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Re: My method against music piracy
From: walkinay@nv.net (hank alrich)
Henry Salvia <hjs@cadence.com> wrote:
hank alrich wrote:
Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.net> wrote:
hank alrich wrote:
<snip>
Bo Legg on the pedal steel pages (b0b.com) has suggested gently
in the past that if people want to make music these days, that
there are worse models than the '30s and '40s snake oil* model,
only instead of snake oil, one might consider flour, furniture
or farm products to be flogging.
*not actual snake oil, but a business model based on snake oil
salesmanship from the more distant past. A "you gotta know the
territory" sort of a business model...
King Biscuit Flour Hour, etc.
Worked well at the time, and something similar might work today.
However, there are precious few products of any kind that I would be
willing to flog, and almost none of them are marketed on a scale that
would support the old model.
"Thanks, folks, and now a word from Fire-Eye Development, makers of the
Red-Eye acoustic instrument preamp"... <g>
The first thing I think of when this is proposed is all of the
stories from radio/tv days of artists' fights with sponsors over
content. I think people who think this is a good model don't know
why the artists moved away from the security of a Singles Chat">single sponsor who
had veto power over what you said and how you said it. Maybe the
analogy doesn't hold up since we're not talking about a single portal
going out to a national audience of tens of millions, but I'd still
recommend watching the old Burns and Allen TV show to seen them doing
the Carnation Milk ads written into the script before they sign up to
pitch Monster Cable or Goldline...
I think that's right on. If one wishes to express ideas that run against
the prevailing grain one is not going to find a sponsor. If the musical
material itself deals with issues transcending romantic hearbreak
sponsors could be few and far between, if to be found at all.
Imagine Halliburton sponsoring a Dylan "Masters of War" tour.
I think a lot of the people we ... deify these days started off
that way, and it wasn't bad for *them*. Troubadourship might
be where you find it....
It certainly is. For groups like our trio the house concert circuit may
prove helpful. We're not bar music, though if there's room enough, a few
couples will dance to some of the higher energy offerings at our gigs.
Our stuff only makes sense where the listening is pretty good. Listening
clubs are few compared to bars, and their overhead compels them to focus
sensibly on acts that are further up the food chain than we are.
However, we've been going over very well live and that is spurring some
interest from those who like to have thirty or a hundred friends over
for a potluck house party with a concert in it. If we succeed at that
level we'll be able to get into some of the listening clubs and perhaps
onto some festival stages, too.
Right now my pitch to a few promoters of key gigs of a slightly larger
scale is that if they're looking for a really good opening act I have
one.
Yes, an opportunity for exposure. Sincerely, good luck with pitching
the festivals. Its a crowded market these days, and my experience
being an old Pictures of People">guy in a band of not-famuous old guys
() is getting their attention is a challenge.
Hey, that's a very good band! And you're right. It's a crowded field,
which isn't surprising, really. Once upon a time, before the rise of an
industry built around prerecorded music, nearly everyone played music.
(The early music publishing business fed that desire, and from looking
over songbooks from the 1800's I'd say the prevalance of crap is not
different today than it was back then.)
In the early 1900's there were approximately 7000 shops or factories
building pianos in the USA. On a per capita basis that is astounding.
Some of them were major factories and some of them were a couple/three
guys with a shop.
There's a lot of competition for that captive audience. I like to think
of the headliner at the Telluride Bluegrass festival the year we played
there a few years back, the famous bluegrass acts Counting Crows and Los
Lobos.
I have to wonder WTF when I see stuff like that. Do the promoters not
have confidence that bluegrass fans will attend a bluegrass festival to
hear bluegrass performers? I guess there's a chance they're hoping to
draw pop music fans to a bluegrass festival in hopes that the bluegrass
virus will catch on with a wider portion of the general public.
The world was different when the alternatives were %.50 an
hour pumping gas versus living on a bus. That $.50 an hour
was inflated much higher by the time I faced that choice.
I remember living on a bus. That won't work for us now. The cellist is a
full-time pro in the SF Bay area, which means that so far, every time he
plays a gig with us he loses money. But he's way into it and feels
strongly that we have enough potential to grow into something
financially worthwhile, and so he's willing to make the investment.
Shaidri's more than full-time managing her older sister's dance studio,
while sis takes care of a new kiddo and handles a lot of admin off-site.
We have to line up schedules carefully in order to book gigs. If we were
to hop on the bus right now stuff would start falling apart all over our
lives. <g>
Hee. Living on a bus is the most possibly awesome thing to do when
you're in your 20's and sleeping on top of the PA is no problem if
there's enough beer backstage. In you're 50's, no so much.
I remember being in my 50's. I can't remember if it seems like a long
time ago or just yesterday...
With enough lead time we can work it out, so I'm presently working on
bookings for spring 2011. We're definitely making progress. Given my age
who knows what will come of it.
The journey is its own reward, or something. But, you get to have that
moment playing good music for people who are listening. That's a feeling
you can't buy, and you may as well enjoy it while its happening/possible.
It's a perfect time to forget about how much money you're not making and
savor the richness of the moment.
I dunno. I grew up in the shadow of Cains Ballroom, and even
played there once, on a Sunday afternoon, opening for ...
Wishbone Ash. No doubt it was a hard time for Cains, but
those wall-sized pictures of Bob Wills should have taught me
something.
If Wishbone Ash drew a crowd Cain's should have done okay, as long as
they didn't over-pay the opening act. <g>
I think Cains was an old dance hall in Oakland love shack">dating from the 20's?
I think Les meant the famous old dance hall in Tulsa, Oklahoma. But
you've piqued my interest in the Oakland venue. Know anythign more about
it? A quick googlation doesn't get me what I'm after.
If that's the one, Wishbone Ash was near the end of a long run. They had
everything from jass bands to country to mexican to R&B to rock. I would
guess Les was intimating that the content may vary, but the rules remain
the same.
Yep, even though they didn't have GPS to help find the gig in those
days. OTOH fewer roads and smaller cities helped there.
But back to Bo, maybe these here machines aren't very good
at generating actual community.
That's a solid possibility in spite of the fact that although I have
never seen you I consider you part of my "community". I read an article
this morning that covered a research project looking into how today's
"digital generation" youngsters feel about community and their friends.
Turns out that the assumptions of the pundits are amiss. For the most
part the kids place much higher value on face-to-face personal
interaction with their friends than they do on any social networking
site. The exceptions, from another study, are those who are very
insecure and/or neurotic. Those folks apparently are much more likely to
become addicted to online "socializing", which relieves them of having
to deal with real people in person.
There's a relatively ancient on-line social network caled Usenet.
<!!!> <G>
The history there is pretty clear that a virtual community can both
enhance and replace face-to-face interaction. Being able to pretend to be
who you wish you were (or believe you are) is pretty seductive.
Easier for some folks than figuring out who they are and accepting that.
Then again sometimes I pretend I can play banjo.
Maybe you had to be there and paying attention.
Yes, and I think that holds now, too.
Megadittoes, to quote a great American huckster.
And maybe that's why Hank Williams could make more money in schoolhouses
than he could on WSM.
From what I've read it was always pretty clear to the artist with a
clue that being on the radio was a marketing tool, whether it was Hank
on WSM or Duke Ellington in the Cotton Club with "a wire" as they used
to say. Bands don't line up to beg to appear on late night TV or Prarie
Home Companion these days for the money.
Before Willie Nelson was an international household name he often made
truckloads of cash playing large rural grange halls, rooms in the middle
of nowhere from a city slicker's viewpoint, that held as many as a few
thousand folks. He'd play as a duo with Paul English on drums, they'd
charge ten bucks at the door, and sell to capacity. Sometimes the take
was on the order of fifty grand, and on a week night. Thirty-five years
ago that was pretty good money for a night's work.
Unless one comes up with an Internet trick that gets millions running to
YouTube one has to be there paying attention and earning the interest of
the folks in the room, however many or few. Yes, having the web site is
important and some social networking is helpful, but it's not the driver
in general. Good performances generate interest, the interested parties
hit the web site, they network with their friends, sharing their
excitement, and some of those friends join them for the next show - and
so it grows. It's a slow process but it's also a rewarding activity in
and of itself to put on a good show in any room and have folks leave
feeling like their lives have been made richer by the experience, and
talking about you when they head home, hopefully with a CD.
This. A thousand times this. Lots of this. Its the old
school/grind-it-out/5 years on the road method, but unless you win the
YouTube lottery its your only option. 10 years ago the "Internet trick"
was "throw up a web site and sell 100,000 CDs". 20 years ago it was "buy
add time on latenight TV and pitch your album". Now its go viral on
YouTube. Personally, I think if we knew what else a given artist who
"came out of nowhere and went viral on YouTube" was doing at the time,
it would be less of a mystery why a given artist "goes viral". Boxcar
Willie and Zamfir, King of the Pan Flute, didn't just buy those adds and
wait for the phone to ring, after all.
Henry Salvia.
Indeed. They were working their butts off. Still, it's hard to predict
sometimes what people will find fascinating (excluding roadside wreckage
which always draws a crowd wanting to cause another wreck). Lots of
people with mad skills have worked their butts off and driven their
busses into the ground without getting to go viral. At least now and
then maybe some of them go to go fungal.
--
shut up and play your guitar *
'slistening.html
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