Thursday, July 21, 2016
Friday, July 3, 2015
Oh no, he's gonna talk about vinyl records
Here's what prompted me to write this. A little while back a friend of mine gave me a small record player. We're both old enough that records were still the primary medium when we were younger, and I have a lot of fond memories of the records I used to listen to. Now, all of my records, my parent's records, and my grandfather's collection I inherited are all at my mom's house 1200 miles away. So today I finally stopped into a shop to pick up a few records, just to have something to play. I got Al DiMeola's Land of the Midnight Sun, an Edvard Grieg recording, and an oddball with Bernstein conducting the French National Orchestra in Ravel's Bolero on one side, and a couple of guys doing Bolero with Moog synths on the other. I'd also not yet heard new vinyl in person, so being interested in something thick and heavy I picked up the newest Nightwish album (double, and not cheap).
The old records sound fine. Sound the way they should I suppose, largely because they were originally made with vinyl in mind. On to Nightwish. It sounds like horseshit. Through the mini speakers, through headphones, through my computer speakers (a nice set of Edifiers) and through my recording studio speakers. Nasally to the point of irritation, thin on lows even with the turntable's bass boost on. People complain about mp3s being compressed, about modern music being over compressed, but this vinyl sounded mashed flat. I hate it. Was this just lazy mastering for the vinyl version? I don't know. The mp3s I have of this album sound better. I have another prog metal band's vinyl album on preorder, we'll have to see how that sounds. This reminded me again of the first cd player my family had, and the transition from vinyl to cd.
My parent's stereo system was middle of the road stuff. Not the cheapest but not from some high end specialty store. Probably over the years the pieces were acquired my parent's spent maybe $1000 on all of it (this would have been about 1984 their main system was complete). No tubes in the amplifier, and the speakers weren't shaped funny, unless rectangles make you laugh. But there was an equalizer. 12 band stereo graphic EQ, and it was always used on records. Sometimes different records were set with different eq, but it was always used. Along comes the first cd player in 1990, and it doesn't sound good with eq... in fact, to eq isn't necessary at all. CDs sound better without it, and in may ways right at the beginning sounded better than vinyl. No hiss, no static, no worn needles. Even those early cd players were much less likely to skip if somebody stomped on the floor or bumped the entertainment center. They were smaller, more portable, less fragile. They were longer and didn't have to be flipped. I liked cds.
Can vinyl sound good, even great? Of course, but my experience then and now shows me that at least some really good and preferably great equipment is needed. CDs and mp3s (and other digital files) need at most a few hundred dollars of equipment for playback. I'm pretty convinced that without at least a good eq vinyl won't sound as good as it should. At least not more modern metal and prog music. Music with many layers and dense guitars. Vinyl is a type of sound, and some people like it. I like it for some kinds of music. But different doesn't mean the same thing as better. Except maybe for some combo jazz recordings, vinyl does not sound like being in the room with the band (and digital sounds just as good there anyway). I've been in all kinds of bands, heard all kinds of bands, in all kinds of venues. Just because it's vinyl doesn't make it like being there.
The science-y stuff: What about the raw sound? What does science say? (and here I may not just be picking on vinyl, I'll also say that things like Neil Young's Pono are utter bullshit, too). You can look for yourself the data on what range we can hear, sample rates, and all those dry details. I don't want to make this essay a novel, so I've linked to a few articles discussing the mechanics of sound, our perception of it, how we hear based on experience (say 50 year old trucker vs 30 year old music major), and our potential emotional bias. I've included a few interesting quotes. There was a time when mp3s were standardly put out at 128k rates. These do sound awful, they were awful from the start, but nobody uses these anymore unless you're desperate to save hard drive space. Vinyl colors the sound, does not show true, and that's the point. Like 8mm film, or red vs white wine, or Strat vs Les Paul, you pick it because of what it imparts to music. Or much like saying you have to record with analog gear and 2-inch tape. Some people like that because of the color and imperfections that gear imparts to the recording. But it's not for everyone, not for all music, and not "better" in a quantifiable way. To say vinyl is more true to life is ridiculous.
• There wasn't a study of vinyl vs cd, but someone did do digital vs high quality tape, and I think it's relevant. Read the full story here.
Geringer and Dunnigan used identical microphone and mixing board setups to record four different concerts, each time using both a digital record and a high-quality analog cassette recorder (the MR-3 from audiophile favorite brand Nakamichi). They then had 40 music majors listen to the recordings, either with loudspeakers or headphones, while letting them switch between each recording at will. The test subjects were not aware of which was the digital recording, and which was the analog one. They were then asked to record their preferences.Also from that article:
It turns out that the music majors had a significant preferences for digital. "Participants gave significantly higher ratings to the digital presentations in bass, treble, and overall quality," Geringer and Dunnigan write.
Perhaps the best audio-based case for vinyl is actually precisely the fact that it does mess up the original recording. A lot of vinyl fans talk about the "warmth" of records, particularly of the low-end. But, as Pitchfork's Mark Richardson puts it, "the 'warmth' that many people associate with LPs can generally be described as a bass sound that is less accurate." The difficulty of accurately translating bass lines to vinyl without making grooves too big means that engineers have to do a lot of processing to get it to work, which changes the tone of the bass in a way that, apparently, many people find aesthetically pleasing.
"Warmth" also comes from flaws in record players. As the University of Waterloo's Stanley Lipshitz once explained to Popular Science, speaker sound and the needle's height fluctuations can cause the record to vibrate, which the needle in turn picks up and translates into a "warmer" seeming sound.
Is it wrong to prefer that "warmer" sound? Of course not! It would be as preposterous to rule that out as a legitimate source of aesthetic appreciation as it would be to discount distorted guitar lines for being "less faithful" to the original guitar sound. Audio distortion can be beautiful and there's nothing wrong with liking it. But there's also something to be said for listening to music as its creators meant it to be heard, and precisely because of their "warmth" vinyl recordings sound rather different from what artists hear in the studio.
"As a recording engineer, when I go to a digital recording, what I did is exactly what I get back," Metcalfe explains. "When you record in the analog domain, what you're hearing there is different from what you sent in."• Some explanation (with additional links you should read) of analog and digital. And some further nerdy explanations you should read.
• Some talk, mostly about the 'experience of vinyl'.
• An NPR transcript. This one I think is most notable for the "experience vs sound" ideas. The record store worker prefers vinyl, clearly for the feel of the process. The two recording engineer professors go for digital because it far more accurately gives them back what they recorded in the studio.
Well, I mean, I grew up listening to records up until about '85, when the CD was already out. And I was involved in testing loudspeakers up at the National Research Council in Canada. And we were testing cartridges at that time, and it was quite apparent that the amount of distortion coming out of these devices was very high compared to CD. So what we found was that vinyl was a limiting factor in our ability to do accurate and reliable listening tests on loudspeakers, and we had to find a more reliable and more accurate medium.And this, also from the NPR article, which I think many vinyl purists get completely wrong; cds have more dynamic range. Don't confuse the loudness wars of the past few decades with the use of digital audio. Fighting to be louder isn't the same as having a wider range of soft to loud. Vinyl is actually more compressed than digital in that regard.
The term can sometimes be applied to vinyl in that the physical limitations of what the medium is able to store and reproduce is such that it can be advantageous, particularly in the lower frequencies, to reduce the dynamic range - meaning the low notes that are being captured - to reduce the dynamic range to do a couple of things.And from the previous Sound Matters article:
One, it's going to prevent the needle from jumping right out of the groove if it gets too extreme. The other is that if we reduce the overall dynamic range going to the disc itself, we can actually fit more material, more length, onto each side of the disc.
With CDs, there isn't that trade-off. We have a, you know, easily, 80, 90 dB or more of dynamic range to work from, and we don't have to worry about any - although, unfortunately, it's very popular to put dynamic compression on a lot of modern music, but it's not a - it's not necessary. Technically, it's more an aesthetic choice or trying to be louder than the other band on the street.
there are many other factors to consider here, including the fact that digital recordings have the ability to products greater dynamic range without noise floor issues, amongst other advantages.Is vinyl elitist? I think maybe for some. My cheap little player might be fine for some old records I have for nostalgia, but if I really want to surround myself with music I'd have to spend a lot more money and I can't do that, and neither can a lot of other people. I have around 800 cds and probably at least a few hundred digital-only albums. I cannot fathom the space I'd have to have to store all of those on vinyl. Ok, I'm a music geek and probably have more music than the average person, but even a few hundred records is a devotion of space not everyone can make.
And on the musician side, vinyl is stupidly expensive for us indies. The best deal I've been able to find is $20 per record with a minimum of 1000 copies. $2000, plus set-up, plus packaging, plus mastering for vinyl, plus god knows how much for shipping 1000 albums, plus the expense of me shipping them back out in packaging that will protect them well enough. On top of that, every album my band Strange Land has made would have to be a double. Even bands backed by big labels have to charge $20-$30 for new records. I'd probably have to charge at least $30 for a single record to break even on those numbers. My cds cost less than $3 each to make and ship to me, with full color artwork and at least 4 panel booklets.
Is vinyl just a hipster fad? To some extent I think it probably is. Like growing a handlebar mustache and riding a pennyfarthing. Hell, I still love books even though I have a kindle. There is something to be said for the physical thing, but that doesn't mean it sounds quantifiably better. And every now and then something old becomes new again. Nostalgia isn't always a bad thing, but it can be taken too far. And the way some people talk about it, to me, it has the same feel as listening to someone go on about the organic free-range tofu dog chews that they just have to buy at Whole Foods but they were out today, oh, no! First world problems.
Is it wrong to listen to vinyl, to prefer vinyl? Of course not. Yes, there is something to be said for the experience. The act of placing the needle, cleaning the record, the larger format for art. It can be like a Japanese tea ceremony. Enjoy it for all it's worth. I will enjoy it from time to time myself. One thing I look forward to is going through all my grandfather's old records. I'm sure most of them have never been reissued on cd, that will be fun. But check your emotions when discussing it with others. Vinyl isn't better, and it's measurably not better for capturing pure sound, and I'm finding it seems bad for some kinds of music. It's just different and some of you prefer that. Keep in mind also that it is very expensive to make vinyl and some of us independent musicians just can't afford it. This has been a hot-button topic for a while and my opinion won't change that. If anything though I would hope to shift the thinking away from "better" to "my preferred experience".
Friday, May 22, 2015
The new album
Well, it's been out for a while, I just neglected a blog post about it. Thanks to everyone who's already grabbed a copy. Remember that the downloads are free! http://seangill.bandcamp.com/album/better-days
One piece of sad news. The mastering engineer for this album, and my friend, Dan Gnader passed away unexpectedly not long after the cd was finished. I had known Dan for almost 20 years, he will be missed.
One piece of sad news. The mastering engineer for this album, and my friend, Dan Gnader passed away unexpectedly not long after the cd was finished. I had known Dan for almost 20 years, he will be missed.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
The new album is almost done
My new music is in the hands of the mastering engineer. Artwork is done, ducks are lined up. I'm also offering a special sale item on my website, check it out here: Better Days
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Online Lessons
If anyone is interested I am available for guitar, bass, and theory/composition lessons online, via Skype of FaceTime. My rate is $60US/Month, and I take paypal, credit card, or check/money order.
The usual set up for these lessons is a 45 minute face to face session every other week. In between these sessions we will communicate via email. I will send you informational sheets, worksheets, and demo videos. I'm working of revamping my website for lessons, but in the meantime email me for more info. I'd also be happy to set up a free test session to discuss your needs.
sean@guitarsean.info
The usual set up for these lessons is a 45 minute face to face session every other week. In between these sessions we will communicate via email. I will send you informational sheets, worksheets, and demo videos. I'm working of revamping my website for lessons, but in the meantime email me for more info. I'd also be happy to set up a free test session to discuss your needs.
sean@guitarsean.info
Sunday, November 16, 2014
History in progress
The quick list and brief rundown of every band I've ever been in. There may be a few short lived entities I've forgotten. Like my first live performance ever. My freshman year of High School, some homecoming function. I remember playing a few Metallica covers. I can't recall what the name of that group was. Some of my dates are fuzzy, too. It's still kind of surprising to me how much I've done, how many bands are on this list. And if my count s right today today I've been involved in one way or other with 22 official album or ep releases.
Perpetual Motion - (c. 1991-1992?) mostly Metallica, Maiden and Primus covers, a few originals, played some shows, morphed into:
Three Blind Mice - (c. 1992-94) played shows, recorded: S/T, Red Beans and Mice
Fishboy - (c. 1993-1996) mostly a duo project, a couple acoustic shows, recorded: Elders, Driving Down This Road, Improv
Big Brown Newport - (c. 1994-1996, semi-active again as of 2010) I played bass, played a lot of shows, recorded: BBNII, Part Time, Mogwai, Appleton Session
Strange Land - (c. 1998-present) lots of shows, recorded: Foundation ep (1999), Anomaly (2001), ProgPower ep (2002), Blaming Season (2004), Catharsis (2008), Singles (2011-12), ∆v (2014)
Catherine Scholz (c. 1999-2000?), played shows, help record/engineer some songs for an ep.
ABS Blues Band (c. 2008-2010), played some shows, mostly covers, a few originals. No completed recordings
Soaker - (c. 2005) recorded some tracks, no shows
The Well - (c. 2008-2010) played shows, recorded some demo tracks
Trinity Demask (c. 2010-2011, still on call to sub) played a bunch of shows
Delusionist - (c. 2010-2012) played shows, recorded demos
Solo - (c. 1998-present) played a heap of shows, recorded: Book Of Ashes (1999), Driving Empty Miles (2001), October Dust (2004), This Is What It Sounds Like Inside My Head (2007), Anode (2014), untitled/unreleased (2014)
Stone Soup Soldiers - (c. 2010-present) studio project, recorded: Street Art (2012), various film work
Other notable groups:
Greater MKE Youth Jazz Ensemble
UWM Jazz Ensemble (recorded a cd)
Wisconsin Conservatory of Music Classical Quartet
I've been awarded an engineer of the year award from the progressive rock hall of fame (sadly mostly defunct). I've teaching private music lessons since 1993. I've taught at many different locations, and even have a student online in New Zealand as of this writing.
I have a number of songs placed with song libraries, and the Stone Soup Soldiers project has had some success with independent films and the Outdoor Channel. In 2014 played occasional bass and guitar with The Most Ever Company, led by composer Dexter Ford. Mostly oddball prog influenced by Captain Beefheart, Zappa, Yes, and others, along with random covers (sometimes played straight, sometimes mutated).
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Free Music and I'm Just Trying To Stay Alive
I've just released a new album of miscellaneous songs. The sort of tunes I wrote for films that don't exist, songs I thought would be good for video games. That sort of thing. I like the music and it's nice for it to see the light of day. I also wanted to collect some of these things so I could "clean out the attic", clear room in my brain for new music I'm working on. I have been working on a new acoustic album, but these songs kept giving me the sad puppy eyes, so they go first. This new album is available as a free download. CDs cost money, but they cost money to make and ship.
Which brings me to a waypoint in part of my musical journey I started about 15 years ago, when I first put music online. Think about that. I'm 38 right now. There are kids now learning to drive who've never not had downloadable music. And for much of that time, that music has been free, one way or other. I've struggled over these 15 years with how I feel about free music, stolen or legit. I want people to hear my music, but it would at least be nice for this endeavor to partly fund itself.
So, I have finally settled on a decision, at least for my own music. All my music is now available for free download. It almost always has been, but at least if you're going to get it free, get it directly from me. If you've purchased my music in the past, thank you. Every bit has helped me continue doing what I do. If you haven't, but you would like to, you could donate when you download from bandcamp. Or contact me directly at my website. This is also now the modus operandi for Strange Land, so you can get the prog metal we've made free, too. That's really all there is to say on the surface. If you want the music and no more, you can stop reading now. If you want the whole story, read on.
There's a joke I see posted about musicians quite often. Musician: Person who loads $5,000 worth of gear into a $500 car for a $50 gig, or something like that. Only it isn't a joke, it's truth. The only untrue part of that joke is the $50 gig. I'd be thrilled with 50, it's usually more like 10.
The creative sphere is an ecosystem. A thriving, healthy ecosystem is diverse, like the rainforest or a coral reef. There is great variety and stability for the long run. One that isn't healthy lacks diversity, and could collapse suddenly. There are some cases where some life thrives in hostile environments, such as the extremophiles that live near ocean vents. But even there, the balance is precarious and the diversity is dwarfed by what you would find in the rain forest. If the creative ecosystem is damaged, creativity suffers. You have movie sequel after reboot after sequel. You have top 40 songs that all sound the same. In my opinion there are many unsigned bands in niche markets that all sound the same. Because the only way to survive at all is to be like someone who already did it. But that always lessens the diversity of the group and pretty soon you're all the same. If the support isn't there, creatives will be less likely to take risks. Less risk means less growth.
Most regular gigging musicians do 3 hour shows, three 45 minute sets. In order to make even the equivalent of $8 per hour, those gigs would have to pay $21/hr, assuming the musician can gig 5 days a week (that used to happen, really. When the Musician's Union mattered). To get it on one gig, it's over $100/hr. Add travel time, gear cost, and the hundreds if not thousands of hours of rehearsal and it's beyond impossible to actually make a living gigging like this. And to even book gigs every weekend all year long is a monumental task. Ok, sell merch. Well, a CD costs between 1 and 3 dollars to make, last time I had t-shirts made they were about 4 bucks each. Unless you can sell 50 cds and shirts every single gig, you're still struggling.
Honestly, this decision makes me feel like I lost. I failed. I did something wrong. And it's hard to make sense of feeling like you failed at being yourself, expressing yourself. But at this point I don't know of another approach to take with my music. I'm not a schmoozer. I'm not a people person. I don't like selling myself. I don't have tons of money to pay someone else to sell me. I don't like playing shows very often, I never have, but that's where you would sell merch and maybe make tips. Live shows have usually been for me at best a semi-fun distraction, at worst a total waste of time. I have been lucky enough to open for some bigger bands and performer and those shows are always good, but they are also few and far between. I'm an introvert, and I much prefer the mad scientist approach. I want to tinker away in my lab with my experiments, hidden away from the world, releasing music when I can. But that's not good enough for the world anymore. Just being creative, enjoying the process doesn't cut it. Doing something other people can't doesn't matter (and by can't I mean make my music. Mine isn't any better than anyone else's, but I'm the only one who can make my music. It's a reflection and extension of myself). You have to be large and loud and do something stupid and put it on youtube. I can't stop making music, but some days I can't think of a good reason to keep going.
This isn't about just my music, or any one type of music. You can be the pop-iest, catchiest, prettiest performer ever, but without a lot of luck and/or a lot of money behind you, your chances are still slim. For every Macklemore there are a thousand artists you'll never hear of. Endless hard work is always necessary, but today that will only go so far, and it's less and less likely that hard work will ever make you a decent living in music. Reverb Nation is a very popular site for bands to use for promotion. There are over 500,000 bands listed on their global chart ranking. Certainly some of those bands are defunct and some might be partly cover bands. Wikipedia states that RN has 3 million band accounts, with 30 million unique visitors a month. Whichever number is right, that is either a monthly average of 60 page views or 10 page views per band. And you can bet the spread isn't even. How do you compete? Before the internet an unsigned band was at best a small fish in a big pond just trying not to get eaten by the few big fish. Now we're all small fish but the pond is an ocean and there are millions of fish.
Entertainment has changed, video games and Netflix binges are the kings. People don't go out like they used to. Who was the last band that broke because they were big in their home town and spread by word of mouth? Macklemore? Who else? Bueller? Bueller? And does anyone really get huge anymore, like Michael Jackson huge? And how many artists that make it big make more than 2 or 3 albums? What band that hit it big in the last 5 years will still be making albums 20 years from now? Spotify and Pandora are getting to be the most popular ways to listen to music, and they pay fractions of a penny on song plays. People will say that Pandora and torrent sites are exposure. I can die from exposure. Sure, the music is out there, but out of every 100 people who download a random new band, how many become fans? One? If you're really lucky? Again, we're overwhelmed with choice. More of us artists are more visible than any time in history, cutting smaller and smaller pieces of the pie. It used to be almost impossible to get your foot in the door. Now we've all come through the door and we're stacked like cordwood. How much music can one person consume, anyway? Between CDs and downloads I probably have around 1200 albums in my music collection. I'd bet in any year I listen to less than 100 of them, and at least half of those will be albums I've been listening to for years, even decades.
I don't want to compete, I want to create. It's the artists conundrum. I do this for myself. I have to satisfy myself and not care what anyone thinks. I know I'm not making a commercial product. And yet, at some point, I want to share. At that point I have to be ready that nobody else will get it, nobody else will like it, nobody else will care that I've done this thing. And that was a major factor that tipped this decision for me. If I really am doing this for myself, I cannot expect anything in return at all. I've told myself that's how I feel for a while, but I haven't really lived it. Thus, now I will create and share and generally ignore the rest of you. Or something like that.
As I said at the beginning, if you want my music for free, get it from me via bandcamp. I would still say don't use torrent and file host sites. Kim Dotcom, founder of Megaupload, has made millions, mostly from advertising, but musicians still get nothing. The "industry" still uses and abuses musicians. Any torrent site you go to will be making some money, but at this point the creators of content that allow sites like that to exist get squat. Torrent sites are the new 'big labels' that chew up and spit out creators.
And wherever you do end up getting my music, if you like it, please consider a donation, it really does help. Let's get into the nuts and bolts. I spend several thousand dollars a year making my music. Probably an average of $2,000-3,000, sometimes more, sometimes less. Getting new gear, repairs, manufacturing cds, shipping, web hosting costs, continuing education, advertising, promotions, it all adds up. Not a huge pile of money, but a chunk. And I'm in the boat of trying to make a living from music. I don't have some great banker/engineer/whatever day job that allows me to afford an expensive hobby (and this is not a hobby to me). I'm self employed so any time off for music is time not getting paid by a day job. What you're doing when you pay for my music is helping me continue, and it's a positive feedback loop. The more I can make on my music, the less other work I have to do to survive. Then I have more time to make music, and you get more music more often.
Music is an inseparable part of me. I love creating. I love sculpting in sound. This is not a hobby. This is a job I love that I don't get paid to do. Quitting music for me would be like dying my skin blue, cutting my arms off, changing my name to Apple Fritter Jones, and running off to join a Catholic convent. There is no universe in which that makes any sense. I don't have children and I never will. The closest thing I have in human form are students, and I hope I've left them with a good influence. The music I create is my family, my legacy. It's all I'm going to leave behind, and a hundred years from now if anyone thinks on me, they will be listening to my music.
Which brings me to a waypoint in part of my musical journey I started about 15 years ago, when I first put music online. Think about that. I'm 38 right now. There are kids now learning to drive who've never not had downloadable music. And for much of that time, that music has been free, one way or other. I've struggled over these 15 years with how I feel about free music, stolen or legit. I want people to hear my music, but it would at least be nice for this endeavor to partly fund itself.
So, I have finally settled on a decision, at least for my own music. All my music is now available for free download. It almost always has been, but at least if you're going to get it free, get it directly from me. If you've purchased my music in the past, thank you. Every bit has helped me continue doing what I do. If you haven't, but you would like to, you could donate when you download from bandcamp. Or contact me directly at my website. This is also now the modus operandi for Strange Land, so you can get the prog metal we've made free, too. That's really all there is to say on the surface. If you want the music and no more, you can stop reading now. If you want the whole story, read on.
There's a joke I see posted about musicians quite often. Musician: Person who loads $5,000 worth of gear into a $500 car for a $50 gig, or something like that. Only it isn't a joke, it's truth. The only untrue part of that joke is the $50 gig. I'd be thrilled with 50, it's usually more like 10.
The creative sphere is an ecosystem. A thriving, healthy ecosystem is diverse, like the rainforest or a coral reef. There is great variety and stability for the long run. One that isn't healthy lacks diversity, and could collapse suddenly. There are some cases where some life thrives in hostile environments, such as the extremophiles that live near ocean vents. But even there, the balance is precarious and the diversity is dwarfed by what you would find in the rain forest. If the creative ecosystem is damaged, creativity suffers. You have movie sequel after reboot after sequel. You have top 40 songs that all sound the same. In my opinion there are many unsigned bands in niche markets that all sound the same. Because the only way to survive at all is to be like someone who already did it. But that always lessens the diversity of the group and pretty soon you're all the same. If the support isn't there, creatives will be less likely to take risks. Less risk means less growth.
Most regular gigging musicians do 3 hour shows, three 45 minute sets. In order to make even the equivalent of $8 per hour, those gigs would have to pay $21/hr, assuming the musician can gig 5 days a week (that used to happen, really. When the Musician's Union mattered). To get it on one gig, it's over $100/hr. Add travel time, gear cost, and the hundreds if not thousands of hours of rehearsal and it's beyond impossible to actually make a living gigging like this. And to even book gigs every weekend all year long is a monumental task. Ok, sell merch. Well, a CD costs between 1 and 3 dollars to make, last time I had t-shirts made they were about 4 bucks each. Unless you can sell 50 cds and shirts every single gig, you're still struggling.
Honestly, this decision makes me feel like I lost. I failed. I did something wrong. And it's hard to make sense of feeling like you failed at being yourself, expressing yourself. But at this point I don't know of another approach to take with my music. I'm not a schmoozer. I'm not a people person. I don't like selling myself. I don't have tons of money to pay someone else to sell me. I don't like playing shows very often, I never have, but that's where you would sell merch and maybe make tips. Live shows have usually been for me at best a semi-fun distraction, at worst a total waste of time. I have been lucky enough to open for some bigger bands and performer and those shows are always good, but they are also few and far between. I'm an introvert, and I much prefer the mad scientist approach. I want to tinker away in my lab with my experiments, hidden away from the world, releasing music when I can. But that's not good enough for the world anymore. Just being creative, enjoying the process doesn't cut it. Doing something other people can't doesn't matter (and by can't I mean make my music. Mine isn't any better than anyone else's, but I'm the only one who can make my music. It's a reflection and extension of myself). You have to be large and loud and do something stupid and put it on youtube. I can't stop making music, but some days I can't think of a good reason to keep going.
This isn't about just my music, or any one type of music. You can be the pop-iest, catchiest, prettiest performer ever, but without a lot of luck and/or a lot of money behind you, your chances are still slim. For every Macklemore there are a thousand artists you'll never hear of. Endless hard work is always necessary, but today that will only go so far, and it's less and less likely that hard work will ever make you a decent living in music. Reverb Nation is a very popular site for bands to use for promotion. There are over 500,000 bands listed on their global chart ranking. Certainly some of those bands are defunct and some might be partly cover bands. Wikipedia states that RN has 3 million band accounts, with 30 million unique visitors a month. Whichever number is right, that is either a monthly average of 60 page views or 10 page views per band. And you can bet the spread isn't even. How do you compete? Before the internet an unsigned band was at best a small fish in a big pond just trying not to get eaten by the few big fish. Now we're all small fish but the pond is an ocean and there are millions of fish.
Entertainment has changed, video games and Netflix binges are the kings. People don't go out like they used to. Who was the last band that broke because they were big in their home town and spread by word of mouth? Macklemore? Who else? Bueller? Bueller? And does anyone really get huge anymore, like Michael Jackson huge? And how many artists that make it big make more than 2 or 3 albums? What band that hit it big in the last 5 years will still be making albums 20 years from now? Spotify and Pandora are getting to be the most popular ways to listen to music, and they pay fractions of a penny on song plays. People will say that Pandora and torrent sites are exposure. I can die from exposure. Sure, the music is out there, but out of every 100 people who download a random new band, how many become fans? One? If you're really lucky? Again, we're overwhelmed with choice. More of us artists are more visible than any time in history, cutting smaller and smaller pieces of the pie. It used to be almost impossible to get your foot in the door. Now we've all come through the door and we're stacked like cordwood. How much music can one person consume, anyway? Between CDs and downloads I probably have around 1200 albums in my music collection. I'd bet in any year I listen to less than 100 of them, and at least half of those will be albums I've been listening to for years, even decades.
I don't want to compete, I want to create. It's the artists conundrum. I do this for myself. I have to satisfy myself and not care what anyone thinks. I know I'm not making a commercial product. And yet, at some point, I want to share. At that point I have to be ready that nobody else will get it, nobody else will like it, nobody else will care that I've done this thing. And that was a major factor that tipped this decision for me. If I really am doing this for myself, I cannot expect anything in return at all. I've told myself that's how I feel for a while, but I haven't really lived it. Thus, now I will create and share and generally ignore the rest of you. Or something like that.
As I said at the beginning, if you want my music for free, get it from me via bandcamp. I would still say don't use torrent and file host sites. Kim Dotcom, founder of Megaupload, has made millions, mostly from advertising, but musicians still get nothing. The "industry" still uses and abuses musicians. Any torrent site you go to will be making some money, but at this point the creators of content that allow sites like that to exist get squat. Torrent sites are the new 'big labels' that chew up and spit out creators.
And wherever you do end up getting my music, if you like it, please consider a donation, it really does help. Let's get into the nuts and bolts. I spend several thousand dollars a year making my music. Probably an average of $2,000-3,000, sometimes more, sometimes less. Getting new gear, repairs, manufacturing cds, shipping, web hosting costs, continuing education, advertising, promotions, it all adds up. Not a huge pile of money, but a chunk. And I'm in the boat of trying to make a living from music. I don't have some great banker/engineer/whatever day job that allows me to afford an expensive hobby (and this is not a hobby to me). I'm self employed so any time off for music is time not getting paid by a day job. What you're doing when you pay for my music is helping me continue, and it's a positive feedback loop. The more I can make on my music, the less other work I have to do to survive. Then I have more time to make music, and you get more music more often.
Music is an inseparable part of me. I love creating. I love sculpting in sound. This is not a hobby. This is a job I love that I don't get paid to do. Quitting music for me would be like dying my skin blue, cutting my arms off, changing my name to Apple Fritter Jones, and running off to join a Catholic convent. There is no universe in which that makes any sense. I don't have children and I never will. The closest thing I have in human form are students, and I hope I've left them with a good influence. The music I create is my family, my legacy. It's all I'm going to leave behind, and a hundred years from now if anyone thinks on me, they will be listening to my music.
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