5 ms·

Music without the music industry (labels etc) is the internet without aggregators (reddit etc) What happened on the internet before content aggregators (or bef

Music without the music industry (labels etc) is the internet without aggregators (reddit etc) What happened on the internet before content aggregators (or before you had access to them)? you'd see a cool website and tell a friend the website address or you'd send a link to a friend and they might pass it on if they cared enough, they might not. That's a few people, unless the website was seriously incredible it would never be seen by maybe a hundred people. Now with sites like reddit a "pretty cool" website can be seen by millions of people. Music is like that. There are so many artists that produce great music but nobody has ever heard of them because their "network" extends to maybe a couple of friends and friends friends and some of their friends friends friends, unless they get a big break (like shared by an already famous artist) they'll remain pretty small, forever. I bet everyone here knows of an artist they like but who couldn't make a living from their music, whether that's a friend or someone they've seen in an obscure Youtube video. The music industry (big labels) provide huge value to artists, so many artists would never have the reach they have now if they didn't have labels. Would Justin Bieber be known by hundred of millions if he was still making songs on Youtube? The idea that sites like kickstarter are the future for creative endeavours is partly true, they can help fund some projects and open up artists to new ways to fund their work, but they can't replace the music industry. Very few people care enough about music to not need to be told who to listen to, or to invest in their favourite artists, they need to be given music to choose from (see: top 40) and decide what they like and buy it. Things like selling a CD for $10 or a download for $1 are what fund the music industry, if the music industry dies so does the way we consume music. No longer will we be able to just consume, we'll have to find it too. I want the option to seek out new music, I want the option to fund artists I love that want to be independent, I don't want it to be a necessity. Music is so much more than sounds – how else do you explain the Gathering of the Juggalos? marketing

Shorel 14y ago
Reddit is not asking for 70% of the income the rest of the Internet gets.
politician 14y ago
"reddit for music" sounds so much better than the current model, "play the same thing on loop 10 times an hour".
- rabidsnail 14y ago
  We have that. It's called last.fm.
nostromo 14y ago
I think labels adding value as curators is an outdated argument. Music aggregators are everywhere now. HypeMachine, SoundCloud, even iTunes and Youtube all help me find great music. Even Reddit itself has subreddits that aggregate great music. Sometimes that music is curated by a label, oftentimes not.
- citricsquid 14y ago
  I think I explained my point poorly. If you do not care about music enough to seek it out (which is most people) and music is just something that's in your life when you're driving to work or doing the cleaning you rely on the "music industry" to be your aggregator, they make/take music that they know the average person will like (yay formulas!) and deliver it to you through radio, television and all the other places people listen to music. If that disappears and music becomes something you have to actively seek out, or find yourself disliking most of the music you're hearing on the radio ("this week on the top 40 from some website that people that care about music visit...") you're just going to give up. music is a part of our lives, yes, but not because it's something most people are passionate about, it's because it's just something that is there. I've started to enjoy music a lot recently, but for the majority of my life it wasn't something I cared about at all, I would just listen to whatever was popular and I was happy with that. My mother is the same, she'll hear a song on the radio and like it and then go out and buy the bands album and listen to that, she would never sit hunched over a computer trawling through websites sharing different music, or flick through TV channels, or switch between radio stations. I used reddit as an example of a website that delivers content of a specific type to people that want it. The example you're using (Soundcloud, Hypemachine) would be sites like Hackernews, they cater to a specific audience. Most people that use reddit are just idle consumers, they go to reddit.com click the top 20 links, laugh at the cute cat pictures and move on. How many ever subscribe to communities they care about? A relatively small amount. That's the amount that would ever seek out music. (edit: I think a good way to explain it in simple terms is: reddit is "my first internet content aggregator", the music industry is "my first music aggregator") How the system works now isn't PERFECT, but it's pretty great. Popular music is distributed by big labels, they control what the average person hears and "know" what most people like; people that want more than just the popular music can seek it out and/or contribute through kickstarter (which is growing, which is great). I think what the article describes is fantastic and it SHOULD happen, but alongside big labels, not as a replacement. Music should be paid for, music should generate revenue, artists should be able to use labels to get big, but artists should also be able to stay independent, make music for making music, have their fans fund what they want to hear. That sort of thing is great, but both can exist at the same time (and I think they will)
freshbreakfast 14y ago
You could market packaged dog poop, doesn't mean lots of people are going to buy it. There's a fundamental value there for Juggalos, and I personally think it's beyond ICP's music.
- X-X 14y ago
  You'd be surprised at the market for dog poop. It can be used as organic fertilizer, as a weapon, as a training aid (for training puppies). Seriously, I've purchased a bottle of dog pee on amazon for $7.99 with free shipping via prime. I know this sounds crazy, but I'm dead serious. I used the dog pee to teach my dog where he should go. But I wouldn't have known that was even possible without marketing. Almost anything that you think is useless has a way that it can be used that justifies someone paying for it.
  - freshbreakfast 14y ago
    Haha, I should have known... consider me educated 0_o
enraged_camel 14y ago
You don't need to have to have your music reach a million people to make a living as a musician. The Grateful Dead for example had fans that numbered in the thousands, but those fans were actual fanatics that went to every concert and bought every piece of paraphernalia. Most artists today don't understand that model. They think success is about topping charts.
- jaylevitt 14y ago
  This overstates the case. The Grateful Dead might very well have had millions of fans; they just kept forgetting where they were up to in the count, and so started back at zero out of a basic sense of fairness.

Shorel 14y ago

Reddit is not asking for 70% of the income the rest of the Internet gets.

politician 14y ago

"reddit for music" sounds so much better than the current model, "play the same thing on loop 10 times an hour".

rabidsnail 14y ago
We have that. It's called last.fm.

nostromo 14y ago

I think labels adding value as curators is an outdated argument. Music aggregators are everywhere now. HypeMachine, SoundCloud, even iTunes and Youtube all help me find great music. Even Reddit itself has subreddits that aggregate great music. Sometimes that music is curated by a label, oftentimes not.

citricsquid 14y ago
I think I explained my point poorly. If you do not care about music enough to seek it out (which is most people) and music is just something that's in your life when you're driving to work or doing the cleaning you rely on the "music industry" to be your aggregator, they make/take music that they know the average person will like (yay formulas!) and deliver it to you through radio, television and all the other places people listen to music. If that disappears and music becomes something you have to actively seek out, or find yourself disliking most of the music you're hearing on the radio ("this week on the top 40 from some website that people that care about music visit...") you're just going to give up. music is a part of our lives, yes, but not because it's something most people are passionate about, it's because it's just something that is there. I've started to enjoy music a lot recently, but for the majority of my life it wasn't something I cared about at all, I would just listen to whatever was popular and I was happy with that. My mother is the same, she'll hear a song on the radio and like it and then go out and buy the bands album and listen to that, she would never sit hunched over a computer trawling through websites sharing different music, or flick through TV channels, or switch between radio stations. I used reddit as an example of a website that delivers content of a specific type to people that want it. The example you're using (Soundcloud, Hypemachine) would be sites like Hackernews, they cater to a specific audience. Most people that use reddit are just idle consumers, they go to reddit.com click the top 20 links, laugh at the cute cat pictures and move on. How many ever subscribe to communities they care about? A relatively small amount. That's the amount that would ever seek out music. (edit: I think a good way to explain it in simple terms is: reddit is "my first internet content aggregator", the music industry is "my first music aggregator") How the system works now isn't PERFECT, but it's pretty great. Popular music is distributed by big labels, they control what the average person hears and "know" what most people like; people that want more than just the popular music can seek it out and/or contribute through kickstarter (which is growing, which is great). I think what the article describes is fantastic and it SHOULD happen, but alongside big labels, not as a replacement. Music should be paid for, music should generate revenue, artists should be able to use labels to get big, but artists should also be able to stay independent, make music for making music, have their fans fund what they want to hear. That sort of thing is great, but both can exist at the same time (and I think they will)

freshbreakfast 14y ago

You could market packaged dog poop, doesn't mean lots of people are going to buy it. There's a fundamental value there for Juggalos, and I personally think it's beyond ICP's music.

X-X 14y ago
You'd be surprised at the market for dog poop. It can be used as organic fertilizer, as a weapon, as a training aid (for training puppies). Seriously, I've purchased a bottle of dog pee on amazon for $7.99 with free shipping via prime. I know this sounds crazy, but I'm dead serious. I used the dog pee to teach my dog where he should go. But I wouldn't have known that was even possible without marketing. Almost anything that you think is useless has a way that it can be used that justifies someone paying for it.
- freshbreakfast 14y ago
  Haha, I should have known... consider me educated 0_o

enraged_camel 14y ago

You don't need to have to have your music reach a million people to make a living as a musician. The Grateful Dead for example had fans that numbered in the thousands, but those fans were actual fanatics that went to every concert and bought every piece of paraphernalia. Most artists today don't understand that model. They think success is about topping charts.

jaylevitt 14y ago
This overstates the case. The Grateful Dead might very well have had millions of fans; they just kept forgetting where they were up to in the count, and so started back at zero out of a basic sense of fairness.