Casio CZ/ VZ/ FZ - Pro Series

look, this all seems a little out of hand for an OT discussion. it's
fun to think about, but my only point is that it seems to me that it's
harder to make a living as an independent musician than it used to be
when people bought more music. that's not rocket science!

i only posted in the first place because it seemed to me like you were
saying that people who complain about diminishing revenue from record
sales are just whiners and should be on CDbaby or something. i know
you probably weren't really saying exactly that, but i thought another
perspective wouldn't hurt.

forget about my own situation, i'm kind of sorry i ever brought it
into the mix; my decisions have been made for my own reasons which are
largely not pecuniary at all, as you've pointed out.

but it is absolutely true that many musicians who i consider my
friends, whose work i have known and respected for many years, and who
have been in the game for a long-ass time, are no longer able to tour
self-sufficiently in this country. some of that has to do with oil
prices and other factors, but a huge part of it is the much, much,
much-reduced market for physical copies of recordings, and the fact
that the independent distributors and brick-and-mortars are gone,
replaced by digital entities which probably don't have the same
interests at heart (e.g., they are "not punk.")

some people can deal with this by evolving into new, sleeker beasts...
other people are really used to supporting themselves on the old indie
model of selling your own records directly (or at least more directly)
to the people who want to hear it (which makes sense to me).

incidentally, these people largely rely on making music in groups,
with other people, with real instruments, which all entails a large...
um, meat-space commitment. meat music. maybe that's relevant.

digital distribution as it exists now is centralized and diembodied.
some musical cultures are already well adapted to those attributes,
others really are not, and have always been driven by localized,
face-to-face experiences.

also, i'm talking about styles of music that will never produce
"hits." they never have. and yet, people make the music, spend their
whole lives at it, and other people listen to the music, and some kind
of money has to change hands somewhere to keep the cycle going.

anyway, it's really really weird right now for independent (or maybe
"underground" is a better term) musicians and labels, who don't have
the luxury of experimentating with their revenue model. all i ask is
that you please don't dismiss the issue.


On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 5:49 PM, ezra buchla <ezra.buchla@...> wrote:
>> Yeah, and if you think you have to cater to the fickle trends of the
>> masses now, if you were to live in a world where musicians worked under
>> patronage of a 'powerful individual', you'd have to be content writing
>> songs with titles like "All Hail Super Wonderous Godlike Bill Gates
>> Hero", or "Ode To The Greatest Being Ever Conceived: Adolf Hitler" for
>> the rest of your life...
>
> ha! i know, i'd much rather just be able to sell a few records... ;)
>