https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQDudbp-pag
Howdy! Today I want to talk about something frustrating I've been noticing in the last few years and explore what it is, what it means, and what musicians ca...
@NotJustBikes 9 months ago
I'm am not, and have never been a professional musician, but I was in the music scene in the 90s and was in a few bands, so I spent a lot of time with people who were trying to "make it".
In those pre-internet days, the only way you were going to get anywhere as a musician was by getting signed to a label. Obviously everyone wanted the big labels that would have the most marking dollars, but there were smaller "indie" labels, too. It was very time consuming and expensive to record a demo tape, and the quality was pretty bad. A lot of your promotional work was about playing live shows. Then try to sell a handful of tapes while you were there to cover your costs.
Independently creating music was basically impossible. We booked studio time in the middle of the night with a college student who was studying audio engineering to record our demo. Our guitarist's dad funded it, but most people didn't have that luxury. Ultimately though, the end product (CD) sounded pretty bad.
Ultimately, everybody was trying to write a "radio-friendly" song that would get picked up by a label. But even if you did get signed, the deal you got was terrible. You weren't making any money until your 3rd album, and I knew people who had signed with a label, but still made almost all of their money by selling T-shirts at live shows.
Ultimately, getting noticed as a musician has always been difficult. Before, the gatekeepers were the record labels and radio stations. Now it's the record labels and streaming services.
I would argue though that the situation is way better today than it ever has been. You can record an effectively perfect-quality album on your home computer at relatively low cost. There are way more marketing opportunities with the Internet, like forums, YouTube, and Bandcamp. That does mean that a lot of people are competing with you, but at least you could conceivably have a music career now without ever signing a garbage deal with a record label, so I consider that a win.
Dig deeper, music isn’t ever boring. Maybe it’s how you’re discovering new music that needs a rehaul.
Perhaps I’ve “missed out” as I’ve always had folders full of albums in some digital format. I did streaming for a while then rolled my own with Plex and a NAS, but I’ve always had an offline stash of full albums with me. I dunno, every time I feel like I’m not enjoying music it’s a personal issue, not a result of “modern music”.
I have jellyfin for tv / movies but don't do much music with it. Primary use would be on my phone for car and gym, do you just download the files to your device?
Yeah, I’m old school like that. I keep roughly 128GB of music in 256k AAC on my phone at all times. I also have Plexamp for streaming the full lossless collection off my NAS if I can’t find what my ears crave on my phone.
Yes, I have my Plex server facing the internet. No reverse proxy, my networking game isn’t at that level yet. I have a half dozen friends and family who use it for movies/TV also.