A couple weeks ago I approached Matt Shadetek from Dutty Artz with a few questions regarding how a recording artist is supposed to exist and enjoy a sustainable ‘career’, ye know, doing their art.
Matt’s been doing music for years, whether it’s production, DJing, label management, teaching, list goes on. He blogs regularly on Dutty Artz, alongside the likes of DJ/rupture and Geko Jones, and he’s since started up his own blog talking bout ‘music production, creativity and life in the internet’. I recommend you go check it out, some proper insight there. Plus, he’s got a new album out now, ‘Flowers’, that’s the bees knees, personal favourite is the steppin’ delights of ‘Strength in Numbers’. Lovely stuff.
Also, this discussion Matt and I have been having is posted up there (in edited form). Here’s an excerpt:
“Redmonk, a person I’ve been acquainted with through the music scene for a while made a comment on my post ‘I’m Doing It For The Scene Maaaan‘ which was relevant to the thesis he’s working on. He posted a few thoughts and links in the comments to that post and rather than type out my reaction as a super long comment that people might not see I decided to do a post about it.
Generally the thoughts are all circling around how artists will make money after the business of selling recorded music, what I call the recording business, finally dies. I use the term recording business rather than music business because there are plenty of businesses about or around music which are making lots of money including gear manufacturers, educational institutions, makers of music listening devices etc. The biggest casualties I see in all this are the labels and at some level the artists. Redmonk is italicized below, my thoughts are interspersed.
Hey Matt, you might have seen this:
http://labs.timesonline.co.uk/blog/2009/11/12/do-music-artists-do-better-in-a-world-with-illegal-file-sharing/
Predicts that artists will supposedly soon be making more from gigs than selling physical copies of their music.
There are more and more theorists (including Gerd Loenhard – http://www.mediafuturist.com/ ) essentially arguing that we should be heard first, build an audience and then once the trust is there, they’ll pay to see our gigs, buy our merch etc. So give the music away for free (cos if people want to, they’ll get it for free somehow) and make money through other streams.”
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Since that’s gone up, the good people at Bass Music Blog have wrapped up their ‘Diary of a Free Album’ project, which, for me, has been great to follow. Statistics and insight from people (ID and Baobinga) who are actively involved in the scene, producing, releasing, DJing, etc.
A few interesting points from I.D. in it that would upset the aformentioned Gerd Leonhard’s arguments a bit:
“But, what about live stuff? The exposure! Artists should give away music for free, and live off the shows, yes? Well, as far as we can tell, the album has had a fairly minimal effect on our bookings. I’ve had one gig that I can directly attribute to the album; but in general over the last few months my gigs have been about normal; Baobinga hasn’t noticed any significant change either.”
So, maybe the theory of ‘music for free, money from gigs’ doesn’t work for underground, independent artists then? Different story for the ‘legacy’ artists though. Sure, big bands can still give away free albums, cos everyone’s gonna buy the ultra-limited DVD package, as well as attend the stadium tour, they’ve already built up a huge following who will eat up everything they do, so the ‘legacy’ that they live off, from the glory years of recorded music, will continue on, they’ll survive. It doesn’t matter if millions of people are downloading their back catalogue for free, they’ll still make a mint.
But for our poor independent artist, what can they do? Get €100 for a Friday night gig? Then what? Wait another six months before approaching that venue again? You can’t live off that. OK, it’s different for DJs, they can rock round to the club every week with a whole bag of freshness (which does take work, mind), whereas a producer can’t exactly create a fresh live set every week, can they? That’s always been the problem for the producer, unless they’re hopping from one country to another on tour, playing to fresh crowds every night. A DJ can play a every week in his hometown, a producer can’t really. Here’s another interesting point from I.D.:
“…the more artists have to rely on live shows to make up their income, the more the supply of performers increases, and thus prices drop as an increased number of artists compete for the same amount of Friday and Saturday night gigs.”
To be honest I don’t know if that’s necessarily going to effect underground music. I don’t know many any producers who rely on album sales, and thus having to get more gigs cos they’re giving their music away for free. I’d say the above scenario would more apply to those who already rely a significant amount on recorded music, and are well established.
I’ll write more on this in the near future but diversification looks to be the way forward for all us artists out there. Doing peripheral work related to your core art that allows you to keep doing your art. Like if you’re a producer, getting some soundtracking or sound design work. OK, means dealing with clients and registering as an independent trader and whatever else, but ’sides that stuff it’s not a million miles away from what you do already. Sure, there’s gotta be more options out there for producers then all just going out and getting soundtracking work (which makes it sound so easy). Feel free to add suggestions to the comments.
Oh and you might as well check ID and Baobinga’s ‘Bass Music Sessions’ album here. Quality stuff!
