2cents on Music

Ashley Morgan is sharing his view of the music industry again……I bet they wish he wasn’t so out of tune with their little agenda. Hahaha out of tune. Getit?

2cents from me:

Recording reasonable quality music in your garage is so cheap these days – I remember 15 years ago when my band recorded a couple of tunes it was a huge investment for us. Nowadays, a computer and soundcard simply slash the price of getting music down. That alone means you can pretty much give away the music.

Give it away, get listeners. Listeners = demand. Demand means you can be sure your gigs will be packed. Go play gigs. Sell T-shirts. Sell live recordings of the gig immediately afterwards. Auction off the bloody guitar you played the gig on. The money is there. I’m pretty sure I read the bit about selling live recordings in Wired, but I’m gonna claim the auctioning off of the guitar as my own idea.

What people are really scared of is that the file sharing gives immediate feedback on how good or bad your music really is. Write a good tune and it will go everywhere. Write a crap tune and no-one will download it.

And that brings into question why you are playing music in the first place. Is it to live large? Do you want the super star Robbie Williams lifestyle? Or do you want to play your music?

There’s an old joke about two guitarist chatting – you know the ones – the guys for whom integrity is everything – playing music from the soul sticking it to the man -
Guitar Dude1: “hey why aren’t you woodshedding”
Guitar Dude2: “meh….it’s such a slippery slope – you practice, you get better. you get better you get more fans. you get more fans, you get a record contract. you get a record contract and they tell you what to play. then you’re the man”
Guitar Dude1: “It’s a slippery slope”