Where can I Find the Album/track.... - Music

badfaith

Gender: Male
Age: 48
Location: Kent

Good points well made, but my concern is that in the not too distant future, an aspiring John Lennon, or a potential Bob Dylan may be working in Starbucks instead of making music because it just doesn't pay the way it used to, and given that becoming a musician is quite a leap of faith, with many people telling you to get a proper job anyway... and how many stories are there already about musicians who could have been great, but were persuaded to do other things for more practical reasons.

We all love our music, but the loss would be ours if there are no artists making music at all, that we can download legally or otherwise.

If you imagine for a moment that 40 or 50 years ago a similar situation had occured, then you could also imagine throwing away your entire music collection, because none of it would have existed. Elvis would be flipping burgers still, instead of eating them to death... Wonderful stories about Keith Moon's Rolls Royce in a swimming pool would not be because he could not have afforded one on his mill worker's sallary.

Our objections to music to the industry's practices should be directed at the proper people... let's not cut off our noses to spite our faces.

badfaith

Gender: Male
Age: 48
Location: Kent

Just a thought... what is a fair price to pay for an album/ track download?
...that is, at what point would you consider paying a better option?

Personally, I think £2.50- £3 for album, and 10p- 15p per track (I don't know what that is in dollars and cents- 4/5$?)

Elston

Yea, I think you should pay like $6.99 (CND) maximum for an online album and maybe $.5 for a track. Which would be roughly $5 US and $.4 And then you should get deals for buying in bulk. Like if you purchase 5 albums from an artist, it should be like $25 or less. And you should have the option of downloading lossless files, like flac or wav for maybe $.1 more per track.

dp39

Location: Hell

Yeah I mean $1 for a track on itunes is a little ridiculous. If albums were $5 in US muscians would still be making millions. Sons a bitches I tell ya!

But I do like what purple nurple was saying
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joannajewsom

Location: Philadelphia

badfaith wrote:

Good points well made, but my concern is that in the not too distant future, an aspiring John Lennon, or a potential Bob Dylan may be working in Starbucks instead of making music because it just doesn't pay the way it used to, and given that becoming a musician is quite a leap of faith, with many people telling you to get a proper job anyway... and how many stories are there already about musicians who could have been great, but were persuaded to do other things for more practical reasons.

We all love our music, but the loss would be ours if there are no artists making music at all, that we can download legally or otherwise.

I don't think this will be a problem. If anything, instead of there eventually being no artists making music at all, there will really be too many artists making music.

With technology and the internet, it's much easier for anyone to record and release their music themselves than it was when Lennon and Dylan were around. All you need is a computer, really. You can use garage band, adobe audition, mixcraft and so on, then you can sell your music on your website, myspace, cdbaby, even iTunes and many other outlets. I think it's great that musicians do not have to rely on major labels like they used to. Of course they will not have million-dollar marketing campaigns, but they will have their independence and the opportunity to make a comfortable living on their own and not be cheated out of their money. Not every potential Bob Dylan will make enough of a living off of their music to be saved from their shitty jobs, but the outlet for their music is still there. And, really, if an artist loses interest in making music because he's not making a lot of money off of it, then I probably wouldn't want to hear their music.

RFNAPLES
Level 8

Gender: Male
Age: 75
Location: Durham, NC, USA

I am not sure what a fair price for digital music is; I guess it is what the traffic will bare. I purchase many CDs through a club where the normal price is $6.99 US including shipping. Often they are on sale at $5.99 with free shipping and a buy 1, 2 or 3 and get one more free offer. That would suggest to me that digital music should be even less since there are fewer manufacturing, shipping and handling costs. I don't purchase tracks and don't want to and therefore don't care what price is charged.
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Elston

Yeah, I think one of the problems with digital music is that 1) the packing is minimal (if none existant), so you don't get an album cover or anything physical and 2) the quality is greatly reduced since it's mp3s. It's mindboggling that you have to pay as much as you do, considering these factors.

purple

To the Maslow comment: he's as good as Freud to the psychology world, i.e. no one gives a shit about him. Freud is good to literary people, Maslow's good to self-help gurus.

And I think the proper price to pay for an album is $0.00 (US). If it's good (they deserve the money) then they'll have a legacy in their influence of other bands, what any artist wants, more than money (though that's cool too); if it's bad, then you might as well steal it because they probably don't deserve it... Do you think Britney Spears isn't in it for the money? steal the bitches music and everyone elses.

badfaith

Gender: Male
Age: 48
Location: Kent

joannajewsom wrote:

badfaith wrote:

Good points well made, but my concern is that in the not too distant future, an aspiring John Lennon, or a potential Bob Dylan may be working in Starbucks instead of making music because it just doesn't pay the way it used to, and given that becoming a musician is quite a leap of faith, with many people telling you to get a proper job anyway... and how many stories are there already about musicians who could have been great, but were persuaded to do other things for more practical reasons.

We all love our music, but the loss would be ours if there are no artists making music at all, that we can download legally or otherwise.

I don't think this will be a problem. If anything, instead of there eventually being no artists making music at all, there will really be too many artists making music.

With technology and the internet, it's much easier for anyone to record and release their music themselves than it was when Lennon and Dylan were around. All you need is a computer, really. You can use garage band, adobe audition, mixcraft and so on, then you can sell your music on your website, myspace, cdbaby, even iTunes and many other outlets. I think it's great that musicians do not have to rely on major labels like they used to. Of course they will not have million-dollar marketing campaigns, but they will have their independence and the opportunity to make a comfortable living on their own and not be cheated out of their money. Not every potential Bob Dylan will make enough of a living off of their music to be saved from their shitty jobs, but the outlet for their music is still there. And, really, if an artist loses interest in making music because he's not making a lot of money off of it, then I probably wouldn't want to hear their music.

I think you make a good point there... I stand corrected, the artists have a greater opportunity through the internet to be musicians, but isn't there a cultural loss there?

I think in another thread the discussion was about a chart chosen predominantly by the artists, and how, doing what they do for a living, all their time being spent making music, being around musicians and being immersed in the musicians culture, ideas and influences are exchanged and music develops in new ways... isn't this possibility lost when such a degree of seperation exists? I'd bet that if you took a group of bands who do this for a living and provided a culture in which they were connected so to speak, the music would be more consistently interesting, brilliant, and develop in new and exciting ways more frequently than millions more who could only make music part time and exist in a culture in which great swathes are entirely unaware of each other and their work.

...and this is the problem for old farts like me who are not as computer literate as many of you younger folks, the internet culture that has risen in such short time has essentially cut miilions out of the alternative culture of the day... leaving only the popular and unsatisfying culture of mainstream corporate enterprises.

I wonder then if it is possible under these conditions for there to be another cultural movement like sixties hippy-ism, punk, or any distinct unifying cultural force, dissolving in a sea of mediocrity as we are, each of us stranded on little islands of micro-culture which says nothing new to nobody about anything... a Gallapigos chain of lessons in how to dissappear completely?

I wonder if destruction of the means of delivery (cd etc) and methods employed by those who control them should be a good thing, but that this does not mean that the loss of structures and the culture that supported them is (something similar could be said for all media, ie. we should jump up and down in hapiness at the downfall of newspaper monopolies and empires, but we should not take that to mean that the death of proffessional jouranalism should go with it)

Elston

Freud is the single most influential psychologist ever, hands down. Maslow is right up there as well. Where do you get this shit man?