The Internet: All the music in the world that nobody's buying…

[captain caveman]

What's more, the word "club" any more strongly implies DJ, not live music from actual performers.

for electronic music, this is true.
electronic live acts are generally much lower paid than DJs. for big events live acts make up an additional value, but the masses will be attracted by names like tiesto or deadmaus. of course DJs try to make a difference with a show nobody can copy easily (light show, dancers, some kaosspad fx) but above all the audience pays for listening to pre-recorded music.

I wonder how many DJs make their money from playing illegal downloads in these days of Live/Traktor etc?

The heavy PR usually comes later (backed by record label cash).

thats exactly my point. this isnt totally valid anymore, i feel.
of course u need influential companies to get publicity via TV and magazines. and still WAY more people spend time on TV than the internet.
but u'r letting aside the type over-night-youtube-star. people that get coverage by magazines and newspapers because they have 1000k hits at youtube or become no. 1 at beatport.

I think you're missing the point that a lot of the successful "internetters" have marketing behind them too, especially when YouTube success can and does make the news. Like the girl in London (?) who played the gigs from her basement and became a cyber-phenomenon - there was proper money behind that.

[amiga909]

my point: as u can compose, produce and distribute ur own music, u can do the marketing urself.

especially the latter is new. one could buy synths and mastering gear 20y. ago, make music and sell it directly. but he could hardly finance a single tv advertisment.
at the same time, there is no real marketing business for internet media by now.

i dont know which story u refer to but i highly doubt one can guarantuee a marketing success by publishing amateur flix on youtube.

i agree, things might go the oldfashioned way. and u need to hire a marketing company to get famous by internet presence. there already are attempts to sell facebook/myspace/twitter followers/friends.

[Goratrix]

i dont know which story u refer to but i highly doubt one can guarantuee a marketing success by publishing amateur flix on youtube.

He probably meant Little Boots, look her up. A cute (and really talented) girl who started out by publishing videos of herself playing various synths (including the Tenori-on) in her bedroom She's quite a synth geek, and maybe the whole story is clever manufactured marketing, but who cares...the album is really good.

[ghettosynth]

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[A.M. Gold]

There's nothing wrong with legally free music on the internet or anywhere else, but if it's legal then it means that no one is losing control of their income stream, and that's the point that matters. Freebies are great, and can be used for promotional purposes, but it's when everything is made free against the will of the content creators that everything falls apart and it becomes hard if not impossible to maintain art as a profession.

[ghettosynth]

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[A.M. Gold]

What I'm saying, is that you have a claim that isn't necessarily supported. I don't buy much music now, I pretty much listen to what's freely available and I'm not even talking about grey areas such as youtube.

What do you mean by "isn't necessarily supported"?

[lilith2k3]

There's nothing wrong with legally free music on the internet or anywhere else, but if it's legal then it means that no one is losing control of their income stream, and that's the point that matters. Freebies are great, and can be used for promotional purposes, but it's when everything is made free against the will of the content creators that everything falls apart and it becomes hard if not impossible to maintain art as a profession.

Of course is Jamendo a nice promotional platform. And if the artists gave away their songs for free, it is nice for the customer too. But the problem i mentioned remains:

How to earn money as an artist? I know a lot of people (possible customers) switching to platforms like jamendo, because the music is (for) free.

I think you underestimate the consequences of platforms like Jamendo. It is not only that the upcoming artist uses it for promotion, and when the point is reached, where he is well known and the (big) lables are interested in making a deal with him, he is going to sell tons of media.

[eduardo_b]

In the midst of all the reactions to the changes in music availability because of the Internet comes the reality that an increasingly fragmented market is going to leave a small percentage of signed artists making 95 percent of the money, with the remaining 5 percent being shared by thousands of people (some of whom are actually artists). Selling music on the Internet is not going to pay for much of anything. It really doesn't matter how good or (mostly) not so good the music is.

Dodgy music, however, has been around for as long as music has been around.

[lilith2k3]

So, to compete with legally free music is not much different than to compete with legally free software. You have to fill a need that the free software doesn't fill and that compels people to open their wallets. Of course, I'm not saying much but I think the reality that you might face is that there isn't that much need for music.

The analogy does not work on this topic. If you take software, you have a special purpose for what it is used. But if you take on the other hand music, what is its purpose - besides entertaining us as the listener? There are rational criteria for choosing one over the other operating system, worprocessor and so on. But what are the criteria for music?

I would not go so far, saying, that there is no need for (good) music. But the question is: why should i as a customer pay for it? Again: i am not speaking of piracy.

What makes paid music the "better" music?

[A.M. Gold]

You have to take into account that there are artists who have given up on trying to sell music, but might have been able to sell it in the past, and that accounts for some of the free music.

Bonnie Raitt said in the documentary film "Before the Music Dies" (which you can stream on hulu in North America) that she is convinced she would never have been signed to a record label today as she was back at the beginning of her career in the early 70's. She says they took a chance on her because she was a "girl who played guitar" and that she's convinced that wouldn't happen today, mostly because record labels don't take any chances anymore, they only go with formulas that have an established sales record.

I don't blame that entirely on illegal file sharing, but I'm convinced that file sharing is contributing to it significantly. Labels know it is much harder to sell music now so they are much more tight fisted than they used to be on who they are willing to sign.

So where would that leave Bonnie Raitt if she was young today? Probably on MySpace not selling much, or any music, and on KVR asking about the latest "mastering" plug-ins.

[deaf dunderkwac]

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[ghettosynth]

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[ghettosynth]

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[A.M. Gold]

I don't blame that entirely on illegal file sharing, but I'm convinced that file sharing is contributing to it significantly.

That's what is not necessarily supported. Every study that I've seen suggests otherwise. I'm not trying to defend piracy here. It's just not clear to me that piracy is the reason that music is "harder to sell."

The truth is that digital sales have always been low compared to CD sales, but it is known that an enormous amount of file sharing traffic happens every day. I'm not sure what studies you're referring to, but I personally don't trust polls that state that people download and then buy music because the amount of file sharing traffic dwarfs the amount of legitimate digital purchases. It is also a fact that CD sales have been on the decline at least for the past five years.

I'm sorry, I just don't buy it that when almost every commercially available song out there can be had for free via illegal download and it is a known fact that file sharing networks are extremely active, that this doesn't add up to a serious loss in sales of commercial recordings. That's just turning logic on its head.