Reddit reviews Free Ride: How Digital Parasites Are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back

Piracy will slowly destroy all niche arts.

Mainstream artists can survive the hit of piracy much easier than small niche artists because they have more revenue sources available to them, plus they appeal to a much bigger potential audience.

Hardcore music fans of today are spoiled. For only $5 a month they get access to almost all the music they'd ever want to listen to. When your power users only pay $5 a month, the same as a casual listener, that's a big problem.

Some good, non academic, books about this topic (though they do cite actual data/studies):

http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Crash-Killing-Creative-Class/dp/0300195885

http://www.amazon.com/Free-Ride-Parasites-Destroying-Business/dp/0307739775

I make music myself and know what it approximately takes to craft certain kinds of music. The loss of revenue from music sales forces musicians to tour more than they'd like to.

If some of my favorite musicians of the pre-internet era had to tour as much as Mac DeMarco, they would have never made the albums they've made. The time and energy they invested in songwriting/production to morph a good song into an amazing song would, instead, today get invested in touring a couple of extra months.

Don't let your kids go into any business where the main product can be digitized, unless it's the video game industry. You will save them a lot of frustration.

There's plenty of research, data and interviews with current musicians and label owners in these books:

https://www.amazon.com/Freeloading-Insatiable-Content-Starves-Creativity/dp/1935928996
https://www.amazon.com/Free-Ride-Parasites-Destroying-Business/dp/0307739775
https://www.amazon.com/How-Music-Got-Free-Obsession/dp/0143109340

Steely Dan for an example stopped touring in 1974, they broke up in 1980. They were able to sustain themselves and pay studio musicians for 6 years with JUST record sales.

A band like Steely Dan could be viewed as indie imo despite selling millions, they do not have a lot of catchy songs, they never catered to their audience and became less and less catchy as their career progressed.

Bands that are viewed as indie today (St. Vincent, Mac DeMarco, whatever) would have had a lot more money if they had careers in the 70s/80s/90s, they wouldn't have to tour so much. They'd lead more balanced lives and focus on songwriting more and not just endless touring.

In the UK you had a band like 10cc which is similar to Steely Dan, they didn't tour much, just lived in the studio and made records. Not possible anymore.

So, ok, we lost these kind of studio bands. What did we gain exactly? Amateurs being able to upload their bad songs on Soundcloud and get fake likes/comments from bots?

Sure it is cheaper to record today, but since there is little money in music, a musician has to play the role of the songwriter, recording engineer, arranger, mixer, businessman. He can't afford to get help from people who specialize in recording, or writing lyrics, or arranging. People who are amazing at songwriting, lyrics, recording and mixing all at the same time and extremely rare.

Now a guy that just wants to write songs has to waste his time learning how to record cos' there's no music industry to support him anymore. He has to learn about how to connect stuff together, about acoustics, about some electrical stuff related to audio... In the past he could have just focused on his songs, his record label would get him help from audio engineers and producers and pay for the recording of his songs.

I am talking about bands that I personally like the music of, bands that can't exist anymore in today's music climate. How much more indie can you get than that? They were not outliers back when they were in their prime. They often lived from JUST record sales.

I don't know what kind of indie musicians you talk about? Local bands or something? I mean, every artist starts locally and if they have good enough songs and are promoted well, they start making actual money.

I'm saying that even those local bands would have been better off in the past than today, the average payout per gig today is almost the same as it was in the 90s... the money local live musicians earn hasn't even adjusted for inflation. This data is presented in one of these books I think, but there's also data about it on the net.

Free Ride: How Digital Parasites Are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight

Had to read it for a class. It was really boring.