Re: This is where the party ends
As an artist, if you don't like the fact that people are going to listen to your work without paying, your redress is limited to plain, old-fashioned withdrawal of labour. Except even that isn't going to work, if people can live without the work you do.
Face it, the party is over. It was fun, for a lot of people, for awhile; but this is where it ends. With a whimper, not a bang.
Indeed, the party is over.
I have withdrawn my labour. I had some kind of fantasy about giving it all away for free, and I worked toward that to an extent, setting up a great website etc. etc.
But it's not worth it. I'm paying for the hosting and putting all the work in. It's just stupid. So I stopped.
There is also the fact that people just aren't interested in music anymore. Most people don't like music. I know I don't, even though I make it. Coupled with the fact, that the few people that do listen to music, don't like to listen to 'good' music, they like 'shit' music.
I do realise how that last paragraph sounds, but I'll just leave it there for those that can understand. Maybe you need to really be deep in to the music to get that, without a further explanation being required.
I know of other musical geniuses as well that have withdrawn their labour. There really is no distribution mechanism for artists to get paid - they get gouged everytime. It's a stitch-up, and all you can do is start drinking heavily, turn to drugs, give up hope, accept defeat and abandon the literally decades of gruelling hard work that molded you into that musical genius. It's what I do!
There is also another factor at play for the high-end musical geniuses like me. There is no scene any more. It's not possible to play a festival now without being privacy-raped. I will not have cameras pointing at me during a gig. And that's just the fucking parasitical BBC. What about the 'audience'? Bunch of mug-punters. If someone started filming me on their phone while I was performing, I would down tools.
In short, this modern world is not for me. I'll leave it to the gullible kids and the cynical old codgers exploiting them. It's actually reached a point, where anyone, anyone at all 'making music' now is not taken seriously. I can't think of one act off the top of my head that is active today that I have respect for.
One simply just does not go into the music biz any more. If you do, you're a prat. End of. It's over. Leave it to the clowns. It's clown world now, all the way to the top and to the bottom.
I have respect for certain niche artists who have made a nice little set up for themselves and because they have a decent income stream and families to feed and mortgages to pay, they soldier on in the face of it. But even they know it is over now. Still, if it pays for that new 20,000 quid mixing desk, more power to ya! A lot of these though will be making money by playing live and selling their souls. There is not an artist in this world that like being taken for a performing clown for someone's fucking bucket list and having cameras flashing at him while he is singing songs about the most intimate of details. Sure, narcissists will love it, and there are a lot of narcissists in the game. But we aren't all attention seeking idiots. You know, some of us are shy and introverted and sensitive.
There is also the myth that artists make money by playing live. Some do, some don't. Most don't. You need to be very big to do this. A small band can't make a decent wage by playing live, it is just not possible. You are gouged at every level from the venue to the booking agent etc. etc. - bit like google/youtube is gouging its exploited.
It's doubly ironic for me, because I worked my whole life to reach the point of artistic brilliance that I have been aiming for my whole life. I did this in the past year or two only, and now, just as I achieved it, the whole game has not just been turned on its head, but totally killed off.
Yes, game over!
But by all means, if you are a wannabee musician/producer reading this, then waste your life/money/time on trying to convince the world that your particular brand of 'music' (that everyone has heard a million times or more) is just what the world needs, if you could only get that 'big break'. I know, you could use the internet, youtube say! No one else has thought of that have they? And of course, your particular brand of crap is better than their brand of crap, so you have that going for you. Why don't you go and do a degree in becoming a 'pop star' - lots of that about too for the 'needy'.
The truth of the matter is, your music is shit, and no one cares. It's all been done before, and even people who have invented new forms of music (such as myself) have no market, because people don't want new forms of music, they want a simulacra of what went before in the 6789'0's. It is just not authentic otherwise, and if it isn't authentic, then it doesn't count. Because it's all about being seen to have the experience, not to have the experience itself, hence all the cameras at gigs. Ask Kate Bush how she feels about that.
But at least I'm not bitter.
I still make music. I am an artisan. I write the songs. I play the instruments. Make the arrangements. I produce it. I engineer it. And then I edit it. And finally I master it. And I do all that to a 'good enough' level, i.e. it sounds fucking amazing, sonically, it makes you happy and warm, it makes you cry and it touches deeper emotions that you never even knew you had, or knew you had, but just had locked away until I opened the floodgates for you. No one can take that away from me, and it is my deepest pleasure and joy in this life, and the one thing I can count on in a world without friends or family, without any money to go anywhere - it's a counterpoint to a life so miserable, that I don't want to live anymore. It's probably the only thing that has stopped me from committing my long-planned suicide.
And on that cheery note...
I haven't given up (on life or music), and even though it is most definitely game over now, I am looking at new distribution and dissemination mechanisms. I can assure you, that this will in no way take into consideration any current 'music' platform at all. Youtube, Google, iTunes, Apple et al. are the enemy - they will not be dealt with in this new world I have planned. Sure, the stuff will end up getting ripped and put on youtube later one, but I'll worry about that if and when it ever happens.
I won't win of course, but at least I am going down fighting. Unlike all the other pathetic weak-willed wannabees sucking satan's corporate cock. Are you in a band? In the 'current year'? Shame on you. You are part of the problem.
STOP MAKING MUSIC NOW. YOU WILL NEVER EARN A LIVING WAGE FROM IT.
This is an extremely interesting time. I feel as if we are the verge of something big. There has been a vacuum in the music industry for the last 20 years, but yes, it's ending more with a whimper than a bang.
I'm actually quite excited by it all, these interesting musical times we live in. And of course, when it finally happens, everyone will say 'oh I saw that coming', 'it had to happen eventually', and my favourite: 'why didn't I bloody think of that?'.