premise.

[jancivil]

maybe I'm lost, maybe I've sinned
I got to be totally free

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cF0AkC3Y9g

free is when you don't have to pay for nothing or do nothing we want to be free
Free as the wind

[xoxos]

hey jan, here's a funny ass joke for ya -

so this guy right, has a band on like sst or something i don't know in the 80s, then he says things and does things, and he's famous, right, but everything he's saying and doing you're hearing about is all genuine like because this famous guy isn't a freemason.

hah!

make sense now?

[herodotus]

This from a guy who makes his living from people that can afford to pay for a recording engineer/producer? None of this makes any sense at all, really. Maybe he doesn't actually need to work anymore? It's all fallacy through being circular to this beautiful premise of 'free as the wind', which I think is a dodgy premise.

He isn't saying the situation is ideal. He is saying that it is reality, like it or not.

The fact that he makes his living making recordings should give his opinion more weight, not less.

But most of what he is talking about isn't musician's income, but musical distribution. The internet doesn't just mean that professional musicians make less money (assuming that they actually do make less), it also means that music by anyone can be heard by anyone, anywhere, instantly. That is a pretty big counterweight to the lost income problem.

To me, the sad thing about music and the web isn't that it is harder for musicians to make money, it is that so many people, when confronted with the entire history of the world's music as possible listening material, will STILL just listen to the most mainstream predictable pap they can find. That tendency is a far more inimical to musical progress than any amount of copyright infringement.

[jancivil]

Well, I don't really feature I have time to research Mr Albini's statements beyond the quotes in here. He appears to have said that music, free like the wind or at least a release of poot wind 'should not be subject to compensation'.

In the extreme, 'the public good' such as would be hurt by, you know, Gail Zappa actually being very successful at shutting down every unauthorized upload and performance, why not. But as an argument on the face of it, not so much.

Him making a living by teh recording arts grants no weight to an argument either way afaic. If he actually believes music should be totally free, this will be kind of an odd tack I think for someone that relies on people releasing their blasts of wind and getting something for it at least in theory, so they can pay him.

But if his actual thoughts are not represented by those quotes, it wasn't me quoting him; and my interest in him is not all that high.

Sharing is sharing, and theft is theft; sure, if someone is saying sharing = theft, that's suspect. When I see John McLaughlin saying he's glad to break even on a release, I consider the situation is not necessarily good for the community as a whole. It is what it is, clear enough, & I quit thinking of <releasing recordings of my music> as a source of lucre long ago anyway.

[jancivil]

I think the whole thing is interesting in a bigger picture sense; 'shouldn't be compensated' along with 'public good' smacks of a communistic ideation and amidst the capitalism which makes it all possible it reveals what I think is quite a dissonance in society. Musicians even less viable in the marketplace than ever vs the freeing up via youtube. While youtube/google makes out and Rebecca Black gets paid.

[ghettosynth]

This from a guy who makes his living from people that can afford to pay for a recording engineer/producer? None of this makes any sense at all, really. Maybe he doesn't actually need to work anymore? It's all fallacy through being circular to this beautiful premise of 'free as the wind', which I think is a dodgy premise.

He isn't saying the situation is ideal. He is saying that it is reality, like it or not.

The fact that he makes his living making recordings should give his opinion more weight, not less.

But most of what he is talking about isn't musician's income, but musical distribution. The internet doesn't just mean that professional musicians make less money (assuming that they actually do make less), it also means that music by anyone can be heard by anyone, anywhere, instantly. That is a pretty big counterweight to the lost income problem.

To me, the sad thing about music and the web isn't that it is harder for musicians to make money, it is that so many people, when confronted with the entire history of the world's music as possible listening material, will STILL just listen to the most mainstream predictable pap they can find. That tendency is a far more inimical to musical progress than any amount of copyright infringement.

As a friend of mine once said, "someone has to like that stuff." But really, why are you surprised? You seem to be expecting something more of people that was probably never there in the first place. I think that, related, is that now that people have so much choice, those that don't want to listen to the mainstream, don't have to suffer mediocre attempts at interesting that, in the past, were their only choice within a local market.

The old adage 90% of everything is shit, really applies here. If you're not in the 90%, then you have a shot if you can find your audience. The sad truth, however, is that most people are in the 90%. There's no point in crying about not being able to find your audience if you don't actually have one. The number of people who want to see something interesting and off the main stream was never large to begin with, now that they have an ocean of music to choose from, it's not enough to be different, you have to be good as well.

[jopy]

Well, I don't really feature I have time to research Mr Albini's statements beyond the quotes in here. He appears to have said that music, free like the wind or at least a release of poot wind 'should not be subject to compensation'.

To clarify, that really isn't the main point he's trying to make. I think you might not agree with him 100% if you read the whole article, but you would likely agree with him at about 50% or so. He digs really hard into the old corrupt studio system that stole millions upon millions of dollars from hard working musicians and asks whether some things have really changed as much as people think they have. A lot of it resonated for me since I just read a very good history of Stax Records and the multiple ways that the musicians and producers ended up defrauded through the actions of various larger companies. He also digs really hard into the arbitrary and corrupt ways that specific people got exposure back in the pre-internet age, as opposed to how easy it is to get hold of an enormous variety of emerging music today. Moreover, it's also the case (as he notes) that, many excellent musicians were never able to even access the extremely expensive technology to get music recorded, let alone distributed. Now it's just a couple thousand dollars to get a decent quality recording and an account at Soundcloud so you can use the internet to at least promote your live shows. Again, there's a lot of nuance going on, and he addresses the nuances to a greater degree than some of the comments taken in isolation might suggest.

I'm not saying this to dispute your points, since I agree that there are some heinous things going on now. But he is right to note that this isn't really a totally novel problem.

[ghettosynth]

Well, I don't really feature I have time to research Mr Albini's statements beyond the quotes in here. He appears to have said that music, free like the wind or at least a release of poot wind 'should not be subject to compensation'.

To clarify, that really isn't the main point he's trying to make. I think you might not agree with him 100% if you read the whole article, but you would likely agree with him at about 50% or so. He digs really hard into the old corrupt studio system that stole millions upon millions of dollars from hard working musicians and asks whether some things have really changed as much as people think they have. A lot of it resonated for me since I just read a very good history of Stax Records and the multiple ways that the musicians and producers ended up defrauded through the actions of various larger companies. He also digs really hard into the arbitrary and corrupt ways that specific people got exposure back in the pre-internet age, as opposed to how easy it is to get hold of an enormous variety of emerging music today. Moreover, it's also the case (as he notes) that, many excellent musicians were never able to even access the extremely expensive technology to get music recorded, let alone distributed. Now it's just a couple thousand dollars to get a decent quality recording and an account at Soundcloud so you can use the internet to at least promote your live shows. Again, there's a lot of nuance going on, and he addresses the nuances to a greater degree than some of the comments taken in isolation might suggest.

I'm not saying this to dispute your points, since I agree that there are some heinous things going on now. But he is right to note that this isn't really a totally novel problem.

Nice summary. About the "free like the wind" thing, that isn't really what I got. My sense of what he was saying is that we need to embrace a more realistic view on what it means today to release something. He used the concept of a fart to make a point. That is, once released, there's not much you can do to recall it back. I don't think at all that he was saying one shouldn't be compensated for their "works", rather, that one has to accept that the release of something will entail some use without compensation.

[jancivil]

Well, I don't really feature I have time to research Mr Albini's statements beyond the quotes in here. He appears to have said that music, free like the wind or at least a release of poot wind 'should not be subject to compensation'.

I think you might not agree with him 100% if you read the whole article, but you would likely agree with him at about 50% or so. He digs really hard into the old corrupt studio system that stole millions upon millions of dollars from hard working musicians and asks whether some things have really changed as much as people think they have. A lot of it resonated for me since I just read a very good history of Stax Records and the multiple ways that the musicians and producers ended up defrauded through the actions of various larger companies. He also digs really hard into the arbitrary and corrupt ways that specific people got exposure back in the pre-internet age, as opposed to how easy it is to get hold of an enormous variety of emerging music today. Moreover, it's also the case (as he notes) that, many excellent musicians were never able to even access the extremely expensive technology to get music recorded, let alone distributed. Now it's just a couple thousand dollars to get a decent quality recording and an account at Soundcloud so you can use the internet to at least promote your live shows. Again, there's a lot of nuance going on, and he addresses the nuances to a greater degree than some of the comments taken in isolation might suggest.

I'm not saying this to dispute your points, since I agree that there are some heinous things going on now. But he is right to note that this isn't really a totally novel problem.

Well as to 'my points', they are limited to,
I chafe a bit as a knee-jerk to 'should not be subject to compensation'; albeit it wasn't me isolating that from context, the things I don't like were all conveniently bundled in one user's quotes.

I'm actually well-aware of the old school and the corrupt industry. There is a fake quote of Hunter S Thompson regarding 'the music industry' that sums it up nicely enough. I personally think 'many excellent musicians had no access' overstates things, but I'm as aware as one can be regarding the access availed to me now and the difference. I'm making things which will have run into millions of dollars when I was trying to record things in studios. And we really had to watch the clock to record modestly at all.
I'm all for access and I'm all for the industry as we know it fading into memory.
These gigantic studios now still exist for the elites in terms of major $$$$$$$$ backing and to my view a huge percentage of it is for show and completely unnecessary.
So I don't really think things have changed radically in terms of the difference between someone with real access and someone at home; except for the latter can after a fashion say f**k you to it. The chances for most people to get a career going were, IME, much better when I was a kid than today, because of who makes the decision and an ever narrowing PTB in terms of taking a chance. And the consumers became more and more as sheep over time as well.

The perceived need to record in a super-duper environment in luxury is part of overstating the utter lack of access. I'm pretty much 'working class' and I got things recorded and I think the truly driven knock some doors down. But that perception still exists. Them that's got want us to want. It's exactly what's wrong with a lot of music, the Kanye West wannabe...

[jancivil]

My sense of what he was saying is that we need to embrace a more realistic view on what it means today to release something. He used the concept of a fart to make a point. That is, once released, there's not much you can do to recall it back. I don't think at all that he was saying one shouldn't be compensated for their "works", rather, that one has to accept that the release of something will entail some use without compensation.

Well, there is one case I saw on this board of someone that somehow believed they could, and should control that release that tightly ["I'll never do streaming"]. I stated plainly he was operating under a delusion.
I still assert 'copyright' simply because, but every single thing I have released I have made available where you can hear it as a 192kbps stream (youtube).
I still prefer to see a purchase of the things. &, every release of mine has been stolen and for sale on the net, many times over. I have no issue with reality. When released other than my own release, I stated 'all rights reserved' in addition. Because while my exerting much control is a stretch, it's a matter of principle. If I'm taking Albini's remarks out of context, it's ironic I think because someone chose particularly that aspect because that resonates with them. I've seen the arguments numerous times that people should quit asking to be paid for music, actually. It seems insane, but there it is. Obviously self-serving and I stand by my reference to Teenage Wind per that.

Anyway, I'm going by a straight quote 'should not be subject to compensation', with no qualification. But I appreciate the input.

[She Changed Her Mind]

JAFO

[egbert]

Albini isn't marking out a moral position, he is primarily pointing out the simple economic realities of digital music.

This was always going to happen once music was released in digital form. If you know the history of the DAT format, the music biz strangled it as a consumer format in its crib. Sony, which had developed a lot of the digital audio tech we enjoy today, planned to replace the aging and crappy audio cassette tape format with the 48kHz 16 bit PCM DAT format in a more compact tape cassette to boot. DATs would have been available with pre-recorded material just like audio cassettes had been for years and would have better quality than CDs and the players would be recorders too.

At this stage Sony was a hardware company with a patent licensing sideline and they hadn't bought CBS yet and so didn't have any skin in the music or video or film games. Sony were completely stymied by the refusal of the record companies to release music on the new format. Without "software" to play on the new hardware format, consumers wouldn't buy it. So DAT remained a niche format for audio professionals in the era before cheap CD burners.

The record companies took the view that once the music was out there in digital form and bit perfect copies were easily obtained, sales would be cannibalised and they refused to be turkeys who voted for Christmas. Of course, what they predicted all happened anyway less than a decade later - once CD ripping and burners were everywhere - and the internet massively facilitated the distribution of copies.

Sony responded to being thwarted by the recording biz by buying a recording company and planned to use that position to facilitate the adoption its future hardware products. Now, of course, hardware is a commodity and Sony lose money on many of their hardware lines and their revenues come more from patents and software - their film and music catalogs and their TV interests.