Give away your music

[bouche]

Here's a little blog post that attempts to explain how music should be given away by artists for free.

Music is not a product anymore, it's content. Content is rarely sold unless it's part of a product (magazine, CD, etc...).

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Music should never be doled out for free; the artist should at least get drinks and a good night out of it.

[bouche]

Music should never be doled out for free; the artist should at least get drinks and a good night out of it.

yeah, if you could upload a beer and download a song, that would be the perfect transaction.

[The Chameleon]

Here's a little blog post that attempts to explain how music should be given away by artists for free.

Music is not a product anymore, it's content. Content is rarely sold unless it's part of a product (magazine, CD, etc...).

Question then how do the content makers continue to survive and make more content for the system. For without content you really have nothing.

Seems like the content providers are painting themselves into a corner out of sheer ignorance and naivety.

[jonyak]

[color:purple]they get real jobs!!

[Booche]

I am going to go out and photocopy some money!!!!!

[geomouse]

Booche, that nails it. The business is changing for sure but people aren't. Hunter S. comes to mind.

[bouche]

Question then how do the content makers continue to survive and make more content for the system. For without content you really have nothing.

Seems like the content providers are painting themselves into a corner out of sheer ignorance and naivety.

Playing live to people that have had free access to your music and want to pay to see you live.

By online advertising after you're being visited by 50,000 unique visitors a day because of the wonderful viral marketing of free music.

By selling merch.

Produce a film.

Sell lemonade.

I doubt many bands are making any money off of selling CD's as it is anyways.

[Dr. J]

The writer lays out some interesting points not the least of which is the one that the album (a collection of loosely related songs) is no longer the primary unit by which music is transferred from the artist to the fan. He's right (although many of us raised on albums still prefer our music in that format).

Seems to me, that what will happen in the near future is that fans who still want albums by their favourite artists will create their own (much like we do in Marco's Legendary 12 Song Album game). From a number of tunes posted by the artist, we will select 10 - 12 songs to download.

What we will pay the artist for is the cover for our album. When our cover arrives by mail (or email?) we will put it with the tunes and have our album.

Maybe this is already being done. Maybe it's crazy. I dunno.

[Hal Johnson]

When I went to school in BC I took a ethnomusicolgy class with a prof named Myron Makepeace, your typical west coast hippy dude. It was one of his beliefs that music should not necessarily be a means to a profit, but rather celebrated organically as a means to spiritual revelations and such. Im no ethnomusicolist by any stretch of the imagination, but when you study music of oral traditions for a semester you gain an appreciation for the sharing of music, as opposed to the consumtion and selling. Er something.

[Jordan Patrick]

Some very serious thinkers here, though. Some good points too. It's hard for an indie artist, who's put at least a few pennies into the production of his album, to just give it out. When it comes to promoting music, it seems justifyable to write them off to radio stations, producers, and web developers ; ). But I think because of how easy music is access, you need to play it the economic way; supply and demand.

It's a tough call, because you can do 1 of 2 things. 1) make your music hard to obtain, selling hard copies only at live shows, and hope that it doesn't leak on the internet, or 2) Sell your live performances, and hope that your fans like the music enough to check those out.

I mean, unless your album goes platinum, an aspiring musician can only hope to rack in money from doing live shows. That's alot of eggs in one basket. I myself, find it daunting when trying to imagine a career in music. Either it happens, or it doesn't.

I know one thing for sure, though. It's not the money that brings me out to do a show, but a love of performing and sharing my energy through music.

[jonyak]

as far as I am concerned and this is my opinion, soley mine and noone elses.

there are 2 things you can do as a small time artist.

1. Sell your music, worry about money.

2. give your music away for free to whomever wants to hear it but still charge a cover at the door.

I know they need money. but if you want people to know about you you need to get your music out there. the best way to do that is to give it away.

my opinion. I don't care about money when I am playing. I only care about the music.

[MarcO]

Why not pay for both albums and concert tickets?

And what about those gazillions of artists who are primarily studio-oriented?

[Esau.]

I'm not a musician, so I can't say what or what not a band/solo artist etc should do with art, thats up to them. I know I'm probally not going to articulate myself very well here, but I think some folks may understand what I'm trying to say. Of course, this is just my opinion.

One person (amongst many) who has really impressed me has been Neil Young - I think he has adapted greatly to the new gen of music purchasing/listening/aquiring, what comes to mind is when he released his albums 'Prairie Wind' and 'Living With War'.

First he put all tracks on his website for people to stream and listen to free of charge, then a month or so before the album(s) hit the stores Neil offers them for purchase via downloading lossless files at a cheaper cost then when the CD hits the stores. Which would work very well for bands who are primarily "studio-oriented" as Marc0 mentions.

Now of course Neil is well established and pretty much can sell an album just having his name on it, but it does impress me that he or his people have taken notice of the whole music on the internet and acted.

So, given that anyone (band or not) can easily setup a website, be it an advanced site they pay for which hosts files, has all the bells and whistles etc, or one of free sites (no file hosting, frills etc) or even a myspace they can do sorta the same as Neil does (perhaps to a lesser extend but still) and with websites like LMA out there, young bands can pretty much get their live music out to the world with little to no effort (eg: tapers will record and upload)

I can appreciate the great efforts and work involved with creating and playing music, so when I say "little to no effort" I am only refering to getting live music online.

Anyway, theres my thoughts, hope they make or made sense.

[Jordan Patrick]

I appreciate the effort, and you have a good point Alabama Man. Artists do need to adapt to current times; I recorded an album with my father, and I have to admit he's still in the basement in alot of ways. Including his adaptation to the internet. He had a Myspace addiction for a bit, just going crazy on adding friends (I swear there's got to be an automated way of adding friends).

Neil Young is an excellent example, I don't know why that didn't click in when I was browsing his site awhile back. Not enough artists are adapting to this new net-industry. But one thing I think we're trying to do is put our name out on Itunes, and sell the tracks for a buck or two a piece.

Because you're essentially right when it comes for new musicians to get they're name out- do whatever it takes.

I agree with you on the giving part to make money Jonyak, but I suppose that depends on the artist. Most people won't justify buying a CD unless they really feel for the artist. IF that. There's no key to sucess in this industry, unfortunately. You just have to hope you played your cards right. But I think we've got a few essentials down pat, let me know where I'm going wrong here for the 'Live with Album' types:

1) Give people a few demo tracks (or complete album) to get hooked on.

2) Get out and play routinely.

3) Promote your shows using word-o-mouth, posters, the internet, and maybe the papers.

4) Enjoy yourself.

[dave-O]

I guarantee you that the author of this blog never spent months agonizing over a lyric, melody or riff.

[geomouse]

A lot of good points here for sure. Trouble is all audiences differ somewhat. It's hard to maintain so many avenues of traffic for your material. People will want the same delivery system over and over again once hooked. Sounds a little like an addiction but that's what any content provider really wants right?

[SaggyBalls]

The more we analyze this to try to explain the best formula for artists to profit the less time we spend making music.

If you don't want to give it away freely then don't. If you want to try to get more people out to see you by letting them try some milk before buying the cow and they just want to come back to get another glass of milk when it's around then charge them for that if it'll make your butter.

Business efforts of any kind are still efforts, so your opinions matter, but every band has its own kind of audience. Having great sounding live recordings - shows that are nice and loud sound as good as a Studio CD will at louder volumes - that's how they were created, right? so that's why they're available on Archive.org - for free! Go check that place out and get something else while you're there...(cross promotion)

If you can get people talking about you or shouting about you then the people want a piece of it. Sometimes it's easier to get rid of something if it's $2 or $10 rather than for free and to have it get taken seriously.