General Music Chat

ppp

Why even bother being a musician? There's no future in it. Trash your amps and instruments. There's no hope for any of you. The system is rigged. There's no way you can make money in the music business so DON'T EVEN BOTHER. If Christian can't succeed nobody can...

This is kinda funny really.

Never in history has music been as WIDE OPEN as it is now. Your whole premise is that labels control everything, through payola style practices.

1) Major Labels had FAR MORE influence in the 50's and 60's than they do now.

2) The Major Labels are DYING. They are becoming so irrelevant and so desperate that they are SUING the fans now.

3) The internet, and sites like MySpace and many others, as well as the commonality and widespread use of good quality computers, makes recording music, and even distributing it now, simple and effective.


THERE ARE NO LEGITIMATE EXCUSES NOW for not getting your music out there, and having it heard, marketing it, and even selling it.

What are radio stations anyway?

That's something I listen to for TALK RADIO and SPORTS!

For music? I have MP3 players and CD's and any number of ways of playing them through my vehicle's speakers. Modern listeners effectively make their own radio stations now, through playlists on their MP3 players, or a compilation CD they recorded on their computers and listen to in their cars.

There are MP3 players, CD's, and now Satellite Radio.

How do you get from that, to Major Labels having a lock on ANYTHING?

Your treatise belongs in the 1960's NOT the 2000's

There is more diversity and variety in music, and more ways and places to listen to it all, then EVER before!

If no one is hearing someone's music today, then...

1) That artist isn't trying

or...

2) Their music may just not be worth listening to

.....................................

Metallica did it back in the 80's with 'no' radio airplay.
Just a fan club, a 'compilation of new metal acts' type indie album, and word of mouth.

But then, they were no ordinary rabbit.

Metallica did it back in the 80's with 'no' radio airplay.
Just a fan club, a 'compilation of new metal acts' type indie album, and word of mouth.

Exactly!

Think about groups like Phish. Like them or not, MILLIONS do, and pay well to be a part of it all.

With almost NO radio play or MTV or any major media exposure, JUST THROUGH WORD OF MOUTH, they became at one point one of the TOP 10 grossing live acts around.

Several of their concerts have been so large, that for two of them, held in Maine, they rented out an abandoned military base or something, and 65,000 people showed up for it, building an actual city, with restaurants, banks, you name it. They repeated this later, and TWICE, they were credited with having the LARGEST CITY IN MAINE!!!

Imagine. A band, who's followers literally became the LARGEST CITY in an American state, not once, but TWICE!!!

They were simply a college jam band, who stayed together for 20 YEARS before breaking up the first time. They circulated their mix tapes of their music for free on casette, early on, and people passed them around to one another. Not good business right? And yet, THEY ARE ALL multi-millionaires now! With a following as loyal as dead heads.

If the music is good, If the concept is unique. If you are worth people talking about... SUCCESS WILL COME!

And no radio station, no record label or anyone else, will stop it!

PHISH CONCERT IN MAINE:

As a point of interest I have to thank Christianlee for his effort in explaining one part of corrupt ways in this country.
It is time to move on and I love the extremely positive attitude that you put forth Mr Craig.Few people could have said it better than you did in so few words. What happened? your computer run out of ink? Anyway right arm ,farm out, and cool beanz.

Gonghead,

I feel more like I was being REALISTIC, rather than being negative.

In my mind, the negativity was more in the tone of the original post. I think this could be beared out by Bob's tongue in cheek response to it. By default, the poster is almost saying that THERE IS NO HOPE for artists, because the system is skewed against you. It is entirely possible, that some people WOULD read that as defeatest in nature, and be a blow toward them thinking "Why even try?"

In providing alternative information and views, I am suggeting this is not correct at all. That there are MANY alternatives, to traditional radio airplay, which is becoming almost as meaningless these days as getting a major label deal.

In fact, we've had some very serious discussions here, about whether getting a major label deal is even a good thing. I started a thread detailing how the monies break down on a typical first contract for a new artist or band, and not only do they not profit much from a top selling first album, but they can, in all seriousness, be IN THE HOLE to the record label. Not every band has a second and third album of high quality originals to follow that first album with. These are good contracts for the record labels, but generally, bad contracts for the up and coming artist.

Successful acts are abandoning the major labels, and this is increasing as time passes.

I think it is more helpful for artists to get the FULL STORY rather than partial information that is questionable.

The poster seems to suggest that Major Labels control which bands are successful or not. This is simply not the case any longer.

I get that you don't care for me much. That's fine. I piss people off all the time. But facts are still facts, whether you like who is presenting them or not.

Craig I was saying just the opposite I thought your post was so on target.Negative no no. I said you were being extremely positive.
EVERY THING YOU WROTE WAS RIGHT ON < FAROUT[the truth] And really cool beanz all around.
I couldn't have written it better. Is it that easy to misinterpret stuff up here?
Craig ,I was trying to agree with everything you wrote,Especially the part about not trying hard enough,,,,,, or your music aint that good.
I like your posts because they are so POSITIVE, thanxs

From my perspective the radio is irrelevent.
I have not gone to radio for music in years as it has become more advertisement than music. And the music, well, I wont even go their other than to say it,s mostly pop crap redux.
I get better music entertainment here, or going to the coffee shop to hear a local band, or Neanderpaul.
Even as a Christian musician I cannot listen to the same ten bubble pop Christian songs being played over and over ad nausium.

No Craig is dead on. Radio is for talk show host and hunting shows.
Perhaps a weather or traffic report while traveling.

The music industry has indeed changed into diffuse ways.
Perhaps it will solidify again.
Local live venues will return to the forefront of music intertainment for the true connoisseur. That is my prediction, for what it's worth.

OMG! LOL

My apologies Gonghead.

It read as sarcasm, especially with the Mr. Craig, and asking whether I had run out of ink. But when I went back and looked, I thought, "Man, why did he pick this post to pick on? It wasn't really that long. Not compared to my usual standards of verbosity!"

And what's worse...

I got a friend request from Christian Lee, and spent the last half hour researching him.

Turns out he is not what he presents himself to be!

I started a post called "The Cold Truth About Christian Lee" and it was juicy and full of my findings. But when I posted it, all the text disappeared and it posted an EMPTY message.

I was like: "Maybe God doesn't want me exposing Mr. Lee this badly in public?"

More likely, I took too long to post it. LOL

LOL

Craig, I'm SO glad you posted this. I was just on the phone with Glen (Gonghead) and he was wanting me to see this and see where he went wrong in his reply to you. He looks at me as an unofficial mod on here because nothing gets under my skin and I just look at things the way they are written. You've taken care of that for me on this. Yeah, he wrote just what he was feeling and you took it as sarcasm at first, but then went back and saw it for what it was. He really meant he was on your side about this and when he used the term "Mr. Craig", it was out of respect. Good to see that you go back and re-read the comments. Some people don't, and then that leads to unnecessary confrontations and communication breakdown. Kudos to you for this. Nothing like a level headed musician when it comes to forums, whether you agree or disagree, or agree to disagree. You're a gentleman and a knowledgeable person and I'm glad to know you in an internet sort of way.

I got a friend request from Christian Lee, and spent the last half hour researching him.

Turns out he is not what he presents himself to be!

I started a post called "The Cold Truth About Christian Lee" and it was juicy and full of my findings.

Craig, during the time period you've been gone there's been an influx of certain types of topics and posts that have been coming around here.

There are people who have been using a spammer/blogger-whore tactic to generate traffic to their sites. Once a certain amount of traffic is generated, they then try to use that info to get advertisers to pay them to advertise on their blog site (or any other site it generates traffic to). It's something I'm noticing more and more these days.

Somewhere along the way this has been considered a "must do" tactic by spammers who have convinced artists that's it's their only chance to internet success. And how do you acquire such knowledge about promoting yourself? You guessed it, by paying the blogging spammers for the information and or services.

If you notice, Christian Lee doesn't respond to any of his OPs. That's because most likely, he isn't writing them. you can hire this kind of spammage to be done for you.

Wanna know what the real kicker is? By deciding to research him out, you actually bumped his traffic count that much more. That's to be expected with this kind of tactic to generate a false count of daily traffic in order to generate paying advertisers.

The spammer/blog hook that they use to phish with is evident in his (or his paid spammer's) posts. They want people to believe that he's an industry insider/artist that knows the ropes and you need to follow his blogs in order to always keep up with his insider knowledge. Translation=Come to my websites, boost my daily count so I can solicit paying advertisers.

Sometimes when it IS actually the artist posting these "knowledgeable insights into the world you don't know but need to", and you call them out on it, the response usually looks like this: "Sheesh, I was just trying to help educate people, what's wrong with you people?"

It's total bullshit, they just want to do exactly what I described before. Generate traffic to their sites for an inflated traffic count.

I personally can't tell whether it is actually Christian Lee "bad boy outlaw" that's posting these or a hired spammer. But the motives behind the topics are very clear to me. It happens on a lot of music type forums these days.

Do you remember our good friend Dez? Doesn't the concept look familiar? Wonder how his blogging/ insider information business is going?

Moe is another Jam band that gets no radio play but has a huge following,
I think you just have to do what ever you do best and enjoy what you do, and have fun and try to enjoy life, music, and the world the best you can while you have so little time on it.

Sure the record companies have their deals, they also work their butts off and have huge investments, it's part of that biz, there's also a huge underground business, sometimes the two intermingle, not often ... just when things are right.

I wouldn't sweat it and just have fun doing what you do and don't wory what other forces are doing...you are your own force.