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What You Need To Know If You Are Seeking A Full-Time Career In The Professional Audio Industry
Author: Andrew Yankiwski
1. The path to becoming an audio industry professional The path to becoming and audio industry professional is not so clearly marked as with many other professions and vocations. If you wish to obtain a job as a lawyer, accountant, doctor, nurse, pharmacist, engineer, architect or in countless other fields, good information on the prerequisites, educational costs and career opportunities for each field is readily available to those who make even the least amount of effort. Yet there are no such simple answers for those who wish to become a recording engineer, mix engineer, mastering engineer, producer, soundtrack composer, sound designer, etc. The educational framework that is readily available to students in the audio industry consists of private institutions whose curricula are not nearly so standardized and regulated as those in more traditional fields served by universities, technical colleges and public vocational schools. The costs of audio industry education are often considerable, but questions arise about the quality of education and whether job placements really meet the expectations of the students who enter these programs. If you are exploring a full-time long-term career in the professional audio industry, this article seeks to provide you with some of the key information that you will need to make informed choices about education, career prospects and what it takes to become successful in these often uncharted waters.
2. Industry background It is impossible to formulate a recipe for success in the audio industry without first understanding the background of the audio industry throughout the latter part of the 20th century and how this compares to the state of the industry today.
The professional audio industry began in the early 20th century with audio engineers who were little more than technicians in radio stations and early recording studios. By the late 1950s most of the basic technological advances that still form the basis of professional audio today had emerged in their modern state: multichannel sound, multitrack recording and post-production techniques. The basic manufacturing model was also in place for the distribution of inexpensive playback systems (stereo hi-fi systems) and physical media (records and tapes) that the public could purchase in order to enjoy these recordings .
Professional recordings of musical artists required an essential chain of organizations and personnel in order to become successful releases. The organizations involved included an artist, record label, recording studio, manufacturing plant, radio stations, music publications, retail record sales outlets and concert promoters.
Artists were typically individual musicians or small groups of musicians - they provided the musical composition and performance itself. Record labels typically employed A&R representatives, producers, a marketing team and distributors. The labels provided A&R people to recognize musical talent and the potential for a marketable recording, the financial backing to pay for the recording process, producers and arrangers to maximize the artistic potential of each recording, marketing personnel to arouse commercial interest in the recording and distributors to transport and place the finished product in retail outlets. Studios employed recordists, mix engineers, mastering engineers and session musicians - these technicians optimally captured the musicians' performance via the recording process and maximized the sonic potential of the recording through technical enhancements which would ultimately be output as a master recording. The manufacturing plant employed technicians and equipment that enabled the mass production of the recording to standards that would faithfully transcribe the master recording to mass-produced formats that listeners would ultimately play on their hi-fi sets (typically tape or vinyl). Radio stations employed DJs who would seek-out noteworthy recordings from among those sent to them by the labels and give them broadcast airplay in order to entice listeners, to whom radio advertisers also catered. Music publications employed journalists who reviewed recordings, wrote articles and conducted interviews of interest to music fans in order to entice readers, to whom print advertisers also catered. Retail sales outlets ordered stock in albums in order to profit from mark-up on the sale of recordings in the form of physical media. Concert promoters coordinated tour concert dates to enhance the sales of recordings and booked appropriate venues, live sound reinforcement and facilitated ticket sales through outlets - in return for fees and a portion of the profit from such sales. This machinery of mutually dependant relationships was the foundation upon which the modern-day record industry has been based since the late 1950s - it was essentially a manufacturing model, and it bore all of the hallmarks of the traditional distribution networks and retail sales techniques employed in other manufacturing-based industries.
In 1982 the world entered the digital recording age with the introduction of the Compact Disc (CD). This technology had relatively little impact on recording studios, which would still continue to utilize primarily analog recording technologies to create music recordings, but it did significantly impact mastering facilities and manufacturing plants who would be responsible for preparing and replicating the digital media for mass distribution to retail outlets. By about 1987 CD technology had been sonically perfected and became the only true commercially viable format - this would persist until the end of the 20th century. The original model of the industry was based on the analog formats of vinyl record and tape, but CDs proved to be an effective replacement for these earlier formats. Although very different in the way that it produced audio playback, the CD bore all the same basic product hallmarks of vinyl and tape formats - it was physical media requiring large-scale global distribution via traditional manufacturing methods and retail outlets.
This model proved to be very profitable, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s all of the major record labels worldwide were systematically purchased by worldwide conglomerates in order to increase profitability and reduce competition - soon only a handful of major worldwide labels with their numerous subsidiaries remained. Similar tactics in the concert promotion industries and radio broadcast industry led to very few large conglomerates effectively owning the vast majority of recorded music, the radio broadcast system and the concert promotion circuit. The effect of this type of ownership is that the labels and related companies were increasingly managed by teams of individuals who had little interest in music or knowledge of the music industry, but who were skilled at maximizing profit for their shareholders within the existing business model. This form of monopoly did not act in the interest of the artists or the consumers of recordings; it only served the bottom line, which was in the interest of the shareholders of the conglomerates.
During this timeframe a large variety of recording studios and post-production facilities arose to meet the needs of the labels and their high-volume output of music recordings on CD. Large and medium studios flourished, in spite of the fact that the start-up cost of even a middling facility ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars (due to the need for expensive specialized equipment and recording environments), with the costs of large facilities running into the millions. Home studios did exist in various forms, but were still relatively expensive ($20,000 - $150,000 in equipment costs) and were generally unable to produce recordings of the quality as those of the major studios. Thus individuals who wished to work in the industry as audio professionals typically had to work their way up as employees in medium and large studios, where they could be mentored by senior engineers and gain valuable experience working on costly, esoteric production equipment. A great variety of technical colleges specializing in recording technology also arose during this period. These private training institutions based their curriculum on the prevailing business model of studios and typically contained mock-ups of the types of equipment and environments in which students would ply their trade upon graduating and obtaining work in a commercial recording facility. Although these training institutions often educated individuals who would go on to become viable audio industry professionals, an informal apprenticeship was a more typical pathway to those who would become the great engineers and producers of this generation. Their most valuable experience in the field was still primarily obtained on-the-job as they rose through the ranks from menial tasks to increasingly important roles within successful studios alongside engineers and producers who had perfected their craft during the earlier period of modern recording techniques.
By the 1990s new technologies began to emerge that would lay the foundation for a means of producing and distributing music in an increasingly digital world. In 1991 the first fully digital studio entered the professional studio arena - Digidesign's ProTools hardware and software was a fully functional recording and engineering environment designed to move studios away from traditional analog recording methods and toward a production workflow entirely in the digital realm. Engineers who had been reared on analog gear were reluctant to adopt the new digital technology, but many studios who made the move found that they were able to hire one ProTools proficient engineer to replace the work of several engineers using traditional recording methods. ProTools studio environments were still relatively costly, but were considerably cheaper than earlier digital recording solutions and traditional analog consoles and recorders.
During the same time-frame the MP3 and the World Wide Web also became a reality. For years music enthusiasts had dreamed of highly portable solid-state music players capable of storing large libraries of digitally-encoded music which could also be readily searched and traded. The infrastructure necessary for this was the proliferation of the Internet/Word Wide Web and the advent of the MP3 format in 1994. MP3 encoders offered a means for music enthusiasts to encode their collections of CDs (and earlier formats once digitally converted) to relatively small MP3 data files which could be stored on hard-disks and indexed, searched and traded on the Web. Early adopters began trading both original and commercial music through sites such as MP3.com. Digital studio technology and Web-based music distribution were poised to supplant the existing model - it was only a matter of time.
In 1998 Hilary Rosen, head lobbyist for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA - the lobby group representing the major labels in the U.S.), attempted to convince the heads of the major record labels that they should consider online sales as part of a future strategy for music distribution in the years to come. The labels rejected this approach and took no interest in this new technology and the potential for sales that it represented. In 1999 Napster appeared and mass online file-sharing of MP3s had officially begun - the practice of widespread peer-to-peer files sharing of music has continued to increase in popularity ever since. The major labels continue to reject online peer-to-peer file sharing as a viable method to increase music sales into the future and have been on the defensive ever since, suing their own customers in widely publicized legal battles wherein private citizens have little hope of sustaining law suits against corporations with inconceivably deep pockets.
3. Current status - an industry in transition Since 1999 there have been many rapid and fundamental advancements in home computer hardware and software which have rendered many traditional recording techniques and distribution methods obsolete in a surprisingly short period of time. Not surprisingly, many professionals entrenched in the traditional audio industry have resisted these changes. It is important to understand the most significant changes and how they have threatened the status quo while at the same time promising a new renaissance in both music production and distribution, the most vital since the golden age of recording during the 1950s and 1960s.
With the approach of the new millennium, digital recording technology would become vitally important in two very different arenas: professional studios and the home-recording market. Professional studios had been reluctantly adopting Digidesign's ProTools recording solution since its advent in the early 1990s. By the year 2000 few studios could be competitive without at least one ProTools workstation and an engineer to operate it. When compared with traditional analog recording techniques, the workflow of ProTools was much more efficient and thus enhanced profitability in an increasingly competitive environment. ProTools turned a high-end desktop computer into a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) via DSP (Digital Signal Processing) hardware - it relied on this specialized hardware in addition to its software interface and a host computer (typically a high-specification Apple Mac). ProTools evolved this sort of approach due to the fact that desktop computers in the 1990s were largely unable to perform professional audio recording and editing without the additional horsepower of add-on chipsets. Due to the need for specialized hardware, a ProTools setup had the virtue of being much less costly than most traditional recording systems but still too expensive for the home-studio and hobbyist market (a full-blown ProTools system typically cost between $10,000 and $100,000 which was far cheaper than the multi-million dollar setups that many high-end analog studios ran throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but still beyond the reach of most project studios). The majority of engineers did not like the digital audio sound of recordings made in ProTools, and were reluctant to let-go of their high-end mixing consoles in favour a computer, monitor and mouse. Yet none could deny the powerful, time-saving non-linear editing and mixing features that allowed engineers to complete projects in a fraction of the time when compared with traditional techniques.
The more exciting adoption of digital recording technology would occur within the ranks of project studios and home recording enthusiasts during the late 1990s and into the new millennium. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s home studios had been utilizing early MIDI sequencing and digital recording software (such as Steinberg's Cubase and Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge) that ran on standard home computers. These programs were native-based DAW systems - the opposite of DSP systems like ProTools. Native systems are entirely software-based systems that utilize only the computing power of the host computer system itself - no outboard DSP hardware is required to operate them. As home computers became increasingly powerful during the late 1990s a number of these software programs began to mature and provide multitrack audio recording and mixing similar to that of ProTools - at a fraction of the cost (typically for around $1000 one could turn their computer into a rudimentary digital recording studio). Software packages such as Cubase, Logic, Cakewalk, Digital Performer and Acid were initially somewhat limited in their digital audio recording, editing and mixing capabilities due to the comparatively low power of the desktop host computers on which they were installed during the late 1990s, plus they also lacked the stability of ProTools. Yet for many underground artists and home-recording enthusiasts who did not have access to expensive recording studios or ProTools systems, this sort of home-computer based recording offered a way to create music on modest budgets for the first time. Innovative companies such as Steinberg, Propellerhead and Native Instruments began pushing the boundaries of this new technology with major new advancements every year that made these software recording packages more stable, powerful and flexible. This combined with the trend toward exponentially cheaper and more-powerful home computers between the years 2000 and 2006, plus an abundance of inexpensive soundcards, preamplifiers, microphones and studio monitors aimed at the project studio market during the same timeframe.
Perhaps the key aspect to this rise of home-studio recording equipment was the democratization of the recording studio. By 2004 these systems had reduced the cost of a serious recording studio to a few thousand dollars - within the reach of almost any enthusiast with a spare room in their home and a decent computer. Innovations such as virtual instruments (playable software replicas of almost any conceivable instrument - from synths and samplers to realistic renditions of traditional acoustic instruments) and virtual effects (equalizers, compressors, reverbs, etc.) began creating a new studio concept - the virtual studio, a studio that resides almost entirely inside a typical desktop or laptop computer.
4. Does the recording education system of today serve the needs of students? The rapid transition from large and medium recording studios to small project and home-based studios has created much confusion within the existing industry and many new needs within the marketplace. The traditional industry has been slow to respond to the opportunity that online file sharing presents for the future of music distribution, and equally sluggish at recognizing the opportunities that home/project recording technology will create for music production and artist development. The infrastructure of technical and vocational recording engineering schools has always looked to the mainstream industry when developing their curricula, as this industry has been the typical destination for graduates of such schools. The result has been a mainstream industry which is attempting to preserve an antiquated business model, with the vast majority of recording engineering schools churning-out graduates with outdated skill-sets who are seeking employment in an industry which is currently downsizing. For the last decade, very few graduates of these schools have been able to obtain long-term full-time employment in the music industry in the coveted roles of producer, recording engineer, mix engineer, mastering engineer, etc.
The schools that have attempted to modernize their training-methods emphasize training on Digidesign's ProTools HD recording system, as it is the current standard within the mainstream recording, radio, television and Hollywood film studios. This strategy would make perfect sense if these traditional industries were to remain the dominant forms of media into the 21st century, as they had over the majority of the 20th Century. Yet if one looks at the current trends toward the major forms of consumer entertainment over the next 50 years, these current industries are unlikely to exist in their present form even 20 years from now - as a result they are very unlikely to be major employers. Major labels and Hollywood are reporting increasing losses each year as they have failed to capitalize on the Web as a means of distributing their product, preferring instead to blame illegal file-sharing for their woes and launch lawsuits against their own customers. Television and analog radio have developed an increasingly lowest-common-denominator mentality with programming that is primarily driven by advertiser's needs rather than a respect for the interests of a diverse audience. This sector of the market has been driven to increasingly moronic reality shows on television and imbecilic talk-radio programming, both featuring little to no artistic content whatsoever while at the same time insulting the intelligence of their audience with an ever-increasing audacity.
It does not take a great deal of ingenious foresight to see which industries will become major players in providing media to the market in the near future. The video and computer game industries are developing immersive and immensely profitable technology that is preferred by increasingly large segments of the youth culture as an alternative entertainment to television and movies. This is an area where sound-design on par with the sophistication of major Hollywood films is increasingly being employed in new game titles. The popularity of iTunes, My Space and You Tube only hint at the many means by which project studio musicians will distribute their product in an intangible digital form, without the significant overhead costs of the traditional industry's manufacturing model. This will allow artists to earn a living from the sale of their media without moving the exorbitant number of units that traditional CD sales would require, for a fraction of the capital cost. Podcasts and internet radio are already vastly preferred to the mindless offerings of mainstream radio by any individual who possesses even the most rudimentary intellectual capacity - these are already serving as successful vehicles for independent artists who have no access to the monopolized marketing of the mainstream industry. It is in these promising new industries that the student of today must prepare to flourish, not in some non-existent career at a television station, movie studio or radio station on the verge of extinction.
Thus the existing recording education system rests upon 2 false premises:
1. The skills that students need are based-upon traditional employment in the mainstream recording studios, radio, television and film industries.
2. The only digital music production platform that they need to learn is the industry standard ProTools HD system.
This system is producing an increasing number of graduates that are ill-equipped to compete in the emerging music industry and are disillusioned with the meager employment prospects available.
5. Alternate education methods
So what are the education alternatives for students who are seeking permanent full-time employment in the music industry of the next 50 years? While there is no one easy answer to this question, there are perhaps more exciting opportunities for students than ever before.
The fundamental important realization that students must make is that the majority of desirable work available in the audio industry is performed by independent contractors rather than employees. Independent contractors are entirely responsible for the direction of their own careers. Of course, getting work in the first place depends upon having the skills to complete the work, and the portfolio to demonstrate these skills. This requires a very self motivated and self-directed education in music production.
The initial step is for students to recognize the key areas in which they require skills:
The next step is developing a strategy to acquire skills in all of these areas, demonstrate current skill level via a portfolio and continuously improve these skills over time in order to become increasingly competitive. It is essential that students acquire information from online articles, books and periodicals. However, This information is useless without practical skills. Students should always use texts in combination with music production as research and development. When a student works in this manner, the formerly abstract descriptions of the text will take shape with each new production project. It is also very important to re-read texts over time in order to glean a more detailed understanding of fundamental audio concepts, many of which are exceedingly difficult for the beginner as they rely upon a host of variables that interact in a complex manner. Learning the fundamentals of the music production process can be discouraging at first; each student must have faith that an ongoing commitment by the student to continue experimenting in order to fill-in gaps in one's knowledge will ultimately lead them to a mastery of the art. It is very important that work in these areas be taken on in a piecemeal and systematic manner by the student. It is also takes time, so students must be prepared to produce dozens of completed recordings over a period of years in order to acquire skills that are at an entry-level of the professional sphere. Once one is at a professional level, continuing education and self-directed learning is necessary to stay abreast of musical innovations and related technological advancements.
While Digidesign's ProTools is currently the industry standard in the mainstream digital recording, it has long since ceased to be an industry leader in terms of software interface and functionality. ProTools is based on a DSP format, which is unduly expensive (a ProTools HD system starts at around $10,000 US) in the current era of powerful and inexpensive software and computing technology. ProTools' software interface was well-designed and very powerful for 1991 when it was first introduced. It has changed little since that era, and it is antiquated in both appearance and functionality by today's standards. A modern-day music production PC or Mac DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) can be purchased for about $2000 US. Native-based software such as Cubase, Logic, Sonar, Ableton Live and Reason, costs no more than $1000 US per software program (often considerably less) . These native packages (particularly Cubase) contain features that allow for comparable audio quality to ProTools systems and far more flexible, creative and forward-thinking music production techniques. Native-based music production software tools represent the next generation of innovative, professional audio production. Students may wish to learn to use ProTools in order to be current with the industry standard, but they should have in-depth knowledge of native software packages and will be far better served if they use these as their main day-to-day music production, engineering and mastering tools. This is particularly true as we enter an era in which inexpensive, true 64-Bit computing, operating systems, and software are becoming a reality along with multi-core CPUs as standard in every new consumer PC or Mac system. These burgeoning technologies will allow for mastering-studio quality recording, signal processing and playback in the home and project studio. This is an unprecedented development that students must immediately capitalize upon.
Once a student begins to acquire skills in each area of music production, it is essential that they begin to prove their capabilities by maintaining a comprehensive portfolio of the music or sound design that they have produced. The portfolio demonstrates current skill level and allows potential clients to make informed decisions about whether the skills of a particular producer fits their current needs. The best type of a portfolio is online in the form of a website. A producer's website should aesthetically pleasing but should emphasize functionality and ease of navigation above all else. The student must never sacrifice ease-of-use merely for the sake of appearance, as this is ultimately a business website. The online portfolio should contain brief biographic material, curriculum vitae and audio examples in as high resolution as is practical (typically at least 192 kbps MP3s). Audio clips should be short, yet long enough to adequately showcase the proficiency of the producer, and they should be available to stream and download. Video clips should also be included, where relevant. The online portfolio should be easy to update and kept as current as possible by the producer. It should also be hosted professionally to ensure that it is indexed in search engines and that it has sufficient bandwidth to be responsive when prospective clients are navigating it.
It is also very important to develop the business skills that are necessary to earn a living as an independent contractor. Rudiments in these areas are essential to the budding producer's ability to obtain work, develop a clientele and manage finances on an ongoing basis. The music producer as independent contractor must be able to market their skills to acquire work and negotiate agreements with clients and talent on an ongoing basis. It is also imperative that producers keep accurate books and appreciate the accounting and taxation issues that will arise in the course of business. These types of skills can often be acquired by registering for continuing education seminars and classes at vocational schools and technical colleges in combination with reading textbooks concerning each one of these more traditional business areas. Much of this sort of training is available by correspondence or online training, so it can be reasonably completed over time without interfering with a full-time regimen of music production.
6. Employment prospects Employment can be deceptive in a marketplace that is in transition. If one looks only to the chaotic state of the current mainstream industry, employment prospects seem uncertain and bleak. However, the practical outcome of the types of innovation in music production and distribution that will mature over the next twenty years is truly exciting. The democratization of the professional music industry will result in a far greater variety of opportunities for involvement from both hobbyists and full-time professionals alike. Simply put, more people will be able to make a decent living through the creation of artistically meritorious music, while there will be less of the type of profiteering, monopoly and hoarding that has come to represent the current business model of mainstream traditional media such as that produced by major record labels, Hollywood studios and television. There will be a general trend away from the traditional media and toward new media based on computer and internet-related technologies. Successful individuals working in the traditional mainstream recording industry during the last 50 years were highly specialized artists, composers, lyricists, arrangers, recordists, mix-engineers, mastering engineers, and record label personnel. The process of creating an album traditionally involved a large capital investment, expansive recording and manufacturing facilities plus many salaried individuals. These roles may now be realistically taken-on by small groups of people or even sole individuals with very modest capital input, equipment and facilities. However, the trade-off is that these individuals must be highly skilled in all of the previously-discussed areas, as they will take-on many more diverse responsibilities than were ever expected of a sole person in the past. While the learning curve will be higher, access to the necessary information is greater than ever before (via the internet) and the tools of the trade are exponentially more powerful, portable and versatile than ever before, with major improvements virtually every year. One other point worth mentioning is the argument that many commentators have made that the public will not buy music if it continues to be freely available over the internet via illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that it will be impossible to earn a living producing music in the future as there will be no revenue stream. However, a new loyalty-based buying trend is already emerging, and it is worth noting. Consumers are already beginning to use file-sharing as a means to discover and sample new music (in a way analogous to radio and homemade mix-tapes in the past). Some of the music that consumers download is simply deleted and the rest is indexed and stored for future listening. There are at present a few often-overlooked incentives for purchasing music legitimately - these will become very important in the music industry of the near future. Consumers will buy music to deliberately support and reward the artists, and also to obtain a high-resolution version of the recording and value-added items. The price per song will need to be reasonable or perhaps the costs will be based on a digital music service membership. Rest assured, once music is made available in a compact, high-quality digital file format that is easily searchable and downloadable for a fair price, consumers will gladly pay for the music that they most enjoy. This type of service does not exist at present (iTunes is closest and it still falls far short of the mark), but soon it will emerge and we will all wonder how we ever lived without it. With the advent of this service a new music production economy will burgeon, creating an abundance of opportunity and fair remuneration for music production and sound design for both hobbyists and professionals alike. Forward-thinking, well-educated producers will flourish in this new music economy. |
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Why Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing Is So
Popular
1. To learn about and discover new music. P2P file sharing presents a tremendous opportunity to learn about music. A listener can be reading online articles/reviews from a site such as allmusic.com or discogs.com while downloading albums and evaluating their content. In the space of just a few hours one can sample an unprecedented amount of music from a great range of genres and eras. The downloads are then culled-through and much of the music is deleted, leaving only the truly worthwhile items to be organized and archived. The music search and discovery is not limited to what is physically available in a store and the listener is not subjected to marketing schemes which try to push disposable music at the expense of art. This type of unfettered research and the subsequent reward is also a very enjoyable pastime for serious music lovers, many of whom recall just how difficult, expensive and time-consuming this process was only a few years ago, prior to the advent of this technology.
2. To obtain music using the most efficient technology. P2P services have offered the best technology for music downloading since their inception. No paid service currently compares to the breadth of music readily available via P2P at any given moment. All of this music is readily searchable using just the fragment of an artist name, album title, song name or lyric. Although the industry tries to point to the inferior quality of the rips and unreliability of these systems, file-shared music is increasingly high-quality. Many of the rips are high-bandwidth MP3s that include scans of album artwork and inserts. Although paid services are getting better, the mainstream industry would still have consumers physically travelling to stores in order to purchase a tangible product whose already high price is elevated by the cost of manufacturing, packaging and shipping the media to outlets. This model is unbelievably outdated and increasingly irrelevant to sophisticated music consumers who find less and less of the product they want on the shelves of stores the odd time that they do attempt to make a purchase. Data is the ideal music format, readily organized, compiled and searched on hard-disks and players by listeners who can build the tremendous music libraries that they have always dreamed of possessing. As data compression schemes become denser and Internet bandwidth higher, we can be assured that perfect rips of even multichannel material will be readily available for download.
3. To fill gaps in a discography with out-of-print or difficult-to-get material. Many music lovers who loyally collected music for decades have never possessed a complete collection of anything - until now. P2P is the ideal means to fill-gaps in extensive discographies where those missing pieces consist of only obscure, out of print, or difficult to get material. Listeners can be sure that there are other obsessive music lovers like them who will possess complimentary collections of any given artist. It is difficult to describe the pleasure of a listener who is now able to use this technology to complete a discography which had gaping holes for years. This also creates a tremendous loyalty of the collector to the file-sharing service and a distrust of the mainstream counterparts who missed the technological boat and are now trying to play catch-up.
4. To conveniently obtain rips of music purchased in the past. It is most often faster and easier for the listener to download a rip of an album that he or she purchased in the past than it is to find the album among their own possessions, where it may be packed away. This is also preferred where the album was purchased in a prior format such as tape or vinyl and is less readily converted to a digital format. It is particularly rewarding to listeners who purchased an album at one time and then lost or misplaced it - the album can now finally be recovered without further expense or effort. |
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Problems With The
Mainstream Music Industry For many years the industry has increased profitability by reissuing popular albums to music fans. As music formats have changed over the years, the industry has been able to turn reissues into a cash cow, often releasing the same album on vinyl, 8-Track, cassette, CD, remastered CD, A-DVD, DVD-A and SACD. While no-one disputes the value of albums remastered for new formats, the cost to the label is often minimal while the cost to the music consumer over time is considerable. This entire process does nothing to spur creativity, and often has the opposite effect, as marketing and promotion of proven musicians is often prioritized over the development of new artists.
2. Hypocrisy And The Music Lottery The industry has fostered a lottery-style illusion of music industry success. The mainstream industry places much focus on the extravagant wealth of a small elite of artists. Until recently very little information about the cost and complexity of producing a new album was ever advertised to the public. The industry has preferred that fans worship artists as though they were the sole creators of their own albums and fortunes, with no corporate or technical middlemen in the mix. The most recent manifestation of this phenomenon is the American Idol trend, which creates the illusion that virtually anyone can become a successful musician with little effort and in a very brief period of time. The outcome of this trend is very interesting as it is fundamentally self-contradictory. On the one hand, random members of the public vie for the opportunity to become a music superstar, with the economic and marketing weight of the industry behind them. Yet it also reveals the extent to which the industry manufactures modern pop-music and rams it down the public's throat. Winners of American Idol and its regional spin-offs are whisked into the studio where a team of writers hastily creates their album with little input from the so-called artist. Producers and studio musicians shape the product, which is then pushed through established channels of the mainstream media, including the television network that aired the Idol program in the first place. The joys of instant fame and success are celebrated rather than the virtues of the well-honed technical skill that is really behind all of the Idol releases - that of writers, producers, session musicians, engineers and marketing departments. What is so interesting about the popularity of the show is that it blatantly exposes the means by which such no-talents as Ashley Simpson, Jennifer Lopez, Gwen Stefani, and countless others are engineered for success by companies with deep pockets and teams of skilled music industry technicians on their payroll.
3. The Democratization of Music Production It is particularly fascinating that the music industry has finally chosen to publicize the extent to which each album is a costly team effort requiring significant financial investment and the skills of many industry professionals from a panoply of technical backgrounds. This information is foisted upon the public to induce guilt over the fact that by file-sharing music they are depriving all of these good contributors of their salaries, while simultaneously stymieing the development of new artists. What heavy ethical burden is placed upon the lowly file-sharer! The reality is that this is precisely the time in which the democratization of music creation is taking place, via inexpensive and powerful software and PC-based Digital Audio Workstations. The laptop studio will allow an unprecedented number of artists to express themselves musically over the next few decades, for little more than a few thousand dollars (and a lot of hard work) in their own home. The mainstream industry wants you to believe that it is simply not possible to create a worthwhile piece of music without large scale venture capital. Perhaps some of that were true ten years ago. Today teenagers are able to make music of marked complexity, nuance and production value. Not the teenagers on the album covers of the mass-marketed products, but those for whom the computer is an crucial tool and a subtle instrument, their connection to a world far beyond that offered on radio or television, and infinitely more varied than the hallowed offerings of Wal-Mart.
4. The Illusion of Choice Target marketing by record companies has been taken to a new extreme since the decline of music sales in the late 1990s. Currently the companies target consumers who form the largest population group with the most discretionary income and least ability to make good aesthetic decisions: girls under 16 years of age. Many of the artists and albums marketed to this segment are also concurrently marketed to their middle-aged fathers through the use of suggestive imagery in the music videos and performances. After all, isn't Dad more likely to buy you that music video or take you to the concert if he gets something out of it too? The role of adults in the music industry ought to be that of educators who present children with a broad swath of musical choice, and expose them to the joys of music in all of its variety. Instead, these young consumers are given the illusion of choice, selecting from among a handful of artists who are marketed to saturation levels by an industry that prefers to pretend that no music is worth listening to if it is not accompanied by the marketing accoutrements of the current music superstars (videos, merchandise, clothing lines, product endorsements, etc.). This type of marketing is not only insulting to the general public, but it leaves a huge segment of the population unfulfilled by current music offerings, including youth who are disinterested in mainstream artists. Ten years ago I could walk into a large record store and buy hundreds of dollars of good music if I was inclined (and I often was). Today I am hard pressed to find a single album worth buying, so dominated are these retail stores by their product placement deals with the music industry giants. No wonder people are downloading in record numbers, in many cities there is simply no other way to learn about and to obtain good music.
5. Manufacturing Music The manufactured artist approach is integral to a manufacturing model that large corporations have applied to the current music industry. The architects of this system bring with them a wealth of knowledge about how to increase profitability in the manufacturing industries, especially candy and fast food. In these industries your product serves you best if it appeals to the appetite in the most superficial manner, satisfying a momentary craving without providing any real nourishment. Consumers quickly tire of such products, so it is necessary to create a sense variety by changing the packaging and extremities of the product frequently without adding any real substance. Modern commercial music fits the bill quite well, with its veneer of slick, novelty-oriented production and marketing. Music consumers quickly tire of the ubiquitous current hits only to be replenished by new ones created from a slightly altered version of the same formula. What has become lost in this mechanical process of hit creation and replacement? What is missing is the primal reason for music creation in the first place: communication. Music communicates on a fundamental level, creating an instantaneous connection between the listener and the composer across space and even time. Well-crafted music is a means for the composer to communicate a deep emotional state experienced by the creator of the work. Every significant musical work was felt by the artist long before it was created. Properly executed, it will induce a specific emotional response in the listener which can then be informed by the listener's own emotional state. As with a well crafted poem, novel, painting or sculpture, a listener can revisit the musical work periodically throughout a lifetime and always get something new from it. A great piece of music matures with the listener. It is imperative that we rediscover the value of this type of artistic creation in our culture.
6. The Cartel The record moguls are a virtual cartel, a very wealthy and powerful group that have a veritable stranglehold on mainstream media. Television, radio and concert promotion are all tightly controlled by these companies to do their bidding. Modern talk-shows and reality TV are clearly just thinly-veiled advertisements for the products that their guests' employers are promoting. This monopoly does not currently control the Internet, but they would like to. |
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Peer-To-Peer File-Sharing and the Music Industry of the Future
Author: Andrew Yankiwski Date Posted: June 14, 2005
P2P is an essential part of the music creation process for the new generation of writers, composers and producers. Although the mainstream industry has portrayed P2P as potentially harmful to musical creativity, P2P is actually the best thing that has happened to music in 50 years:
1. Research and Development for Artists P2P gives the artist access to an unprecedented variety of music from which to draw inspiration and influence. An artist who has a monthly budget for CD purchase will tend to make conservative choices so that they can maximize their value per dollar. I remember a time quite recently when a consumer would have to purchase a CD without ever having listened to it, with no opportunity to do so and with little prospect of returning the product if unsatisfied. The price ranged from $20-$50 per CD, and often the most interesting music would have to be special-ordered, which could take weeks or months. P2P allows aspiring producers to quickly sample music from all genres and all eras, including music that is unavailable or out of print. It fosters an exposure to a much greater diversity of creative ideas which inevitably results in a richer musical output. The benefit of having a world music library at your fingertips cannot be overstated. In combination with a music information database such as allmusic.com or discogs.com, P2P becomes a potent tool of aural discovery. Emerging producers who use P2P in this way also continue to buy music, but they purchase it because they want a high-bandwidth copy for referencing or to reward artists whose music they have judged worth buying after having the opportunity to listen to it in detail.
2. Raw Material With Which to Create New Music P2P allows for the use of sampling technology to dissect and use elements from previous works of music. We are not talking about pedestrian P-Diddy style sampling here, but truly creative manipulation of short slices of other music to be incorporated into new works. This technique has been used very inventively in underground Electronica and Urban music for two decades. In recent years sampling has been demonized by the music industry as theft. In reality, it allows for a post-modern reinterpretation of previous works from various creative and technological eras and genres.
3. The Global Studio P2P is integral to our music creation process. Precusor hosts an FTP server which our clients can log-in to at any time to access their projects. This allows work on projects by individuals who are not physically proximate to our studio. A client may be down the street in their home studio or thousands of miles away. Using P2P I have produced albums of artists in other cities that I have never met, and I have collaborated with artists in other geographic locations. Recently I spent a month in Hawaii working on an album with a client who lives there for a large portion of the year. I had all of the resources of our studio at my fingertips at all times. The workflow was completely transparent, and I had no sense of being limited as a producer because I was not in my own studio.
4. A Market of the Alienated P2P allows artists to sidestep the music industry cartel which controls the overwhelming majority of professional music creation, distribution and promotion in North America. Our clients are sick and tired of the novelty-oriented and ubiquitous top 40 garbage which is force-fed to them every day. The major labels have so much money and power that it is virtually impossible to escape this music. I have not listened to the radio or watched television in any real capacity for years, yet I am familiar with every top 40 hit at all times. I will often hear the same 10 songs many times per day in public places such as my gym, the mall, or any other common gathering place that I may attend for brief periods. The record companies have increasingly adopted a saturation-based lowest common denominator marketing strategy. This type of control of virtually all mass media and concert promotion ensures that the least sophisticated members of society fall into line, but it also serves to further alienate the educated segment of the music-buying public. The educated segment is actually the more valuable of the two, as these individuals will tend to buy music very loyally once they like an artist or a label. A new opportunity exists to attract the dollars of this frustrated segment of the music buying public. The Internet and P2P are a means for innovative small online labels and individual artists to reach these people and profit. Will these new artists achieve the type of individual wealth that record moguls have in the past? Probably not. But an amazing range of new artists will be able to be reasonably compensated for their musical output. Some of these artists will be professional full-time musicians, but many will be serious hobbyists who merely supplement their income with their creative output.
5. Biding Our Time While music industry organizations rabidly attack anyone who speaks out against their antiquated business model, a new generation of producers and musicians is poised to fill the void. These organizations claim that Canadian lawmakers have not kept pace with the global trend of draconian digital copyright law amendment. My view is that Canadian courts have been slightly more progressive by not simply following this disturbing trend. In some respects we view the current state of the law in this area as a moot point. P2P is here to stay. The vast majority of P2P sites and music related hacks are produced by clever and disillusioned 15 year-olds, who are going to be a very powerful cultural and consumer force over the next 20 years. Even when Digital Rights Management and breach of copyright lawsuits are enacted, they have proven to be broadly unenforceable. We are actually glad that the music industry is so backward and persistent in its attitude – it has given us time and opportunity to capitalize and market our businesses as a replacement for the mainstream. |
