In an interview about the rock music business, Gene Simmons, founding bassist of the rock band KISS, once again rants against file sharing and the 'predominantly white, middle- and upper-middle-class young people who were native-born, who felt they were entitled to have something for free, because that's what they were used to'.
Simmons says that that's to blame for the commonly held complaint that today's pop music featuring acts such as Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, and Justin Bieber, doesn't hold a candle to the rock scene of decades past, particularly in the mid '50s through early '80s. It turns out the creative engine of rock music was just... capitalism. 'The problem is that nobody will pay you for the 10,000 hours you put in to create what you created', says Simmons.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by CRCulver on Tuesday September 09 2014, @05:54PM
Rock fans today have access to a larger collection of fine rock music than at any time in history. Part of that is due to filesharing, which offers exposure to music that may have never been available in a local store. Some kid living in a small town in Kansas in decades past would not have been able to discover, say, the Italian progressive rock scene of the 1970s, or the lesser-remembered West Coast psychedelic bands of the late 1960s. With filesharing communities, that is now possible.
When it comes to contemporary music, Simmons focuses on the vacuous pop acts of the moment and overlooks the great rock musicians recording now, even though they know they are living in a world of filesharing. The rise of Napster doesn't seem to have stopped, say, Tame Impala from launching a career as a musician and gaining both fans and critical acclaim years later.
And finally, Simmons doesn't stop to think that there has always been crap pop music of the Katy Perry and Justin Bieber sort. Hell, even Kiss has been considered this: my father and his friends, for whom rock music was their religion in the mid-1970s, say that they listened to Kiss as a sort of guilty pleasure and break from what they considered more serious and artistic bands (Rush, Led Zeppelin). Most of what set Kiss apart from forgettable pop bands of the era was extramusical, namely their live performances, but when it came to radio airplay they offered little greatness.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by chris on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:04PM
Plenty of great music out there (sure, it's not so much pop music). I suspect it is more of an ageing glam rocker fearful of new technology than said tech ruining art.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RedGreen on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:09PM
Nah just a greedy piece of shit wanting even more, the old stand by the more you have the more you want type.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday September 09 2014, @11:32PM
It should be mentioned here that Gene Simmons is a JEW.
A JEW!
(Score: 4, Funny) by DECbot on Tuesday September 09 2014, @11:40PM
Looking at his retirement plan statement, Gene is just pissed that his song royalties are not performing as well as he expected. That's his hookers and blow money! It must be those blasted file sharers listening to his music and stealing his hookers and blow money.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:12PM
Except that the "Italian progressive rock scene from the 70s" sucks and I have no idea how anybody could get inspired by it. My 0.02. Or course you can proove me wrong, as I'm always interested in learning something new.
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @02:00PM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mmcmonster on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:24PM
Bingo.
We live in a golden era of music. No time in the past has any individual been able to listen to such varied musical fields as they are now. No time in the past was an individual able to walk around with an entire library of music in their pockets which would make anyone from the 80s jealous.
The only thing that would make the current era of music even more awesome would be sensible limits on copyright.
Did they ask Gene Simmons if 50 years is enough on copyright for music? If so, the Beatles, Elvis, and their generation are coming off copyright.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @12:57AM
1. I don't think Simmons disagrees that there is more great pop music in the hands of more fans than ever before, thanks to digital technology and filesharing. He's concerned about the production of new pop music.
2. I'm sure it's true there are lots of interesting bands out there creating and posting stuff. However, very few will have much of an audience; they will be comparable to the garage bands of the '60s who may have had a a local hit or two, but no national exposure (many of these have been compiled on series such as Nuggets and Pebbles).
3. I'm not a fan of KISS myself, and Simmons was careful not to list KISS as one of the 'iconic bands' of decades past. I think he did include himself in the ranks of those who spent 10,000 hours working out their craft, though. Of course there were always flash-in-the-pan bands like the Knack ('My Sharona') that managed to score a couple Top 40 hits without working too hard.
I have to admit that 'I wanna rock and roll all nite' is a kick ass song though. You may have noticed its sometimes cranked up at sports stadiums after a big victory by the home team.
There was a story about the Beatles telling each other at an early gig, "I think we can probably get another year or two doing this", before they had to all get real jobs doing work they despised. Of course what happened was that after the Beatles had put in many years (probably more than 10,000 hours apiece in fact) playing dive bars in Germany as well as the UK, suddenly the money started rolling in. That's what Simmons was talking about. Capitalism allowed these bands to put aside the necessity of making a living long enough until some of them became really good.
4. Of those who pointed out that '84 was long before Napster surfaced - that's an excellent point. While I'm sympathetic to Simmons' point (I wouldn't have submitted the piece if I thought it was just an out of touch old man rambling), I think perhaps a bigger issue was the rapid evolution of technology in general, which had several important effects:
a) easier and cheaper to innovate in the studio with sound effects
b) different environmental 'vibe' - digital technology - that artists and their audiences try to capture with their music
c) the rise of music video in the '80s, which made stars of different kinds of musicians (for example, Christopher Cross had a string of hits in the early '80s, but his career fizzled when people saw him on MTV and he looked really average. Not even ugly, just average).
d) more demands on people's time - video games in particular
e) distribution channels (Simmons' rant)
- AC submitter
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @01:11PM
Of course what happened was that after the Beatles had put in many years (probably more than 10,000 hours apiece in fact) playing dive bars in Germany as well as the UK, suddenly the money started rolling in. That's what Simmons was talking about. Capitalism allowed these bands to put aside the necessity of making a living long enough until some of them became really good.
errr....
playing dive bars is how they made a living long enough to become really good,
they didn't put asside the necessity to make a living, they simply decided that they where willing to work very hard while having a low standard of living and perecting their craft
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Wednesday September 10 2014, @07:16AM
The 90s and early 2000s were a bit of a low, mainly due to extremely poor mastering. Some great tracks are all but unlistenable because of the loudness war. The good stuff sometimes gets re-released in a properly mastered format, but much of the talent of that era seems to have been lost.
If anything file sharing helped. It helped people understand the problem and demand better quality. Notice how scene releases include the release date of the source CD. Bootleg re-masters are popular too. Mp3 players often have a volume limiting feature (thanks EU) which means over loud music ends up quieter than properly recorded stuff.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 3) by Nerdfest on Tuesday September 09 2014, @05:54PM
Wow, we had file sharing in the 80's? He should have checked the dates a bit better before making those two statements.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:07PM
Really? You are telling him to "check the dates" when you yourself have utterly failed at reading comprehension?
The guy is a douche, but come on. What's more likely? Somebody claims that file sharing existed in the 50's OR you misread what they said?
How smug and dumb do you have to be to make that mistake?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by cafebabe on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:30PM
The mid 1980s had tape-to-tape recorders which worked from the same motor. The quality of third-generation bootlegs increased notably after that.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by present_arms on Tuesday September 09 2014, @10:42PM
Man i remember them, the high end ones though had twin motors and 3 heads on the recording deck :D good days
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:40PM
His first claim is that file sharing killed rock. His next claim is that rock went to crap around '84. The most likely answer is that he is wrong about the root cause of the demise of rock.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:22PM
That was what I was implying. The implication seems to have eluded most. Personally, I think the decline in quality matches a lot better to the 'corporatization' of music.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:29PM
"Wow, we had file sharing in the 80's"
We most certainly did on BBSes. Much more cracked games than music of course.
As far as shared music goes, I think way more people like "8 bit retro sound chiptunes" now than did in the 80s. But yeah, we had midi files and stuff like that and some trading went on.
For a good time search "Jason Scott BBS Documentary"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @07:39PM
I think way more people like "8 bit retro sound chiptunes" now than did in the 80s.
We would download those because even to get an mp3 you were talking 1-2 meg. That was HUGE in the early 90s. Or about 12 hours to download 10 1 meg mp3s. Which would be somewhat bad in quality. You could get a few hundred midi's in 1 meg... Never mind 10-20 meg to hold the album which most of us did not have.
Once speeds and space got high enough people ditched midi/mod.
My point? We would have done it if we could have. My secondary point? If you are dependent on space/speed of something to protect your media you better get looking for a new source of income. DVDs days are numbered. The only thing really holding back the torrent (ha see what I did there) is network speeds. People will stop messing with 'mkv' and mp4 rips and just go for the full ISO. The same will happen for CD rips. If you could dl 700 meg in 2-3 mins to store on your 20TB drive would you bother with mp3s?
The only reason I did not go back and re-rip my cds as FLAC is because I do not feel like devoting the time to it as for me mp3 is 'good enough' because I am old :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @08:52AM
Most CD torrents are flac already (or other, similar, formats). There are some .vob rips of DVDs available, but they tend to be rare.
Oh - and I already can dl 700 meg in 2-3 minutes on my 70Mb fibre connection. :)
(Score: 2) by tynin on Wednesday September 10 2014, @11:20AM
mkv doesn't have to mean that any compression took place, but it and other containers that support compressed video data are not going anywhere I suspect. You say DVDs days are numbered, and they are, but new higher density data formats are always in the works. The data we want to create is always bigger than that the network/disk IO of the day. While this stays true, people will always seek to find an acceptable level of compression that doesn't noticeably impact the audio/visual quality. 4K video would be an example of this as a 2 hour uncompressed video will take up over 3 TB.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @02:15PM
4K video would be an example of this as a 2 hour uncompressed video will take up over 3 TB. I'm sure they will use a lossless format.
And if you have an 10 exabyte drive? Do not depend on space and download speed to slow down the people who share. It is weak sauce protection.
My point is people will not fart around with other container formats once speeds and space catch up. They will just grab the 'best one' if they are able to. If you had the option to pick between iso and mkv and it only took 1 second and you had tons of space to hold it which would you pick?
Right now space and speed are not quite there for DVD. Which is already fairly good quality wise. You have to invest a decent amount of HD to hold DVDs. It is why formats like mkv are popular as they strip out the 'extra'. Then many re-encode to mp4 to get a bit more out of it. Usually a 9 to 1 if people can manage it.
For the decent amount of people in the US a decent connection is 4-5MB. With 10-15 becoming more common. 100+ if you are of the chosen few who can afford it or happen to live in the right area. Yet most people do not have 10TB of drive laying around to keep their movies. So they pick compressed formats.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by turgid on Tuesday September 09 2014, @07:49PM
I've always blamed the arrival of affordable (first by recording studios, then "musicians") musical machinery i.e. drum machines and sequencers in the 80s for the decline in the over-all standard of popular music. All of a sudden, it became much easier and cheaper than ever before to mass-produce skull-filler for commercial radio. Stock, Aitken and Waterman (responsible for inflicting Rick Astley, Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan etc on us) were a case in point.
Before that you needed experienced and talented session musicians who often brought song-writing experience with them.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday September 10 2014, @03:51AM
"tape trees"
I have a master; you want a copy. you send me 3 blank cassettes (or DAT tapes, in the 90's) and I fill them and send them back to you. if we trade, we do filled tapes for filled tapes; else blanks and postage for filled tapes.
been going on for many decades; up until networks got fast enough and people have good net connections at home.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday September 10 2014, @01:32PM
Wow, we had file sharing in the 80's?
Yes, we did. The files were analog and shared on cassette. I was file-sharing in the 1960s. And guess what? It was legal then, although the record companies didn't want us to know that.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RedGreen on Tuesday September 09 2014, @05:54PM
The day I get paid for work I have done 40 years ago is the day I agree to stop downloading so the parasites can get some more money from me for the items I will buy but that were already bought years ago in a different format, oh and by the way I have already paid for being pirate with a tax on blank media since the 70s in Canada so STFU Gene.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:18PM
Well put, well put indeed.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:47PM
please mod @RedGreen up +1000. The tax on media "in case" you pirate is an *amazing* abuse of power, and considering the competition...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:56PM
Simmons is just bitching because he doesn't get any part of that tax. None of the writers/artists (I use the term loosely in regards to Gene) ever see any of the money from "copyright taxs" like the one you mention.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday September 09 2014, @10:52PM
Then why the fuck are they doing it? ;)
Very interesting that state sanctioned rape and theft is spun so effectively to the unwashed masses. It's either that or we live in a world where logic, common sense, and the benefit of the people are somehow not represented in our leadership. Sounds crazy, I know.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @07:11PM
Wroooong. The money from the blank-media levies does not go to artists. You're not supporting anyone's 10,000 hours to mastery of music, you're supporting record company employees 10,000 hours to master paperwork-pushing.
(Score: 1) by disambiguated on Wednesday September 10 2014, @07:42AM
I can't believe I'm defending recording studios, FFS, but surely some of that money is used to pay artists more, even if indirectly: Better equipped recording studios, cheaper studio time, better promotion, more bands signed, more 'risky' artists, etc.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday September 11 2014, @05:03AM
There was a hoorah about that a while back, with documentation (mighta come through slashdot) , and as I recall the truth was NONE of the money went to artists.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Alfred on Tuesday September 09 2014, @09:04PM
That said, from a consumers point of view, I keep it legal and if I don't like the terms or content enough then my dollar goes elsewhere.
But to address your original rant. Do whatever you want to with your old media. Want to rip your old CD to MP3s, do it. Want to convert your old albums to Digital, do it. Want to convert the tape you used to record the radio to an MP3, do it. All of those are legit and legal. Otherwise you pay someone else to convert for you. You don't own the song in all formats but you can do whatever you want with the one copy in the one format you do own. It is only your fault for buying into the system, you didn't have to. And frankly there isn't a song so good that you personally need to buy it ever, if you think otherwise you are a slave to their marketing.
*None of this should be construed to imply that Gene isn't an idiot who spews stupidity.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday September 10 2014, @03:38AM
Hey Red -- Does Bill still have all of his fingers/eyes/arms/legs?
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday September 10 2014, @03:53AM
yup, that's one reason I gave up paying for music. they make money from past performances and I strongly disagree with this business model. you play the song once and you expect infinite returns for the rest of your life? must be nice. I work for a living and I get paid for the hours I work. it would be funny to tell my boss that I once wrote some cool code 20 yrs ago and I should get a recurring check for it.
I can't change the system so I work it my way. you know what what is, I'm pretty sure.
and I sleep just fine at night.
you work your loopholes and I'll work mine.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday September 09 2014, @05:56PM
"particularly in the mid '50s through early '80s."
The dates don't match up. I bought one of the first Diamond Rio portable mp3 players in '97 or so.
Sometime between when I graduated HS in '92 and everyone was listening to Metallica, Pantera, Perl Jam, or the back street boys, and when my sister graduated in '94, the music execs kicked out all the white people and no teen in '94 was listening to anything but rap / hiphop / dr dre. Seriously, it was like two years where teens went from laughing at "grandmaster B" on married with children to being totally confused about why anyone would laugh, he's our hero. From vanilla ice being a walking joke, to being pretty much the only form of teen music permitted on the radio.
By 97 white people were not allowed in music unless they sang like other races. Britney Spears sounded like a young diana ross or some baptist gospel singer, or at least whoever she lipsyncs to, sings like that.
So I don't think the numbers match up.
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:11PM
AFI
311
Nirvana
Staind
Metallica?
Mudvayne
Pearl Jam?
Blink 182
And those are only the most notable. Rock has gone through a bit of a lull in recent times, but there are some pretty good bands out there. Since the 90's it's went: grunge, then hard rock, then punk, and now...
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 3) by VLM on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:26PM
Yes agree with your assessment of good bands existing, and agree more or less with your list of good bands plus or minus some could be added.
Where we part company is none of them were listened to by high school teen girls, for example, post 94 or so, but it did happen pre 92 or so. My sister had a metallica album cover (or tee shirt?) in her room, just to show how mainstream that used to be.
I'm not sure the changes were really better or worse. Growing up watching rich suburban white kids play act that they're Kurt Cobain or Dimebag Darrell in retrospect was quite comical, and its not really any more or less comical watching my sisters slightly younger friends play act that they're little Dr Dre clones. Teens have never really been an indicator of good taste, not for centuries, so I don't suppose it really means much. It was a little shocking to be introduced to my little sisters little friends and think they're doing some kind of blackface routine, which would be totally politically incorrect in that era although certainly not now given that all major "famous" musicians do the same thing.
Rebellion, especially teen rebellion, is a comedy all its own.
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Tuesday September 09 2014, @09:02PM
You are right about white kids playing like Kurt Cobain - wearing thermal underwear in 95 degree weather, complaining about the man after asking Dad for $20... but it was good times.
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:35PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:47PM
Not relevant to a discussion of mainstream music, AC. High school hallway littered with kids listening to NWA and Ice-T on their walkman, you pass like 99 of them, and yes you'll find one kid in a black trenchcoat (before those became "ominous") listening to NiN. But the relevant part is its 99 mainstream vs 1 alternative.
I still like NiN, its aged well. Stone temple pilots. Soundgarden. CoC. But I assure you my sister and her little mainstream friends were not listening to anything like that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @07:06PM
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:57PM
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:47PM
> By 97 white people were not allowed in music unless they sang like other races.
Tool [wikipedia.org]
Foo Fighters [wikipedia.org]
Green Day [wikipedia.org]
Garbage [wikipedia.org]
Radiohead [wikipedia.org]
Beck [wikipedia.org]
Marilyn Manson [wikipedia.org]
Linkin Park [wikipedia.org]
Korn [wikipedia.org]
Most of those white mcwhitewhites have multi-platinum albums in the late 90s and early 2000s, few had any hits before 1995.
The problem is that you weren't (or stopped) listening to rock and only listened to pop.
But still plenty of whitey mcwhitewhites in pop too:
Hanson [wikipedia.org]
Maroon 5 [wikipedia.org]
Spice Girls [wikipedia.org]
Dave Matthews Band [wikipedia.org]
Jewel [wikipedia.org]
Pink [wikipedia.org]
Sheryl Crow [wikipedia.org]
Most likely what happened is you got old and just generally stopped listening to new music in general. Happens to most people.
What is really ironic about your complaint is that the origin of rock is in music from "other races." White people in music have always tried to sound non-white.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:57PM
Wow retro blast AC, I like that list you made. The first list sounds exactly like the playlist from the weirdo alternative college rock station I was listening to at that time. Not mainstream at all, but it was good music.
I was never a big MTV watcher but I'd estimate that as a group that class of music got less than 20%, maybe less than 10%, of video playing airtime in that era. I'm sure the figures exist somewhere.
I guess the whole battle boils down to good ole Gene saying Rock died, I went off on a tangent that I can date to a couple months were Rock was dethroned as the dominant mass media young person music genre of choice, and things went off the rails after.
I don't think my claim and Gene's are all that oppositional anyway. Your genre shrinks from 90% of mainstream to 10% of mainstream in months, you're gonna be hurting for money and creativity. A little hyperbole from Gene, a guy known for BS anyway, and thats "dead" and "extinguished" and all that.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday September 11 2014, @05:15AM
I was one of those weirdo alternative DJs, back around 1980. I didn't play any of those. Mostly fringe rock, new wave, and oddities no one else played. Since then my tastes have degenerated even further, and about all I listen to nowadays are industrial and aggrotech. By my age, shouldn't I be listening to Sinatra and Lawrence Welk? I think I'm living backwards.
Gene Simmons is a businessman first and foremost; he's said that himself. He runs KISS as a business, not as a band, and he's obviously good at it. But I think you're right that he's blaming filesharing for what really was due to the precipitous growth of mass media and market dilution. And if filesharing is so bad, how is it that artists who give stuff away do so well? NIN and JoCo leap to mind...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @07:35PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:15PM
and KMFDM SUCKS!!!!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Bob9113 on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:02PM
A musician who can't do accounting, go figure.
particularly in the mid '50s through early '80s. It turns out the creative engine of rock music was just... capitalism. 'The problem is that nobody will pay you for the 10,000 hours you put in to create what you created', says Simmons.
Musicians got paid more in the 50's than today?
Recorded music revenue per capita [businessinsider.com] is over half what it was in 1973, while production cost per unit has plummeted. Concert revenue [wikipedia.org] is massively higher, with 17 of the 20 all-time highest grossing tours (inflation adjusted) happening since 2000. And at the "major rock artist" level, the tax rate has plummeted [voteview.com], meaning take-home pay is much higher.
False premise, conclusion unfounded.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:16PM
It was financially possible, in fact not all that hard, for me as a starving college student to attend one of the last Grateful Dead concerts with Jerry Garcia and a Phish concert in 1992 in Madison Wisconsin .. Sure, moderately expensive, but affordable, like the cost of a couple bottles of decent liquor.
Kids these days don't believe my stories about that, because its no shit true that Katy Perry concerts tickets cost over $400. I kid you not. I've heard the remaining living baby boomer musicians are all asking for $600+ per ticket which is insanity
This kind of stuff will likely be the death of live music.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:51PM
That and they killed off camping for tickets. When I was in high school, we could camp for 24 to 36 hours (in the summer) starting with no money and end up with good tickets and enough money for a concert tee and such.
(Score: 3) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday September 09 2014, @07:03PM
modern musicians don't really make any money from LP/CD/digital sales, they get most of their money from concerts, the boomers are just trying maintain their lifestyles at the expense of their fan base.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 1) by mckwant on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:25PM
Bottle that bile, dude.
http://www.ticketfly.com/purchase/event/667445?q=937ef49b-29da-415f-a0ff-72ddea024085&p=a2197199-9694-45a4-8906-ef9b3390386c&ts=1410294094&c=ticketfly&e=00339a&rt=Safetynet&h=2d1f7ad77b8f03bd422b319dc97a2e84 [ticketfly.com]
Duran Duran, $325 (obstructed) - $550. Granted, it's Austin, Moody Theatre (where they tape ACL), F1 weekend (private jets abound), but still.
Similarly scheduled concert last year was Sting @ $250.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @09:41PM
Are you trying to show AC how affordable concert tickets are by quoting $550 for Duran Duran and $250 for Sting?
I saw Aerosmith, Metallica, AC/DC, and I can't even remember all of them in the 80s and 90s for $15-25. Half a day's work at the restaurant. Inflation adjusted, that's around $50, back in the days when those bands were at the top of their popularity. The Madonnas of the day might have been twice that. When Elton John did one 'spectacle' asking $100/ticket, it made the national news.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Wednesday September 10 2014, @02:47AM
Well, to be fair, at their age, they're probably just trying to get their audiences to buy their statins and viagra. Half of 'em probably need insulin, too, and those that don't are probably on immunosuppressants of one kind or another to deal with their prior liver transplants. They're more chemical than man, now...
That is all.
(Score: 1) by mckwant on Wednesday September 10 2014, @08:06PM
Oh, Lord, no. Ticket prices are ridiculous, if you let them be. Just saying that if Duran Duran can get $550/seat for their (IMHO) limited and not terribly noteworthy catalog, all bets are off. I think they lost a member, too.
Caught MC Frontalot last night for $12. The venue needed AC (badly) but that, I'm more comfortable with. I wish some of the $22-25 shows I see were in the $15-$18 sort of range, but now I'm quibbling.
brett.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday September 10 2014, @01:40PM
It's been getting more and more expensive all along. I saw Blind Faith (Clapton, Winwood, etc) for $5. Concert with Yes and Donovan, $3. Concert with Golden Earring, Journey, and Electric Light Orchestra, $5. The Doors, ten rows back, $5. A stones concert was $3-5 depending on seating, look what one of their tickets cost now.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday September 11 2014, @05:22AM
Saw Lyle Lovett 6 or 7 years ago for five bucks, and that was in Los Angeles. I guess that's one dude who ain't greedy. A couple years later Meat Loaf came to my little town with $60 seats. Was out of my budget, but now that sounds like a bargain. :(
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:47PM
So if it was, say, 80 in 1973, then it's over 40 now? Is that what you mean?
Or are you just applying the same fucked up sort of expression similar to "the number of numerically
competent people is 5 times less than it was in 1973" (so if there were 1500 competent people, then
there are now 5 times less, or -6000 such people).
Now although the quote may be factually correct, it'd not be as accurate as "over 50% greater than it was", or
"over half as much again" (if the increase was what actually occurred).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @07:15PM
Bob9113, he's talking about the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skillset. This is not about paying the high-grossing tours and major rock artists, who HAVE ALREADY GOT 10,000 hours. This is about sustaining livelihood DURING those 10,000 hours, BEFORE an artist can be a stadium-packing, MTV-borne cash cow.
You entirely, entirely missed the point.
Good job backing up your train of thought with data though! If this was about paying the 1% of musicians at the top, you'd be bang-on!
(Score: 2) by monster on Wednesday September 10 2014, @01:37PM
For the other 99%, wasn't always the norm to perform in small venues and get some money? Have all those small venues disappeared? And, if they did, was it really because of file sharing?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:03PM
Gene Simmons has got to be one of the most pathetic names in rock. Everytime he opens his mouth all that comes out is the kind of grandstanding one would expect from the most fragile of narcissists. Kiss was the original glam-band, completely manufactured to sell merchandise like lunchboxes. [everythingkiss.com] Known not for their low-rent derivative music but for their looks and stage shows. He's got even less cred than the manufactured acts he is complaining about.
Also, check out his sex tape [thestranger.com] where he keeps trying to kiss a hooker and she keeps squirming out of the way. Tawny Kitaen must really be broken to stick with him for so long.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:29PM
ITYM Shannon Tweed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:54PM
lol
You are totally right. I guess that says something about how I stereotype blondes with big boobs in show business.
On the other hand, it looks like Kitaen would have kicked his ass since she beat up her pro-sports ex-husband.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @09:19PM
UGH! No thanks! *shudders*
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday September 09 2014, @09:59PM
The Simmons you hear is not the rocker, but the brand manager. A brand that worth nearly 1 billion [wikipedia.org] in name/image licenses [wikipedia.org] alone.
I never liked Kiss'es rock anyway, sounds cheap to me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:07PM
Gene how many times do you expect us to buy your albums? Being someone who enjoys your music once I get a couple of your greatest hits albums I pretty much have peaked on what I am going to get which was about 15 years ago. As the CD I own still plays just fine. Which was the point of CDs.
Music is a cultural/commercial thing. Our culture has moved on because of a technological shift. We buy our music in small 1 hit songs (which we were doing anyway but getting 9 songs we didnt want). Where as before you could force 10 songs me and charge for 10 songs I can now get just the one song I want.
Gene is also being rather disingenuous as he has recouped. So he can proclaim from on high 'where does the next KISS come from'. He forgets the other thousands of bands out there that he came out on top of which still 'owe' millions to the record companies. Bands are also getting a lot smarter and more educated about who they sign up with. They know the scam.
'The problem is that nobody will pay you for the 10,000 hours you put in to create what you created', says Simmons.
You had the lens of a small point in history where you could create scarcity of your music. Now it is dead easy to copy. It is hard to compete with free.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday September 10 2014, @01:58PM
We buy our music in small 1 hit songs (which we were doing anyway but getting 9 songs we didnt want). Where as before you could force 10 songs me and charge for 10 songs I can now get just the one song I want.
Before 1970, most people had far more 45s than 33s. 45s were singles, 33s were albums. The CD killed singles.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @02:30PM
The CD killed singles.
MP3 killed the CD.
It is more of a return to norms. They were forcing us to buy overpriced goods for that one part of a good we really wanted. Its called bundling.
The middle man is dying and Gene is bemoaning their death. They were ripping everyone off (including him!) and he is mad about them going away.
People no longer are willing to pay 15 bucks for 1 song and 9 they didnt care about. The demand curve changed. It is almost perfect pricing.
I personally would not want to be a musician these days (at least if I were in it for a job). You are not only competing with new groups out there. You are competing with every top 10 hit from the past 60 years. You have to be something really special to compete against that. You will find tons of 'ok' music and even some good music (just like every era before it). But that is what you are competing with.
(Score: 2) by Theophrastus on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:15PM
with every notable adopted technology there will be someone shouting that it ruined something wonderful. it's part of the pattern of progress. and probably it's a fair indicator of a significant development; if no one is declaring that it is evil, causes cancer, steals our souls, (or our wallets), then perhaps it isn't significant.
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:28PM
John Phillip Sousa notably fought against recorded music, saying it would kill the music performance industry. So it's been going on for at least a century just in music.
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:05PM
Reminds me of an Egyptian legend. When the god Thoth shared his invention of writing with king Thamos, the good king recoiled and called it an "enemy of civilization," claiming that children and young people learning their lessons would fail to exercise their memories and become lazy and stupid. Kids these days. Ruining civilization since civilization began.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:16PM
That's all this is. Simmons doesn't get it. He's crying about the demise of a business model that wasn't very good to start with but it worked for him, and getting all crazy because he can't see any way forward without it. Complains there aren't any new bands that are big, not like the big artists of the 80s and earlier, artists are really struggling now. No, I don't see that. Lady Gaga is pretty big. So is Justin Bieber. Top 40, Billboard Top 100 and such charts are able to fill up.
Simmons says "The masses do not recognize file-sharing and downloading as stealing". Good! Because, you know what Gene? Copying isn't stealing!
(Score: 2) by WillR on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:10PM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:17PM
A guy whose contribution to humanity is songs like "you pull the trigger of my love gun" is saying this? Yeah, I can only wish that garbage like his creative output will never be made. I'm going to go download some music and destroy as many of these careers as possible if it will prevent more music like KISS from being made. What web zone has those files? Can I still fit them on a floppy disk like I do my GIFs?
Funny how we romanticize the past. From the 70s and 80s, we tend to only remember the good stuff. But the 1970s had Olivia Newton-John, Abba, and Andy Gibb. They're every bit as awful as Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, and Justin Bieber. We only remember a fraction of the music. Pick a year and make a playlist of the 100 most popular songs and see what I mean. Your enduring classics will be in the minority, if they are there at all. Even your favorite years will have stuff you can't stand. Should we really cry if the corporate machine that put out all this schlock does not survive?
If people look back at the 80s, it's like some kind of golden age of music with Peter Gabriel, Sting, Genesis, and Tears for Fears putting out high-quality albums, but we quickly forget that those were the rare exceptions to the incredible torrent of awful garbage we've erased from our memories like Debbie Gibson and Adam Ant. The 80s had just as much crap as today, it's just that over time the shock treatments have erased it from our minds.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:41PM
It crosses cultural genres
"Atari Star Raiders" cartridge vs "Atari ET" cartridge
"City on the Edge of Forever" and "Doomsday Weapon" vs "Spocks Brain" and "That episode with the space hippies"
Then of course there's the innocence of youth. Knight Rider and Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica seemed like pretty classy high brow entertainment when I was about 7, but upon recent review it seems they don't age well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:01PM
Yeas but Erin Gray and Pamela Hensley still look hot as hell when I see old Buck Rogers shows.
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:50PM
He ought to sit down with Don Henley and compare notes I think he'll find that the label is still charging him for Studio time from the 1970's.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:56PM
Rock and roll is not dead. What is dead is cock-rock. And good riddance to that.
And cock-rock wasn't killed by file sharing, it was just out-cocked by rap. The guys who used to listen to KISS or Aerosmith switched to NWA and Tupac.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:42PM
Simmons was one of the industry's pampered children. He had it all. Whine a little, and someone went scurrying to get whatever he wanted. Today, he's just another aging old fool. And, like many an aging old fool, he doesn't know how to adapt. No more girls screaming when he comes on stage. No more agents showering him with meaningless gifts. Somehow, I can't empathize with him at all. The REST of us had to work for a living. Excuse me, but I just don't give a damn about yesterday's pampered children.
That goes for all the industry executives and agents as well. Suck it up, children. Time moves on. This isn't the same world you grew up in.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:47PM
Gene Simmons commenting about lack of creativity in music.
*falls out of chair laughing*
Next he will go on and tell us if he just had a few more corporate sponsors and reality shows then he, too, could be more creative.
Oh well, at least he his honest about about being owned unlike most other successful (read: rich) musicians.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1) by bswarm on Tuesday September 09 2014, @07:41PM
The drugs were helping make good music, but too much and too long that he lost so many brain cells he's now a chronic-incoherent.
(Score: 1) by Whoever on Wednesday September 10 2014, @03:00AM
FTFY.
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:26PM
The drugs were making other people think he was making good music too.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:50PM
Once the recording companies started to take the copyrights away from the writers/artists and started fighting to keep those copyrights enforced indefinitely so the media companies could rake in the money from old works they stopped signing bands that didn't sound like ones that had previously succeeded.
Just look at all the pop idols of today. Most don't write their own works, and are mediocre singers that rely on the art of the sound mixer to sound even halfway good. The big recording companies control what is getting published, it is part of the contracts that they get to say what songs go into an album, and they play it safe. Now a days a band/group makes their money from the concerts and merchandising, not record sales.
You want creativity, look at the indie bands, there are some great groups out there that will never get a contract because they are too much of a departure from what the recording companies are willing to take a risk on. I've heard some good stuff from several indie groups and they sell their work over the Internet, they get my money. They may never be as rich as KISS but at least they are not likely to become shills for the recording companies.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:13PM
That has been how it has always been. Sure, you have some classic tunesmiths like Lennon/McCartney or ABBA, but if you look at high-charting rock and pop singles in the Sixties and Seventies, you'll see that many of them were not written by the musicians in question, instead they were the product of hired songwriters or covers of venerable old standards. Cream took old blues songs and dressed them up in electric instrumentation -- hell, a lot of early rock was white people making it big on the work of poor black musicians. Mama Cass got famous for a song ("Make Your Own Kind of Music") that had been written by other people a year earlier and already recorded by a different group, a very common recycling of material back in the day.
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:15PM
It is so formulaic, you can do it in about five minutes. How to make a pop song, part 1 [youtube.com] and part 2 [youtube.com].
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:54PM
Gene Simmons? Ha! Ha ha! Hahahahahahaha! (is this even more Soylent irony?)
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:57PM
News at 11
(Score: 4, Interesting) by cafebabe on Tuesday September 09 2014, @06:58PM
This is a problem which is affecting all performing arts. A similar problem is occurring in acting. People from rich families can afford to be successful actors and musicians. However, this is most acute in dance due to a career which is rarely as long as 15 years and has few opportunities for choreographers. I'd be making similar observations about professional sports if they didn't have million dollar salaries/prizes.
1702845791×2
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @07:11PM
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:26PM
I generally avoid nepotism. So, I miss gems such as After Earth [wikipedia.org]. (Scientology [wikipedia.org]? Nepotism [wikipedia.org]? M. Night Shyamalan directing? What could [rottentomatoes.com] possibly [imdb.com] be worse [rottentomatoes.com]?)
Cases of nepotism which spring to mind include Miley Cyrus, Angelina Jolie, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zosia Mamet, Duncan Jones [wikipedia.org] and Dan Snow [wikipedia.org].
1702845791×2
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Archon V2.0 on Tuesday September 09 2014, @07:01PM
"'The problem is that nobody will pay you for the 10,000 hours you put in to create what you created', says Simmons."
I love it every time Simmons goes on the warpath over people stealing work when his kid was nailed for art plagiarism in the comic he was tracing... er... drawing and SELLING.
Sins of the father (or son) and all that, but if he was genuinely all blood and thunder about people getting ripped off by IP theft, he should have got his own (literal) house in order first.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @07:13PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by dyingtolive on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:58PM
He didn't rip them off; those guys actually made enjoyable music.
Kiss makes me roll my eyes and change the station. Or would, if I still listened to a radio station.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @01:50AM
Arthur Brown and Alice Cooper
Go back 20 years earlier and you find Screamin' Jay Hawkins. [wikipedia.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ken_g6 on Tuesday September 09 2014, @07:01PM
Practice predicts only 12% of performance on average. [spring.org.uk]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:01PM
gene simmons is a terrorist. gene simmons hates the american people. yes, i'm kidding but there is kernel of truth in there. it's sounds like he's jealous and bitter.
(Score: 3, Funny) by metamonkey on Tuesday September 09 2014, @08:11PM
No problem Gene. I can absolutely promise that I will never, never download a KISS song.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 3, Funny) by looorg on Tuesday September 09 2014, @09:25PM
... Gave rock and roll to everyone ... and then file sharing took it away.
Do I owe Gene Simmons royalty now?
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Wednesday September 10 2014, @05:06PM
Nope, but maybe the guy who wrote it. That was a cover of a song by Argent, and I suspect Kiss' Pantomime Dame in Chief doesn't make an awful lot of money out of that no matter how many times it's played on the radio.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09 2014, @10:52PM
To quote Ballmer.
Tape trading was quite common in the 1970s and 1980's. If a friend had an album, you could tape it, and then with double tape decks dupe off that one master tape. It was not as easy as file sharing but certainly easy enough.
What happened instead was Demographic implosion. White kids peaked in the baby boom, you had a lot of them in the 1950's and 1960's, and there was an echo boom where kids peaked in the late 1970s and mid 1980s (i.e. teen purchasers of music).
New music depends on a large(r) population of White kids to produce both a paying audience early on, where people can experiment and gig around, learning as they go playing low rent clubs, school dances, the like, and then a youth cohort large enough to support "indie" type experimental music. You need a certain amount of musically talented, White guys playing (call it the Rick Ocasek theory) for girls as much as cash, looking to stand out by trying new styles, new instruments, new techniques. This is particularly true as the Black community has imploded into fatherlessness, meaning little to no church attendance and basic musical training in the choir (where guys like James Brown, Otis Redding, and Marvin Gaye got their musical foundations to name a few prominent Black artists).
Musical experimentation requires a certain level of middle-classness, a garage to play and practice in, and the ability not to worry about a next meal or a drive-by shooting.
Support for that experimentation means a certain level of middle class young teen consumers, with money to spend. Even if the economy picked up radically, the White teen cohort is just too small to support all the myriad clubs, bars, dances, etc. that existed up through the 1980s.
We have ever greater MIDI opportunities, all sorts of ability to borrow from other styles: Jazz, Classical, etc. without the cost of having a huge horn section (which can be replicated via MIDI and a keyboard) but we don't have the demographic cohort to experiment much less support that. So we have artists making more money than ever touring live and charging $400 a ticket. U2 gave away their latest album on Itunes because they make all their money touring with corporate sponsors (just like BTW the "Corporate Rock" of the 1970s with the Eagles, ELO, Boston, .38 Special, Foreigner, Led Zeppelin, etc.)
So until we have a lot more White kids Rock Music (which is utterly, utterly White no matter how it started out; just as Basketball is utterly, utterly Black now) will continue to be stagnant and dependent on work done thirty years ago.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Pav on Tuesday September 09 2014, @11:30PM
...at least not here in Australia, and I suspect the USA.
My family has been involved in music for generations and have known artists from tier one acts (eg. AC/DC), been in working bands themselves etc... THE biggest reason is the creative pool has shrunk - live venues have largely dried up for up-and-coming bands. The likes of AC/DC, INXS, Jimmy Barnes, BeeGees etc... cut their teeth working HARD earning peanuts in a vibrant live scene. That scene largely doesn't exist anymore. Probably the biggest factors are pubs and clubs turning to poker machines instead of live acts, and the Aussie pub culture itself dying down due to many factors including less tolerance of drink driving, higher taxes on alcohol etc...
This drumbeat of bullsh*t... "filesharing has killed music!"... repetition upon repetition... it almost has ME believing it after all these years, and I actually KNOW better.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday September 10 2014, @12:52AM
I just had a nostalgic look around YouTube for random Australian music of my childhood. there was such a great domestic scene, and so many tracks almost unknown outside this country. Gene Simmons was talking about rock - I think Australia has had some of the best rock chicks ever, eg. Chrissie Amphlett [youtube.com] of the Divinyls, and Suze DeMarchi [youtube.com] of the Baby Animals. Everyone probably knows Down Under [youtube.com] by Men at Work, but before them there was Jo Jo Zep [youtube.com], and there was that carefree reggae feel in much of the local rock, even some real working-class stuff eg. Australian Crawl [youtube.com] (yes, he's supposedly singing in English). I was more into Split Enz [youtube.com] in the early 80's - they were actually a New Zealand band, but their first real success was here. OK, that's it... not wasting any more time. ;)
Actually... speaking of reasons for success INXS [youtube.com] and Jimmy Barnes [youtube.com], and the huge majority of Aussie bands made it big with the help of a publicly funded national pop-music show called Countdown. Help! Socialism!!! How did I forget that?!
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Wednesday September 10 2014, @05:53AM
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday September 10 2014, @01:19PM
Italics from TFA.
My father instead laments the loss of opportunity for my generation, those who have begun to sense that it may no longer simply be a matter of dusting our hands, learning a skill, and putting in the time.
It never was a matter of "dusting our hands, learning a skill, and putting in the time." There are hundreds of thousands of very talented individuals out there, and always have been, who have minimal success if any at all.
I know two of them who have turned down recording contracts by the majors because of the labels' dishonesty towards their musicians. Forty years ago they would have been forced to sign, today anyone can be a publisher.
THAT is Simmons' biggest problem -- more competetion.
NICK SIMMONS: You once said the music business isn't dying — it's dead.
Well, who gives a damn unless you're in it for the money? Art for money's sake is seldom any good.
GENE SIMMONS: Don't quit your day job is a good piece of advice. When I was coming up, it was not an insurmountable mountain. Once you had a record company on your side, they would fund you, and that also meant when you toured they would give you tour support. There was an entire industry to help the next Beatles, Stones, Prince, Hendrix, to prop them up and support them every step of the way.
Yet historically, only one in every 25 RIAA musicians ever saw a penny or got any radio airplay.
I am so sad that the next 15-year-old kid in a garage someplace in Saint Paul, that plugs into his Marshall and wants to turn it up to ten, will not have anywhere near the same opportunity that I did.
You got lucky, Gene. I like your music, but I personally know far more talented and original musicians than you are. I'm your age, knew musicians (was one, in fact, but never was much good). Jim Meyers could play rings around you. He eventually went into the construction industry because guess what? You're full of shit. YOU GOT LUCKY.
The problem is that nobody will pay you for the 10,000 hours you put in to create what you created.
Real artists don't care about the money. Know how many paintings Van Gogh sold? ONE. To his brother, to repay a small debt. Musicians I know play because they love playing. I write because I love writing. I don't write to sell, I write to be read. Real artists don't play guitar because they want to get rich, they play because they love music. And file sharing is how they get heard.
But, strangely, today, everything pales before Psy's "Gangnam Style."
Meanwhile, in 1969 The Archies, a made-up bubblegum band, sold millions and were played multiple times a day. Meanwhile, Zeppelin and Hendrix got almost no air play. You have a pretty selective memory, Gene.
Is rock dead? Hell, no! Go to any bar, what are the twenty-somethings yelling for? "FREE BIRD!!!" Is the rock business dead? Why should I give a flying fuck if a hack like Milli Vanilli can't get rich any more?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday September 11 2014, @05:33AM
Music is not unique in that most never make a living at it, let alone make it big. Know how many published authors actually make a living at it? About 5%. The rest work a day job. That's pretty much how it is with every creative endeavor.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday September 11 2014, @01:56PM
Indeed. I don't expect to make much if any money from my books, they're a labor of love. Thousands of new books are published daily, and you are correct, it's all the arts. Van Gogh was a commercial flop, only selling one painting in his life, to his brother, for rent he owed.
Success is 5% quality, 95% luck whether you're playing, painting, sculpting, writing, or playing sports.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday September 11 2014, @03:04PM
Yep... the luck being "Did the market happen to notice you? and if so, for more than two seconds??" Simmons (and/or whoever he hires) is very, very good at marketing himself, and from the interviews I've read, he's =extremely= driven. Most of us are neither, no matter how skilled or talented we may be.
I write too (SF) and while I expect eventually it'll make a little income, it certainly won't ever be a living wage.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.