100 Hundred Thousand

[dnf777]

Originally Posted by kurth

yep...we were fooled again. Everything that converts to the digital realm becomes worthless to the creators. And those numbers just reflect the legal downloads. Most of the world is torrent'ing them for free. First death was photography, now music, next cinema. Then we'll just accept AI to do it all for free. Create nothing and be happy. But it was all so convenient.

I really REALLY wish I had an argument contrary to your comment, but I fear you are spot on correct.

Spent last night shivering around a burn barrel listening to a beautiful young lady singing/playing original tunes for all 8 of us in the “crowd” with as much heart and soul as if she were Chris Stapleton singing to a packed superbowl crowd.

I know that for me, NOTHING can or will replace those human moments. (But they keep trying anyway)

[kurth]

Originally Posted by dnf777

I really REALLY wish I had an argument contrary to your comment, but I fear you are spot on correct.

Spent last night shivering around a burn barrel listening to a beautiful young lady singing/playing original tunes for all 8 of us in the “crowd” with as much heart and soul as if she were Chris Stapleton singing to a packed superbowl crowd.

I know that for me, NOTHING can or will replace those human moments. (But they keep trying anyway)

I really wish I never had to arrive at that conclusion, and even worse. And I totally agree about live music. And we all play live music to ourselves hopefully everyday. I was lucky enough to live, listen and sometimes even play during it's hayday of the 60's, 70's &80's in a music town. One thing I've been working on for about 10 years jaja....is a doc on the local street music scene in the town I live now. I love being able to still want to give out my pesos when I hear a reasonably good musician faring their way on the local buses. We have a very lively cultural phenomenon of street sounds. I hear someone playing somewhere every time I set foot in town, although today my bus trip included a clown instead. cheers

[DupleMeter]

There are several proposals going before congress to make sure content creators (like songwriters) get paid fairly for their work. If you are concerned, make sure you reach out to your representative(s) and let them know how you feel & what you want done about it.

You can also refuse to release your own music on platforms known to profit off of the work of others (i.e. Spotify), and band together with other artists to release music together at a grass roots level that caters to fans & treats the artists fairly.

Nothing will get better if we don't take steps to make them better.

[Mandobart]

I'm not a songwriter or composer. The only recording I've done is demos for festival applications.

I have a few friends who are songwriters. One is out pursuing his dream, landing opening act gigs locally for folks like Loretta Lynn's granddaughter or Conway Twitty's grandson on the casino circuit. He is planning on releasing a CD this year. He knows the shows and merch are the only avenues to make any income at all, small as it may be.

Another friend writes songs in the "bro/modern country" genre. Every week he has a new contact, producer, etc. that he's sure will land him all kinds of downloads and eventually he'll sell one of his tunes to some famous hat and be on easier street (he's basically destitute now).

Another friend writes pretty good folk/Americana songs. He does it strictly for the sake of creating. Like me he has a "real job." I don't know if he even put anything on YouTube.

I believe for most not (or not yet) known touring or recording artists that don't have another source of income for paying the bills, it's a tough choice to make and stick with to pursue music as a vocation (as opposed to an avocation like most AGF'ers).

I've played lots of gigs and public performances over the decades. I've contributed on a handful of albums. I'm at the point now where I no longer like much about studio work. For me it's boring, repetitive, desired end product is too loosely defined, too much work for ever diminishing returns.

Likewise the loading, unload, setup, reload, etc. of regular gigging has lost its charm. My happy places musically are social gathering with other players to make music with or without an audience. I particularly like campground jams at bluegrass or gypsy jazz festivals. Just making music and memories, not money.

[DCCougar]

Originally Posted by AcousticDreams

....with so many people creating that it is harder for the newbie to enter the pro field of music in which to earn a living...

That's for dang sure. You might as well buy a powerball ticket. But I've always enjoyed recording anyway, multitracking, playing several parts, even though I'm much more a player than a recording technician. Never messed with midi, all audio, all the time...

[DCCougar]

Originally Posted by Mandobart

....Just making music and memories, not money.

This site needs an "up vote" button!

[FrankHudson]

Pedantic point first: I've read a couple of variations on this 100,000 tracks a day uploaded or other similar huge numbers. Those numbers were inflated to make a point. A year or so ago I was going to write on the quote the OP cited and found some folks applying basic sanity checking to the claim and finding it faulty. You may counter, "Well, whatever, there's a lot of music out there on Spotify, YouTube, Soundcloud, et al." We'd agree on that.

Moving on to a few points I'll make then:

It's both much, much easier to make a recording and distribute today. I don't know enough about the economics of how well things pay vs. "the olden days" of my youth. But from what I've read making money from being a recording act was not easy then. Many artists got little or nothing. Record company accounting was notoriously shoddy. Even mid-level acts that members of my generation would easily recall never recouped advances and promotion, and so ending their careers "in the hole" at the completion of their recording contract.* Those advances paid for $500 Les Pauls and lots of recreational chemicals and tour support, so there's that, but the business wasn't as generous as we may have thought it was.

And lots of records then sold in very small numbers. Ask vinyl collectors, they've got stories.

Not everyone back then was The Beatles or The Bee Gees as far as recording revenue, and Beyonce and Ed Sheeran aren't putting in for shifts at the 7-11 to make rent this month either. My rough understanding is that mid-level artists are again getting the worst of our present system, likely worse than the "old days." I do suspect that songwriters much less producers and technical recording fields have a harder time.

Getting a few thousand dollars for millions of Spotify streams may not be perfect, but then I don't know if we can say the same act would have those million streams or more revenue if they could take a time machine trip.

To save money and time, my own recording work now is non-revenue. I think it would cost me more money to try to make money than I would recoup. I've been able to get not millions of streams, but I have got over 100,000 streams listening to my musical forays. 45 years ago, a few hundred bought my band's recording done by the same guy who did the first Husker Du recordings. I get an audience now around a hundred folks a day from all over the world--and those things are tiny and totally un-notable in the current "I went viral" Internet counting world.

In summary, yes artists have it hard now. Maybe worse than some other times in my lifetime, at least for some artists in some ways. But it's not all doom and gloom.


*The book Star Making Machinery by Geoffrey Stokes concerning Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen is one case in point.

[rick-slo]

Example of recent digital activity payment range on my account per stream or download:

Tik Tok $0.00 stream of one tune

Apple iTunes $0.637 download of one tune.

Most activity is streams at a fraction of a penny per stream.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by FrankHudson

Pedantic point first: I've read a couple of variations on this 100,000 tracks a day uploaded or other similar huge numbers. Those numbers were inflated to make a point. A year or so ago I was going to write on the quote the OP cited and found some folks applying basic sanity checking to the claim and finding it faulty. You may counter, "Well, whatever, there's a lot of music out there on Spotify, YouTube, Soundcloud, et al." We'd agree on that.

"Those numbers were inflated to make a point."...... But are they ? curious why you would think that ?

Currently the according to one 3 party statistics blog https://www.demandsage.com/youtube-s...e%20and%20Apps.
Youtube alone,,, has over 2.6 billion active users
And over 720,000 hours of video's are uploaded per day ..

Youtube claims 3.7 million new video's uploaded per day

So wether in hours or number of videos, the question would then be what % would be actual music video's or "tracks" ??


I don't know, but given the 100.000 tracks per day is for all streaming platforms not just YT,
So if we say that 50% of all tracks uploaded, are to YouTube so 50,000 (which I am betting is conservative, I would guess more in the 60% to 75 % range (but that is just speculation )
And if there are 3.7 million videos per day then that 50% or 50,000 tracks represents only 1.35 % of upload's as being music videos...

If we say 60% @60,000 tracks is then 1.62 %

If we say 75% or 75,000 tracks would mean only 2.02 % of the videos uploaded would be music videos, (which I am guessing is still probably still a pretty conservative number ???)

So all in all ,, it seems to me that statistically 100,000 tracks per day , may not be all that inflated

[FrankHudson]

I abandoned my idea to write something about the quote in the OP and another similar one that was making the rounds in Twitter and elsewhere a year or so ago. I may have taken some notes, but haven't dug them out, but my memory says it might have been something along the lines that it could only makes sense if you count anything uploaded as if it was a unique music recording.

A lot of folks have YouTube accounts and never upload any original music recording, or even upload anything. There' a lot of music on YouTube that's just existing recordings, often in multiple duplicates. YouTube is not alone in the accounts vs. content uploaders. Think of how many members the AGF has vs. how many you see posting regularly.

Back to that duplicates issue. I distribute my music via a podcast service, even though I'm not doing the usual chat-chat talk-talk podcast thing. Every piece I sent to my podcast host goes out to nearly a dozen (I honestly don't keep track) services. Does that count as 12 songs? Not in any fair accounting I can think of. If I was to use one of the music release services, another group of places (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube etc) would get the identical song all with one simple upload on my part. And if I was ever to do that, I'd likely use the "Greatest Hits" from my more than six years of my Project, so those songs would be duplicated twice over.

Now should I count that large number from one recording I once wrote to my hard drive as part of the 100,000? I'd think not.

If one thinks it should, because after all they are all recordings out there in discreet places, would you have considered how many thousands of songs were out there 30-50 years ago when any single physical record release would put thousands of duplicate copies out into record stores all over the world?

In the end, the "it's not 100,000" is just a point of accuracy and maybe a little tempering of degree regarding the issue. I'm not disputing that we have a lot more music creators with access to recording technology and distribution methods. That has changed things in ways that are good and bad.