Record companies are completely outdated. All bands need now are a producer, and a marketing team to promote the album and manage the tour - Integrated Marketing people are experts at staging events. Muic is a DIY media. For decades we've listened as bands have whinged and whinged about how record companies don't allow for total artistic freedom. Well guess what? You don't need them!
In week 7's lecture, Barry Saunders made some important points about DIYmedia.
- More popular in economy with lowered costs of entry
- Pathway to professional work
- Strategy for established professionals to lower costs, reach audiences in a different way
As technology progresses further and further, the barriers to entry for the music industry are lowering at dramatic standards. Many of the top-charting bands at the moment have found huge success through the self-promotion magnate that is Myspace. The cost of setting up a makeshift home-studio is absolutely minimal! In fact, you don't even need talent! Samples are so readily available on the Internet, open source editing software is free and easily accessed, and the avenues for distribution are literally endless.
I can't play drums, so I use samples from CCMixter. Or if I'm after something a little different, I'll put down a guitar track on my Audio-USB interface (cheap as chips) and email it to my mate, who plays electric drums. When he has spare time, he'll plug in at his house, bash away, and send it back.
I can't rap, so I sample the Beastie Boys, who give their acapella tracks out for free.If I'm after some tripped-out ambient stuff, I sample IceWorld. I'm not much of a singer, so when I can, I use Meladine - pitch-correcting software that can even make Britney Spears sound listenable!
This video is a great example:
As Daniel pointed out on the Explosion blog, bands no longer need to drive all through the night, sleep in their van and live off cereal for the entire tour just to get their name out.
The Internet is playing a bit of Robin Hood, really - it taxes the rich bands (illegal downloads, less cd sales) and gives to the poor (exposure to unknown bands). This flattening of the traditional hierarchical model of professionals and amateurs is representative of a broader change in content production, facilitated by the Internet. So why are bands going to such great lengths to protect their content? They've had it too good for too long.
This week Adam Muir discussed the communal goal of information sharing and the moral compulsion that causes hackers to contribute to the global community. Seemingly at odds with capitalistic society, patents are a restrictive and inefficient way of advancing new media technology - primarily because of the communal collaboration that the term produsage embodies, and the ability within a global community to respond to feedback and improve services more efficiently than a private, market-orientated company can.
Music, like other online content, should be shared.
Industries are focusing on making their online music released less and less compatible and manipulate-able in efforts to discourage piracy – similar to the way in which Microsoft monopolised computer software by making the operating systems compatible only with their own products.
