quote:

Originally posted by Fledz This is pretty much all that needs to be said really and I hear it time and time again.

So true. Storyteller just nailed it with that statement. Labels power molest you on demand with zero lube, at least the majority do.

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quote:

Originally posted by sleeping agreed on some levels. But, it´s not ideal that day after you´ve released a track, the 100 first hits on google are piracysites or shady russian forums...

The way I see it, when I release a track on a relatively new and unknown label, the fact that my track appeared in a pack with other tracks, means that more people are going to hear my song and see my name. i know alot of djs download packs like that, and if my song start appearing in mixes that's more exposure for me. and people don't even have to listen to the mixes, just people seeing my name in tracklists is enough to be noticed.

if you're gonna make it in EDM you have two choices;
1.whore yourself out to the bigger labels and quite possibly get screwed over after a short period of what seems like success, but unless you have something really special to offer, you'll most likely burn up and fade away quickly.
2.try to appeal to the underground. that means having to play alot of free gigs, and start with a small group of followers and just build on that, mostly by word of mouth. takes alot longer than being featured on ASOT, but your fans will probably be fans forever, so a longer career is expected.

this should probably have been rewritten a couple of times, but it's 4:20 so I can't be bothered. I hope it kinda makes sense.

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Last edited by itsamemario on May-20-2011 at 17:55

quote:

Originally posted by clay yes ASOT is the measurement of what tracks are good people dont buy his music because it sucks. not because it was on ASOT or not. please not another blueman sucking dick thread.

True - when the fuck did ASOT become the yardstick by which good music is measured? It is not an indication of quality nor sales figures. And those top 5,10,100 or 1000 lists are utterly meaningless; they are either polls which are notoriously inaccurate or someone's particular bais, either one of which isn't worth the paper they're written on.

Even if I were to go along with Blueman's sucess based on a top 1000 poll, the ones I could find all had PVD, Oakenfold, Armin and Ferry having more tracks in the top 500 than Blueman had in the top 1000.

Blueman quit becuase he had no where else to go with his disposable brand of trace, other than repetition. He also saw the kind of money involved in scoring and thought he would like some of that cake, but sadly like others before him have found out, it's not quote that simple.

Don't get me wrong, I know a bunch of EDM guys from the 90's who got in to commercial music production and do quite nicely (The Trouser Enthusists, for one), so it's understandable that trying to scrabble around for some beatport revenue from a label that continues to fuck you is not a great plan for finanacial stability.

Back OT, Storyteller is right - those that see the current status quo as problems,are not the ones coming up with the solutions, and those that view the situaion as a challenge, however hippy it may sound, ar the ones coming up with ideas.

The current state of EDM labels and the commercial aspects of EDM is so bad, it's doing more harm than good, whereas at least piracy gets you out there.

Do I like the idea of my music being given away for free? no.

Do I like the idea of a label selling it and giving me nothing? FUCKING HELL NO.

In other words I prefer it be given away for free and at least getting my name out there than some cvnt making money off my work and giving me nothing.

Frankly if this was any other industry (retail, design, real estate, whatever etc), these people would be in prison (or at least shut down long ago) for material breach of contract and accounting fraud. Think about, I cannot think of any other industry where contracts are so routinely broken without any negative consequences.

Unfortunately, the negative consequences are passed on to the artist, through the resulting piracy (and let's remember, it's actually the labels job to protect your material) and loss of revenue.

quote:

Originally posted by dj_alfi if you're gonna make it in EDM you have two choices; 1.whore yourself out to the bigger labels and quite possibly get screwed over after a short period of what seems like success, but unless you have something really special to offer, you'll most likely burn up and fade away quickly. 2.try to appeal to the underground. that means having to play alot of free gigs, and start with a small group of followers and just build on that, mostly by word of mouth. takes alot longer than being featured on ASOT, but your fans will probably be fans forever, so a longer career is expected. this should probably have been rewritten a couple of times, but it's 4:20 so I can't be bothered. I hope it kinda makes sense.

myself ,and and i do hope that many others too, dont have the urge for claim to fame. I never had and will never have plans to "make it" in this industry because, let´s face it. I dont have the time, economical security or desire to let my whole life depend on my "career" as a producer. I just make music beacuse it´s fun, in a very selfish way.

I look at it this way, labels are just a way for me to get my tracks into the mainstream, so they can then be disseminated for free. I don't expect to ever see a dime. I get the sales reports, and I typically sell 4 or 5 units per release. My tracks are pirated far and wide, I'm guessing the pirates are the ones who buy them. So I sell tracks to a pirate, who then shares them with the world. If I tried to release my tracks for free, they would get lost in the shuffle. When my tracks hit beatport, I can know for sure that they will be disseminated for free all over the internet. Illegal downloads don't hurt my sales at all, the way I see it. Music is pretty much free now, any MP3 can be found via Google, or listened to on youtube, last.fm, ect. Yes, all this free music means lower revenue for artists. They try to make up for the loss with live gigs, sponsors, licensing, merchandise. I don't know how some of these EDM labels are surviving, the ones that have offices and employees. That's another topic though.

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Very interesting reading here, someone wrote long time ago that, people who do illegal downloads wouldnt even bother to buy it so I think it really doesnt affect that much.

I kinda start notice that people dont care about music that much anymore as you can type everything on google and download it not really getting to know the artist ect. (I am not saying about us who live with music 24/7

I still would like to get back to old vinyls/cds days ... anyway about labels the good thinkg about them is that they gather some good artist and by knowing someone already from that one label you can track some other you might never heard of and which could be really hard to find if that artist would like to promote by himself .

I will put myself here as example nobody even heard about me as I am bedroom producer as thousands out there. I would like to promote myself and reach some wider audience but I need to first thing out some plans how to do that.

I think that if artists would make some alliance or whatever and do sell music by themselves it could be maybe some idea to go. We would run out off the labels and there would only be left producers and djs which I think is enought in that bussiness, producers make music give them for free for djs they play them out promote and someone who find out what track he plays just go to his site and buy directly from the artist. I wish it would be like that someday

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Last edited by drogtech on May-22-2011 at 10:37

this is my plan.

im gonna setup a website, a facebook, twitter, blogspot and a soundcloud all with the same name, linked to each other, not giving away whether its a label, artist, distributor, promoter or what teh fuck, no info what so ever - just a merged platform of all big social medias.

then im gonna post new tracks for free for everyone and spam it everywhere - atleast two tracks a month (have quite a few almost ready already).

each track will have a new alias so it just becomes completely retarded and impossible to understand who made it.

the track titles and aliases will be more retarded and random than any of my previous works.

i will not let myself be limited by any genre either, i will try to make each new song within a different genre (within electronic) but with the biggest weight on ambient, breaks, dnb and house.

at some point ill make albums of these various aliases and spam it everywhere yet again.

this way i can keep complete artistic integrity without any genre-limitaions, label letdowns or anything.

everything will be avaliable as both wav and mp3.

i much rather have fans following my websites than some artist name or label name.

then i have no idea, i just want to share all my ideas with the world, and today we have that opportunity bigger that ever.

if you forget about money completely todays music and technology can breed great things.

my dad always says that if he was young today hed do nothing but make music on computers and share it everywhere online, he sort of envy our availability today and i see his point.

back then he had to hire a record studio for a week just to make a single 12" together with some friends, and it costed them quite a lot.

No one should really complain today, the world is just waiting for someone to find/make the right platform.


edited for weak readers

Last edited by Zak McKracken on May-21-2011 at 22:15

@ Clay, Drogtech & Zodiac

As producers you guys know enough not to record a squashed block of music, but when it comes to posts on the internet you seem to think its ok lol.

PLEASE PLEASE, like DJ Rann does, double space your posts.
Its not hard, after every sentence or 2 just press enter. =]

It really makes a big difference.
There is a lot of great advice in this post and no I never considered ASOT a measure of anything. So you are right DJ Rann that doesn't mean shit realistically. But I'm trying to think of other ways you could measure an artists talent in an objective light and I can't think of a lot more ways to do it.

I also don't understand why popular music is disposable wouldn't it be the other way around (@storyteller)? If a song is good its good. Whether its popular or not I don't think it would matter. Unless you're trying to say its the overexposure that kills the music?

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quote:

Originally posted by DJ Robby Rox @ Clay, Drogtech & Zodiac As producers you guys know enough not to record a squashed block of music, but when it comes to posts on the internet you seem to think its ok lol. PLEASE PLEASE, like DJ Rann does, double space your posts. Its not hard, after every sentence or 2 just press enter. =] It really makes a big difference.

Lol, so fucking true. It really hurts my head (in the same way over compressed music does).

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Robby Rox There is a lot of great advice in this post and no I never considered ASOT a measure of anything. So you are right DJ Rann that doesn't mean shit realistically. But I'm trying to think of other ways you could measure an artists talent in an objective light and I can't think of a lot more ways to do it. I also don't understand why popular music is disposable wouldn't it be the other way around (@storyteller)? If a song is good its good. Whether its popular or not I don't think it would matter. Unless you're trying to say its the overexposure that kills the music?

Fair point - I suppose the conversation here is about popularity not having a bearing on quality. Take Guetta for instance; he's so damn popular amongst a particular demographic (musically uneducated youth and people who don't understand english lyrics) yet he produces lowest common denominator cheesey commercial house, that although well engineered in some cases, is musically abhorrent.

one thing I've realised about business is that people (or at least the masses) are sheep - they follow other people, blindly in some cases, and often will believe something is cool, just because others like it, or it's marketed in the right way.

I'll give you an exact example: there a popular Boutique shopping empire called Kitson here in LA. They built their sucess, by paying Paris Hilton at the peak of her fame, many thousands of dollars to shop in their stores, whist calling TMZ to make sure they filmed it.

What happens? droves of dweebs and wannabe's from the mid west flock to kitson so they can say "I bought it there". It's overpriced and in many cases bad quality, but they can't keep their shelves stocked.

So back to you point, there is really no way to measure the value of art or the talent of an artist. Some thing are obviously apparent - when you hear a track that you know will be a classic, either in the respect that it typifies a particular point in time or that it is timeless.
But I'll be honest, 99% of all EDM is disposable. It was like that 15 years ago (albeit slightly less as there were production based filters (like the costs of equipment and vinyl pressing) that negated some bad material from ever making it out to release) and it's like that today. Very few tracks stand out and very few artists can repeatedly produce great music.

i must admit i was never good on communication.

quote:

Originally posted by clay this is my plan. im gonna setup a website, a facebook, twitter, blogspot and a soundcloud all with the same name, linked to each other, not giving away whether its a label, artist, distributor, promoter or what teh fuck, no info what so ever - just a merged platform of all big social medias. then im gonna post new tracks for free for everyone and spam it everywhere - atleast two tracks a month (have quite a few almost ready already). each track will have a new alias so it just becomes completely retarded and impossible to understand who made it. the track titles and aliases will be more retarded and random than any of my previous works. i will not let myself be limited by any genre either, i will try to make each new song within a different genre (within electronic) but with the biggest weight on ambient, breaks, dnb and house. at some point ill make albums of these various aliases and spam it everywhere yet again. this way i can keep complete artistic integrity without any genre-limitaions, label letdowns or anything. everything will be avaliable as both wav and mp3. i much rather have fans following my websites than some artist name or label name. then i have no idea, i just want to share all my ideas with the world, and today we have that opportunity bigger that ever. if you forget about money completely todays music and technology can breed great things.

Renard Queenston.

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