drma173
Free, free, and free. People are giving songs for free. Most Producers are working for free or making pennies. Why do you think this is happening? It is not just the consumer fault that they are ripping music; because it is people in the music industry that leak songs up on the internet.

Maybe it is our perception that is off. Other than the superstars was there ever a time when musicians as a whole were among the highly compensated on average?  I'm pretty sure it was just as true 50 years ago as it is today that if your daughter brought home a guy who said his job was "guitarist" and he wasn't world famous already, you would assume he was broke. The commercial industry as we know it is relatively young. Most producers make very little money because there are only so many pop hits that can chart at the same time. Imbalance reportedly makes up to a million per song. The producers consistently making songs that sell well are making buttloads of cash since, unlike performing artists, they get paid upfront. Songwriters of hit songs can live for life off of one hit song. 
 
The music industry is like most American industries. When it starts, it grows rapidly with countless competing elements and then gets reduced to relatively few huge companies putting out similar products under different monikers. There used to be hundreds of automobile makers but even many ubiquitous brands have disappeared. New technologies allowed a glut of music to be delivered to the general public in a way that allowed access to the average person. First there was radio, then affordable home and portable stereo systems, culminating in the current internet driven and far more accessible incarnations. When you have exponentially more access combined with the product being made by far more individuals, the value is bound to drop. The ride was nice for a few decades but the industry as a whole is suffering more than its individual components on a collective level. An aspiring artist has never had so many avenues available. For decades, not being signed to a major label meant irrelevancy. Now some spurn offers from labels because they can make more money off of youtube than a label would have ever given them and still tour (which has always been the more profitable income source for artists than record sales) . Nothing is wrong with the music industry that does not fit into a natural progression in a capitalistic society.

is it possible that now everyone has Sonar et al,the market has been saturated with viable recordings to the point of overload.
it used to be the cost of a decent studio or producer that determined output but now I hear GarageBand mixes that are viable.
I used to make a living out of demos for booking agents-with the advent of a ZoomHd and a GO PRO that work has dried up.
thank god I worked my arse off when I was young and can afford to retire,reluctantly.
maybe the industry should take note of other retailers and provide a premium product at a premium price as most of the free(ie:stolen) music justs sounds like crap to me.
I have said this before but the younger people I deal with just don`t see illegal downloading as theft and I think that's the industries fault for not protecting their market-
as Dub said
"the music industry that does not fit into a natural progression in a capitalistic society."
if music is just another retail product it has been poorly merchandised-you get what you pay for and I have yet to buy a 99c mp3.....
just my say

Things have a way of working themselves out. I like to look at the whole instead of constantly compartmentalizing all the time.  Young people, even the ones downloading music illegally, are still spending money music related purchases.  At one time the primary delivery method of pop music to the masses was radio. With the advent of smaller, cheaper portable devices like cassettes, cd players and eventually mp3 players this shifted the primary from a free source to a paid source.  The industry enjoyed this gravy train for a few decades and now it has shifted back to what has not become the "radio" of this generation. The genie is out of the bottle.  Today's teen would rather spend $200 for Dr Dre's headphones than 9.99 for an album by him. In fact, a look at the contemporary artists with the highest net worth shows a diversification of branding that did not exist when record sales were at an all-time high. Even the greatest entertainers in history would be hard pressed to come close to being billionaires via record sales alone, yet mediocre talents have leveraged branding to hundreds of millions. 50 cent made more money in one vitamin water deal than all his record sales combined. This sucks for the musical purist, but purism in music was always a myth. Look at all the legendary artists who died broke during the days many of us long for. Jim Croce would have been better off using his songwriting talents to market his own brand of whiskey than hoping a record label of any era would do right by him.

once again,well said Dub.
I am seriously considering selling most of the studio and converting it into a craft brewery as the water is pure and local organic ingredients are excellent and the market is booming.
gone are the days of trying to get one band out and another in and rehearsals are paying the bills,just.
it was great while it lasted but sometimes you just have to move on.
I have been working on my solo album for 20 years now and once its finished there will some very cheap gear going.
someone gave away a soundcard here recently,which was very cool and considering what I will get for most of it we could maybe establish a bank of unwanted gear for those of us not so fortunate?
cheers

LOL... I don't take "selfies" with a camera...  I do it with Sonar.  I don't feel like my music is good enough to be sold, but I do enjoy putting what I worked on out there for other people to hear and enjoy (or hate). 

exactly T-we will only print 50 copies of our new ep-some for posterity but mostly for friends of the band.
But,i wouldn`t object to going bacterial on the net and promoting a line of RockSox or whatever.
cheers

personally, I do what I do to be creative and spread the love - art for art's sake I say.
 
If you're in it for the money, you're in the wrong profession

daryl1968
personally, I do what I do to be creative and spread the love - art for art's sake I say.
 
If you're in it for the money, you're in the wrong profession

true that-I`ve only ever covered costs-playing back a master and watching people realise their dream is priceless.
cheers 

webbs hill studio

daryl1968
personally, I do what I do to be creative and spread the love - art for art's sake I say.
 
If you're in it for the money, you're in the wrong profession

true that-I`ve only ever covered costs-playing back a master and watching people realise their dream is priceless.
cheers 

YES - love it mate.
Without sounding too cheesy, music is joy and fun and groove and inspiration and feeling and emotion.......
The phrase 'The Music Industry' says it all - music ain't made in a factory, it's a spark of something that comes from a feeling, an emotion and should be available to everyone to make or listen to, however good or bad.
 

daryl1968
personally, I do what I do to be creative and spread the love - art for art's sake I say.
 
 

Who is Art? Has he played on some of the songs we did or does he just listen to them?