Will piracy kill off prog rock ?

It's interesting how many non musicians tell the musicians that they aren't starving. Or perhaps it's OK that they don't make enough money to do it full time, produce albums, go on tour, add to the genre. Seems pretty strange logic to me. Mind you, they do get a lot of free downloads. ;-)

Now surely only a small fraction of these bands are making enough from their music to do it full-time, even considering the fact they get a much bigger cut from direct sales. But is this so bad? If they are a happy earning a bit of cash from doing something they love in their free time, then so be it. Why is it automatically assumed that making music MUST eventually become a full-time endeavor for every artist? The fact is, technology has made it cheaper and easier than ever before to record high-quality music and make it available to the masses.

If you cut off the tail of a lizard it will grow a new tail. The old tail does not survive, nor does it grow a new body.

If the music industry dies then all music will suffer because the industries that feed into the music industry will not survive and so all the music that also relies on the technology and support that those non-music industries provide would not survive. Fringe, esoteric and niche music rides on the coat-tails of mainstream music and all the commercial enterprise that rely on it. If it was not for the music industry creating a mass market for music we would not have the concept of The Album; we would not have vinyl and good quality audio equipment to play it on. We would not have the modern studio; we would not have the concept of home studio. We would not have cassette or compact disc because Philips and Sony would not have invested millions of dollars in a technology of zero value. Without compact discs we would not have digital technology and downloadable music and video. Without downloadable content we would not have portable media players and a mobile cellular telephone would have remained a simple a voice communication device. If music does not make money for the music industry and all the industry that supports it then there would be no incentive to create the technology we so love today. Cut off the body and the tail will die.

Perhaps you are okay with this. Sure we can survive with what we have. We don't need technology to progress further, we are happy with what we have. As long as a market exists for the makers of home studio equipment they will survive, development will stop of course because the technical advances in that area are made for the professional studio, and they will no longer trickle down to the domestic market, but that's okay, we don't need the perfection that a modern studio provides - its all bland, homogenised, overproduced and overcompressed anyway. We can do all that on a PC with Fruityloops and  GarageBand any day.

 

 

Good point Dave and for all we know bands like that have day jobs or other sources of income so they can pay the bills.

A decent guitar plus amps plus effects is probably £1750 - 2500. Ditto bass. Drums and keyboards, bring money. 

And then, as Dean says, the cost of transport, venue hire, the sheer logistics of it is staggering. Hell of a lot of CD sales and downloads. Yes, you can sell merchandise at the gig, but you've had to fork out to get it produced in the first place and there's no guarantee it will sell. Or people will even turn up. 

 I was a band manager and gig promoter for five years and much of it was depressing, but when you put on a good show, or when your band plays a blinding set there is nothing to beat it. Even watching from the wings there is a great deal of satisfaction to be gained when everything works. I don't regret doing it, it was a great experience and in the main I enjoyed doing it, but I certainly didn't love every minute of it... Would I do it again? No. Never.

Promoters of small gigs of amateur band do not do it for the money, they do it because they love music. Think about the maths of it all - three bands, 150 seat venue, £5 on the door - that's £750 if you sell every ticket and assumes each band can bring 50 "fans". Subtract from that the cost of hiring the venue (£50/hour for 6 hours = £300), hiring the PA (£300), paying the sound guy (£50), paying for flyers and posters (£50) and that leaves £50 to split between the bands.

The name of the game is show business and it is an entertainment. If you can entertain a room full of people who have paid to see the show then that is a cause for celebration and joy. Making money is secondary or even tertiary to that.

I only mentioned all this because there is this weird assumption prevalent in this thread that bands can make money from touring so they don't need to make money from selling albums. This is a fallacy that is used to justify piracy and that is the really depressing thing.