State of Major Label recording

[aqualand666]

you are quite the prophet. no doubt the advent of technology goes both ways. right now, the mass public is confused about how they should obtain their audio. the medium is trying too quickly to change, hopefully shit like the ipod (another reason to hate mac) will die as quickly as cassette did. i blame everybody for what occured through p2p downloading programs. not only was it the artist's fault for not producing anything worthwhile (both creatively and sonically) but its also the audience's fault for buying ignorantly into synthetic "music" and for themselves not holding SOME sense of sonic perfection to value.

most people don't realize the role technology played in rock and roll. i think a huge part of jimi hendrix's distinct sound (which changed electric guitar forever) was actually owed to the creation of marshall amps and obviously the use of cabinets and high wattage heads. i'm sure at the time electric guitar was seen as degrading. it still frustrates me for the classical musicians who credit proficiency on electric guitar as easier than acoustic. i don't think it's any easier than playing a flimsy little set of nylons.

although i don't like your pro wrestling analogy, because anyone who seriously feels the need to point out that its fake has some sort of issue, i will diagnose that in freudian terms. wrestling is fake? nice insight, genius

there is a piece of gear out there that despite all the ass clowns its allowed for in the mainstream, every artist truly can (and most know this) benefit from using it, and its called Pro Tools. even as a good musician you would be lying if you denied dynamic processing procedure (even though most times dynamic processors are used for colouring your sound over doing the actual process.) the anal classical and jazz musicians can kiss ass. either that or they can try maybe integrating one ounce of creativity and ingenuity into their sound instead of doing their best to commit to the boundaries of a genre.

i could very much see a modern downfall in music similar to what happened to classical music. i don't think there is anything wrong with the death of former institutions like the typical recording studio situation or where radio is going. i don't like listening to idiots on the radio talk about the stupid shit they talk about. i'd rather just have some archive like xm radio. who cares if its owned by one company. an extensive archive would be nice.

i find it funny that MTV (Music television) plays maybe an hour of music a day if that. to me that is the most ridiculous aspect and tell tale sign of the times.

in my opinion, live venues are or have been dead for a while. why else is it the preconceived notion that you have to go to LA or NY to make it.

the web and most other forms of technology can work in a positive direction however, i think everyone on this engineering forum knows that. it just takes the proper motivation from all parties involved. not only is it the artist's responsibility, it is also the audience's.

to me, the engineer doesn't mean technical rigour as much as it means having a knack for listening to music and knowing how it should be produced (most "engineers" might tell you that this is called a producer). basically the moral of the whole thing is to be a good and intent listener

[hueseph]

They believe Wrestling is real, too!

The lure of easy money has been compounded by the advent of cheap technology and promises of an easy walk to stardom and fame.

The technology has cheapened the value of the art, artist and the whole creative process. But unlike the home organs of the past, the computing tools allow the complete absense of musical skill or ability to bypass the single greatest aspect of creating music. There is no longer a self culling process whereby true artists seperate from those who have limited talent. It's now a completely level playing field.

What? Wrestling is fake?!

On the other hand I think you nailed it with the technology, though I don't think the playing field is nearly level now. By far success is leaning to those who are marketable. If the look is right, if the allure is right, talent and music can be bought or synthesised.

[Mises]

On the other hand I think you nailed it with the technology, though I don't think the playing field is nearly level now. By far success is leaning to those who are marketable.

If the look is right, if the allure is right, talent and music can be bought or synthesised.

Speaking of... this would be a good time to bring up that YouTube video. Dont know how many people have seen it.

Aptly entitled "How To Create A Sexy Pop Star".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irk3_...elated&search=

Sadly.... I think thats the way it really is, and the makers of this film didnt have to exaggerate to get their point across.

[aqualand666]

you tube is a great place to find video clips of the best musicians in the world. these virtuosos shredding in their bedroom. though in a bit different manner, these people also contribute to the demise of musical sanctity. ideosyncracies are as important to contributing to style character as technicality is. thus the spaces in between the notes are as important as the notes themselves.

[Thomas W. Bethel]

Professional equipment has NEVER been cheap. I go back to the days of the multitrack Ampex, Scully and MCI tape recorders that sold for as much as a car would today. I also go back to Neumann and AKG microphones that sold for THOUSANDS of dollars. It is not the cost of the equipment it is how you can make it work for you to earn you money.

In the "old days" if you had a recording studio you had quite a bit invested in it. You had the equipment (none of it cheap) you had a physical space (rent or buy it was not cheap especially in NY or LA) and you had the amount of money you had to spend to make it into a recording studio (again NOT CHEAP) so maybe if you started small with a 4 channel recording studio with a voice over booth and a drum booth you could get by for X number of dollars. You sold time in the studio and you paid your bills. When you had enough business you expanded in to more studios and a higher track count and kept paying your bills.

Musicians who wanted to record themselves for records came to you and you provided them a service. The musicians were fairly charged for that service and you, as a studio owner, made a good income. Then the MEGA studios opened and in order to justify their cost they had to charge really insane rates which the record companies were more than happy to pay since this was a drop in the bucket for them when it came to profits they were making on the artist. So everything seemed to be going well.

Then a couple of things happened. 1) companies such as Tascam and Mackie started producing equipment for the prosumer or garage band that wanted to record themselves and not have to pay for studio time. 2) people started making copies of their record collections on to cassettes and open reel tapes (there was a slight quality loss but the people doing the copying were not concerned with that).

Then DIGITAL revolution came along and people could, with their computers, make exact copies of their CD collection and as long as they had the CD on their computer they decided to let other people have copies so the P2P networking was established. Record companies lost millions of dollars in revenues because they were not selling as many CDs. People were illegally copying them and sharing them without paying the record companies or the artist. So record companies pulled back and started to reduce budgets for recordings and at the same time suggested that the bands they were signing get its own equipment and start doing their own recording thereby saving the record company LOTS more money. At the same time record companies started not signing new acts due to the lack of money for development and bands and artists started doing self promotion and became indie artists since it was the only way their music could be heard.

A couple of other things also happened along the way. Where in the old days you had lots of good listen-able songs on an album now you only had maybe two or three songs you really liked and so you would only copy those on to a new CD along with other songs from other artist and instead of buying a whole CD with 2 good songs and 14 fillers you got stuff off the web or from friends or later from ITUNES.

In the old days you purchased your instruments and sheet music from a local music store which also offered lessons and sold accessories. These were local merchants that had ties to the community and besides teaching and selling music supplies also were a place to meet other musicians. That too was about to change big time. Two things happened in rapid succession. The universal access to the WWW for most people in America and the rise of the super stores like Sam Ash and GC which offered prices that were sometimes below what the local music store could purchase their goods from the manufacturer. So the individual family owned music store started disappearing and at the same time places like Borders and Best Buy started offering CDs and cassettes at good prices with lots of selection which in most cases meant that the local record shop (again with ties to the community and a place to ask questions) also started going out of business. So now people were able to purchase their musical instruments and the recording equipment to do it themselves at very low prices and were able with the WWW to trade P2P with people throughout the US and world wide.

All of these factors converged about 10 years ago and what is happening today is what this convergence did to the music industry as we now know it.

In the past ten years most if not all of the independent record stores have gone the way of the dodo bird. The number of independent music stores is shrinking and they too will be extinct in a couple of years. The record companies now run by "business types" are more interested in their collective bottom line than producing good music. The Mega stores are in trouble as well as they have saturated the markets and people are not buying new equipment because they already have it all and when people go to NAMM they come back complaining that their is nothing NEW to see. And the reason for NO NEW PRODUCTS is because lots of manufacturers gave places like Sam Ash and GC prices that were literally too good to be true and their bottom lines started going negative which also meant that their was no money for R and D.

There are too many performers in this geographical area and not enought places for them to play so many bands and musician either have to guarantee their door sales or bascially pay to play. The bar owners know that there is an almost unlimited supply of musicans out there so if they pay slave wages or no wages at all they can still get people to play which has meant that bands and artist no longer have the cash to do recordings or buy new equipment

In this geographical area I have seen all the independent music stores closing down, I have seen all the independent record stores go out of business, I have seen two local retailers who were very strong into the the MI market go belly up, our independent professional audio products retailer who had been in business from the 60's just went belly up and the couple of CD duplicators in this area are having real hard times competing and one maybe closing their doors soon. It is not a pretty picture and I am not sure where this will all end. There are always new recording studios opening up but there are more closing down and some of them have been in business for years. It is not that they had bad business models it is just that no one has the money to use them anymore.

Hopefully a new music business will, like the mythical Phoenix, rise out of the ashes and be reborn but I kinda doubt it.

What tomorrow will bring is anyone's guess........


FWIW

[Davedog]

Good points Tom and succinctly put.

A corporation has but one real function and that is the bottom line for its investors. The music business as a whole has always been one based on the creativity of its membership, and as far as I have been able to discern these MANY years, creativity and black numbers at the bottom of a ledger dont really hang out and have beers together.

In my time, I remember being in moderately successful bands, ie: we got paid to play....and living in houses where you did everything, rehearsed, recorded, jammed, picked up girls, etc etc... In short, you could do well enough to continue the creative process which, by and large, is what built the rep of the band, caused people to flock to the gigs, got interest from labels, fueled the whole thing right along to its natural conclusion ie: breakup over creative differences, lack of direction, internal hassles etc etc.

The economics of todays world cannot support that scene. The record companies do NOT support the building of the creativity that would allow a group to rise through real talent and desire, it simply doesnt fit into the bottom line for the investors. There is no R&D as there was when music took off to reach its heighth.

The real crusty part of it is this......Due to todays technology boom, it would be such an easy and inexpensive (relatively) thing to do. Going back to an R&D based industry would probably turn up musical gems like the world has yet to hear.....a 'new Beatles' !!! Perhaps.....

Alas, its not going to happen any time soon. The fear factor of the bigs and the extreme top heavy salaries and the costs of maintaining a major and still giving the investors a bottomline they can live with is killing the creative side. Why invest in talent when it can be created out of nothing with technology and pushed down the throats of the masses who have ZERO time to spend researching what kind of music they really like, through a media which has mooks running the show.

Its going to be up to the independants and the self-taught, the folks who are driven to make noises on some sort of recording media, the musicians who WILL play for nothing because its in their blood, the average joe who gets a wiff of actual 'new music' from some pirate station and passes its reality on to his friends, word of mouth people....word of mouth.

This is YOUR industry. Save it if you can. If you cant, then get out of the way because a bunch of us are going to try.

[aqualand666]

institutions like guitar center are both good and bad, i love the selection of it (and the lower prices, thank you for pointing that out) but i miss (or in my case have never experienced) genuine record or guitar shops with interesting pieces of equipment that you can't find in the run of the mill guitar center. as for the online situation, who cares? having an endless selection with cheaper prices on the web is great. its the same scenario as using XM radio.

i don't know if i would ever really say that record companies generally accept ingenuitive creative acts. most every good band i can think of was rejected a thousand times before they were ever even close to accepted. i guess im going to have to go with nietzsche on this one and credit this situation to society's inability (or oblivious nature) to understand true genius when it comes along.

this is of course without that notion of 'acceptance,' in which people feel comfortable flocking together with a herd of sheep and jumping on the bandwagon.

[MadMax]

institutions like guitar center are both good and bad, i love the selection of it (and the lower prices, thank you for pointing that out) but i miss (or in my case have never experienced) genuine record or guitar shops with interesting pieces of equipment that you can't find in the run of the mill guitar center. as for the online situation, who cares? having an endless selection with cheaper prices on the web is great. its the same scenario as using XM radio.

i don't know if i would ever really say that record companies generally accept ingenuitive creative acts. most every good band i can think of was rejected a thousand times before they were ever even close to accepted. i guess im going to have to go with nietzsche on this one and credit this situation to society's inability (or oblivious nature) to understand true genius when it comes along.

this is of course without that notion of 'acceptance,' in which people feel comfortable flocking together with a herd of sheep and jumping on the bandwagon.

It's thinking like this that I point out to prove my point... it's Wally World mentality... "Low Price Always" over better quality... "Go with a National Chain" instead of supporting your local economy... the hell with service... the hell with quality... just gimme cheap prices... pffffft... You don't deserve to own decent gear with THAT mindset kiddo.

You think that this is good for the industry? You gotta be kidding me there junior... The reason you've never experienced a REAL music shop is because "the price is the deal" has killed the backbone of our industry... the small shop of knowledgable individuals. And then you turn out to be one of the first in line to whine about not finding cool gear to try out. You can't have it both ways.

The small independant record labels used to be the places that acted as the "farm league" for the Majors... They in fact DID search out the creative and "ingenuitive" acts. The small indy label helped those acts by promoting them in local and regional venues. When a band had begun to build a following, the "indy" label promotor would contact another promotor in another region and push the band out there to another market... so on and so on, until the band/artist either got to a large enough market to be heard by a rep from the major, or a rep from a major stumbled on the band and felt they were worthy of investing in.

The major then would make a deal to invest in the artist and the endentured servitude would commence. They would buy the small label's interest in the artist and the small label would go out and search for another act. The Major then took every opportunity to exploit the artist for everything they could... and the artist in turn had fame and stardom... no real money, but hey... it was primarily about the music. The artist had food on the table and a roof over their head... they were in debt up to their ass, but it was usually hidden prtty deep in the details of the deal.

The major's see the artist as a marketable commodity like pork bellys and jelly beans. The whole thing started to spiral out of control in the late 70's/early 80's when they started to do marketing analysis on demographics. It's still the root of how the big boys "do their thing"... e.g. you don't have to be good... just look good... "we can make you a star"... "we have the technology". That's when the major's started making the move to eat up the small indy's, and bypass the natural culling process. They figured that if they ate up the farm league that they could reap larger profits by taking more product to market sooner. All they had to do was be better at stretegic marketing of product.

There is HUGE money rolled out for "marketing"... e.g. brainwashing... the masses are pretty much like sheep as you so astutely pointed out... of which, you too are a branded lil' ewe being lead to the slaughter... IT'S AN ABSOLUTE TRUTH that you CAN tell people the same lie long enough and it begins to be the truth. It's been done for years... ask the parents of the baby boomers if they know what propaganda is. With the likes of Ubber Channel conglomerates controlling the PUBLIC's air Waves, there's little room for true independant markets. People DON'T want to look behind the curtain... they are basically being lead to believe the drivel on the radio is good... BECAUSE THEY WANT TO! The masses don't want to think for themselves. They like having someone think for them... it's much easier that way.

It's a dumbing down to lowest common denominator... why else would people so readily accept mp3's? They sound like shit, but they're accepted... just like a CD. Look, 44.1 @16 bits is pure crap when compared to a virgin vinyl on even a half-assed turntable system... but you were told that CD's were better long enough that you've come to believe it. Maybe not you per se'... but at least your generation. WAKE UP!! LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAIN! THINK FOR YOURSELF! You kids got no nads... you won't look... it's too hard... you have to go against the grain... it's too much work... it's just plain sad... really sad.

Too many folks think it's just not fair to just have the best of the best be at the top. Not FAIR? Excuse me... since when is life fair? You want something... then WORK for it like the rest of humanity has had to. You want a viable music industry to work in? You want this industry to give you a living? THEN STOP LOOKING FOR THE EASY WAY!... there ain't one. You're wanting a guaranteed job and no risk of ending up on the street... then don't you dare step foot in this industry... this whole "industry" is based upon risk. For that matter, EVERY industry is filled with that level of risk. Maybe you should just go get a job in government and become a worthless blob of flesh behind a desk wasting my hard earned and so readily stolen tax dollars.

Good stuff ain't cheap and cheap stuff ain't always good. You need to stop and look at what you can do to stop the pilfering of the artists' income. You need to learn the craft of creating music is not just about the cheapest DAW and bootleg software. That's as bad as stealing food from the mouth of the artist. So what if the software's too expensive... Go buss tables for extra cash until you can afford it. Stealing copyrighted intellectual property is still stealing. PERIOD.

Learn to be honest with yourself and those you deal with. Stop doing things the cheapest way... do them the BEST way. Put quality as your guidepost over quantity. Think before you act, then be decisive in your actions. Accept blame and criticism as equally as important to the learning process as praise... if not more so. Not because its easy, but because it's what is necessary to survive in this business. Here's a dirty little inside secret... if you ain't got chops... you're not gonna survive. Learn your gig and then DO your gig.

You want a music industry in the future? Then YOU better do your part to save it. If you think you can't, or worse yet, WON'T... then get the hell out of my way... because I AM going to do my part. Music and sound have historically been an integral part of the core of societies. It's far too important to let a purely capitalistic cynicism ruin the very fabric of such an important part of humanity.

So what constitute's doing your part? Don't use bootleg software. Tell people to stop file sharing. Don't rip CD's or mp3's. Tell everyone to go to whatever live venue there is in your town and tell the owner what you want to hear. If the artist on stage sux... tell the owner, but even MORE important... tell the owner when an act is GOOD! Find a band/act that you like and throw a house concert. Back a band with a recording session at a reduced rate or negotiate a mutually beneficial deal. Tell everyone how lousy mp3's are. Form a consortium with other bands/acts. Help out on street teams. Call radio stations and ask to speak to the PD... don't ask him why, TELL him he needs to put local bands on the air. Call or write the FCC and complain that there isn't fair access. Call your congressman/senator and raise hell about open airwaves not being open to the local community. Start a small label and network with other label owners throughout your region. There's all kinds of work to be done and there's so much complacency to overcome. Whatever you do... YOU'LD BEST GET OFF YOUR ASS AND DO SOMETHING!

[RemyRAD]

And one must not forget Thomas, the first budget 16 track recorder the Scully 100! What a piece of crap that was! It only had 2 heads! No playback head! Just erase and a combo record/play head. Almost impossible to align this deck. But it was a budget machine for budget studios that only had $16,000 to invest in a recorder. Instead of the $36,000 for an Ampex MM1200-24. Put that in your Mackie or is that Alesis and it!

Smoking lots of stuff
Ms. Remy Ann David

[aqualand666]

you're a righteous man, are you drinking wine?

there is nothing wrong with searching for the cheapest prices as long as you still posses the desire to use truly professional gear. obviously. who cares about the old way of having a record exec "stumble" onto you? you say you want a revolution, well you can count me out, in. i say the new idea of self production or "home" recording is a great idea if used properly. you should have no problem with it either, especially since it is the industry's way of making up for losses from p2p. i'm assuming that we all know what is good equipment so why assume that we don't, do you? sure vinyl is wonderful, there are downsides to a lot of the vinyl produced in the older days. i don't know if that was as much a result of the production and mastering or the vinyl itself. i'm sure it's a combination of both. but there are some great cd's recorded too, especially those from the early ninties and late eighties that used reel to reel at some point in the mix.