This is a conversation that I'd had a decade ago. Responding point-by-point:

Any monkey with a laptop is a "producer;" the 23-year-old neophyte who'd just "gotten into music" is now considered a peer of the 50-year-old conservatory-trained multi-instrumentalist with at least a couple of film scores to his name.

Being born into or bred for the entertainment industry helps a lot (e.g., Billie Eyelash, Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake, Post Malone). Being a singing lap-dancer seems to work (e.g., Rihanna, Cardi B, Ariana Grande, Charli XCX, Dua Lipa . . .).

Hardly anyone wants the challenge of hearing something which will challenge one's sensibilities; people want enough familiarity to know how to groove along with it. The daunting glut of music available for free, and immediately so, makes familiarity easier on the consumer, since it's less a matter of money than of time in making a decision to listen to which music. Internetric delivery of music reduces music to a passive experience, as opposed to buying it on fixed media such as vinyl or CD, which requires (required?) time, money and discernment.

If one isn't making music for enjoyment or the gratification of creating things beyond one's own expectations and assessment of one's own talent, then one's music is gonna suck – though it might stand a chance of breaking-through as a generation's pre-party pump-up jam.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jul 15, 2021

A lot of people like music. A lot of people love books. That doesn`t mean one has to become a musician or a writer.
Music is part of our education-history just as science is.
Find out what you`re really good at. Then you can contribute. Find out what makes your set of skills unique, indispensable, otherwise someone else will take your job.
There are plenty of careers related to music. Sometimes is better to be a good technician than a poor engineer.

Still Hollywood praising itself but might interest some of you. Some will be surprise by how many women are in this doc.

Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound 2019 documentary.



You`ll find on the sister site if you do a search.

The fact, that we`re able to download the hard work that somebody spent to make this doc should give us some food for thought.

What are we winning about?

 

Last edited: Jul 15, 2021

@m.sarti I apologize for having the wrong impression.

 

Last edited: Jul 16, 2021

Ah, the bitcoin bubble nonsense. That has been spread around since, well, the start of bitcoin.

Ask yourself why massive institutions, banks, billionaires and major businesses all around the planet are integrating crypto/bitcoin into their treasuries and systems?

1. - They are being forced to as crypto continues to grow stronger and develop out. If they don't, they'll be left losing huge amounts of value as their fiat currencies devalue. This is only going to increase as more and more fiat is "printed." BTC gains average 200% per year. Find another asset that performs like that.
2. - They know full well block-chain is taking over and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop it. (including , and especially governments) If they had even the slightest inkling that crypto were a "bubble" or going to be banned, killed, regulated out of existence or fail, they wouldn't touch it, nor would they spend literally billions of dollars on integration.

If crypto weren't heavily manipulated right now, btc would be a million+ per coin and headed to overtake the gold market cap (it will eventually). That's why it's so volatile and that's why old clowns like Schiff constantly put out FUD. These people do not want you to own bitcoin. They want you full of fear, uncertainty and doubt so you don't buy it and so you sell THEM what you do own for as low a price as possible. They want as much as they can get and it's why they suppress the price and keep trying to shake out retail investors.

Next to the "bitcoin is a bubble" bullshit, you have "bitcoin is dead" - I lost count of how many times it died, but here's a running tab of its obituaries if anyone wants to pay their respect and send flowers:
https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/

If you really want to understand why "institutions" are buying bitcoin and adding it to their treasuries, look up some Michael Saylor interviews and you'll quickly learn why this will only continue long into the future. Add on the lightning network and tap-root integration to all this and you'll quickly realize that bitcoin is about to take over the world as the masses on-board.

btw- you know damn well that people like Schiff and his gold bug buddies already own plenty of btc and are buying every dip... all while they tell retail investors and the peasants to ignore it all and buy gold and/or to stay in fiat. For your "safety" and protection of course. Because they care so much about you. lol - same with all these banking institutions feeding out endless fud to their media whores claiming bitcoin is volatile, dangerous, going to fail, in a bubble etc.... all while they continue to buy it up on every dip they cause. Watch what they do, not what they say.

Now....

How will crypto change the music industry?

It will be integrated and more innovation will roll out all through the industry. Do some research into NFT's and you'll see this already starting to take form. Synthetic assets are going to be gigantic. NFT's bring real would assets onto block-chains. Here's a little peek into the future and how you can take advantage of it all for your art:

https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/top-7-nft-use-cases
https://www.binance.com/en/blog/421499824684902131/How-NFTs-are-Changing-The-Creator-Economy
https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/a-guide-to-crypto-collectibles-and-non-fungible-tokens-nfts

There's no stopping any of this. There are literally "millions" of developers in this space and growing.
Ignore it all at your own financial peril.

 

I wonder how Bob Dylan's career would pan out if he was 17 now and just starting out. A hit machine for the autotune brigade? I struggle to imagine him getting anywhere now as a singer as he did in those good old days. The Beatles would make it, they were a boy band after all. Maybe Ringo would be given the boot though...

 

Whilst it's true that not everybody with a laptop can make music, it is more true that anyone with a laptop and a mind to make music can now do so.

Plugins like Scaler 2 and Captain Chords provide an endless supply of midi-parts for basslines, melodies, chord progressions, and riffs of any genre to run through the thousands of available presets from each VST instrument.

Plugins like Shaperbox and Looperator provide an endless supply of FX to twist your 8 or 16 bar loops into evolving ear candy across a full track.

Is it a good thing that people with little actual musical talent or knowledge can generate results that closely emulates "studio quality" output?

I say yes! - With the caveat that you understand that your musical output is highly unlikely to result in any real commercial gains that you can make a professional career from. Not because it's crap - just because it's indistinguishable from the 99% of other musical output that makes no money either.

 

If his music career didn't work out, he'd come out with a Nasal Vocal Kontakt library.

 

You have good ideas. Keep it up...

Does everything we do always have to have a value?

Where is the playful and the discovering. Burn your music on 100 CD's and distribute it for free in your neighborhood or among friends - or as a gift with your address. Organize a small laptop concert in small groups. Everyone hangs alone on the PC ...

 

Nothing Fascist nor racist here ... you're lost on that affirmation.

But I agree with the rest of it.

 

when do guys ever get that every marked has its gatekeepers and that markets of the future and the current are no free markets
and on top its media which supposed to keep masses dumb and ignorant and chasing shit

but still you could live allright with involving social media and building niche community and multible platform spread
there are ugliest deathmetal or gabber artists who make the 20 times more than your income and you talkin from how shit mainstream music industry is ...eh eh eh

 

Last edited: Jul 15, 2021

Saturation.. yeah there are too many Saturation plugs on the market for sure. Nobody has managed a talent plug but give it time AI will get there when Kanye is elected president

 

Take the fact that "the industry is dying" (although thats not completely true) as a (very) positive thing, stop caring about industry and make music for the pleasure of it, without compromises (its a very big pleasure indeed). If you're one of the few that "breaks" you're going to break also if you don't care about industry, and if you DON'T CARE, your trip will be much much better, consequently also your music will be much much better! SOURCE: personal experience.

 

Last edited: Jul 16, 2021

Hello @giacomino ino, you described it well and welcome to the forum.

The sales of the music industry in Germany in 2020 were around 1.79 billion euros, an increase of nine percent compared to the same period in the previous year. While the share of sales from physical sound carriers was 28.5 percent, with 71.5 percent almost three quarters of sales came from the digital segment. The share of sales from vinyl albums was 5.5 percent.

 

The thing about back then was that it was hard, but if you truly sacrificed , searched for and found the plan...and then went down the rabbit hole as deep as you can possibly go you had a high chance of finding gold at the end of the tunnel.

It's why the work back then was so "great". The motivation was there and they were getting paid.

These days it's not worth it. You will end up most likely losing relationships and sacrificing your life for nothing.

Society loses and the craft. Nothing progresses and it creates a angry/bitter population. The motivation isn't there. You can hear it in our music.

I also think we often undervalue how valuable what we do actually is and how hard it is to do well.

Especially if you are doing all the marketing, writing, performance, mixing, mastering etc...



We have a crap economy overall partly because we have created so much tech that has helped us that we have constrained ourselves near death.

Help is always bundled with some form of constraint.

Freedom is dangerous and uncertain but needed.

Dark energy is needed and just as important as the divine and pure.

 

Last edited: Jul 16, 2021

There are a lot of talented extremely hardworking intelligent people I meet everyday who put in the time and work relentlessly sacrificing everything....

yet, we have nothing to show for it.

I can guarantee people who fit the description above is at an all time high, above all other generations.

Younger people born today often get the rep for being lazy and if you are unsuccessful you aren't working hard enough. This is not the case. We are working extremely hard.

 

That is the language of rule and propaganda. You have to work harder (for the profits of the capitalists, which they keep silent) you should only generate profits and work, but not participate. Above all, you should be willing consumers and buy their products. In short, it is the achievement society and the competitive thinking that is planted in your brain.

The elites and the powerful want to keep control, they want to secure your privileges. They own the newspapers and the television stations for their propaganda. They hammer your opinion into you all day. All you have to do is work hard and adapt and you will become rich and happy too. Every war starts with a lie.
You would also like to control the Internet - but you cannot quite manage it. The internet is the chance to make the world a little more democratic and fair. And freedom is not given to you, you have to fight for it.

So dear fellow human beings: "Believe little - question everything - think for yourself".

 

Oh yeah?

How about countless artists that get discovered decades after they released their work? All those untold geniuses who get famous thanks to a youtuber who uploads underground records from back in the day?

How about those talented souls who, after releasing 7 albums in the earl 70s that sold 26 copies in total, became door-to-door vacuum salespersons? Those who ended up with debilitating alcoholism?

Why do you think stuff like the Nuggets compilation series even exist? Why do people go crate digging for hidden gems? Surely there wouldn't be any unknown artists, since you get rewarded for your sacrifice, unlike today, right?

Maybe they didn't sacrifice enough to become the next Fleetwood Mac? Or maybe they just weren't as fuckable as Stevie Nicks?

 

I want to believe this and wish this was true but if it were this simple and easy there would be a lot more successful people walking around.

 

The hole gets deeper every generation but it's still the same craft. It's much easier to find the information these days than back then so of course more people are going to learn and execute what it takes but by doing this =/= you will achieve success.

back then it was about finding what you needed to know. when you did, you having the information necessary was enough to make you stand out above the crowd as it was hard to find even if you weren't the best or at the top of the craft in performance.

these days we all know where to look and are educated on HOW to get educated and because of that it's hard to sell the product because there isn't much variety. Only the very top of the pyramid will excel and surprise, & sell you the minuscule new discoveries of what they have found as they push the limits and breaking point of our craft.

 

You should take a closer look at the internet to see what it actually is. Worldwide there are millions more people in the game who make music and sell their products via the Internet (WorldWideWeb = WWW).

In other words, at the beginning some companies made a lot of money with their know-how, for example Cakewalk - Sonar, one of the first digital audio workstations - today Sonar is free - the competition has increased and thus the earning potential has become smaller. At some point, if you are not innovative enough, you can no longer pay your salaries. And that's how it goes for record companies. That's why big corporations buy up small companies.

Perhaps one should think and act more regionally. That means doing something in the place where you live. Almost the whole world is now online and everyone tries to put their music on the Internet. The number of users and videos is just too high. Go to a record or CD store - there are things that a record company or private label sells. There you can find your way around better and if you can also preview the music, so much the better. I think we need to understand the internet better and learn new and different ways of walking. Quasi a time of upheaval, also called digital (e) evolution, with an unknown end. There are too many participants in the game. Everyone vies for the attention of consumers.

 

Last edited: Jul 16, 2021