Another way to Buy Local...Ten to twenty thousand dollars to produce, record, and manufacture a CD. Yup, your favorite local band or singer-songwriter finds a way to scrape together the money for studio time or very expensive equipment, hire a graphic designer, and order a thousand units, just so their fans can buy a CD, to play in the car, at a party, on their computer.
Buy their CD, you get the songs, liner notes and musician credits, artwork, the songs playing in an order designed to build for your enjoyment. All this for $15!
The musician gets to use the proceeds from the sale to pay for the project and to keep making music for you. Or you can buy a song by download on iTunes or Amazon and the artist will get paid anywhere between 4¢ and 65¢. Hear it via a streaming service and musicians get paid .000007. Burn a copy of the music for yourself or a friend and you break a musician’s heart. Creators of music have come to refer to services such as Spotify or Pandora as “digital parasites” because the service makes millions, artists and musicians now make —this is
really the term on our statements—micro-pennies.
So, if you want to hear music in your community, and support local economies, please support your local musicians. If you like their songs, please buy the CD. If they are using social media, connect and share them in your network. If they are connected to a rising indie label, check out the other artists on the label. The photo in this post is my dear friend, Jim Stoltz, or Walkin' Jim as he is often called. He walked thousands of miles across the United States, performing and supporting environmental activism in communities where people came together to raise money AND for music!
We all have these generous souls in our communities.These are the same musicians and bands that show up and donate their time and talent (and equipment and gas) for every good cause and fund raiser in the community. Please show them a little love and appreciation and buy their CD. For yourself, or for a friend.
Music, the universal language. Support it locally. Thank you.
Interesting point, and I do believe we need to support local artists. But one folk musician, Tom Nielsen, posits this question and answer:
ReplyDeleteQuestion: How, do you think, does the internet (or mp3) change the music industry?
Answer: It puts music, that is otherwise censored, in the hands (ears) of the people.
While the dollar receipt per song in Internet distribution may be less than individual CD's the reach is so much larger that it seems to be to be well worth it. It is like the iPhone apps that sell for 99 cents each, and Apple takes a 30 percent cut - but the really successful ones have made the developers millionaires. Of course, I don't expect those singing about environmental responsibility and social justice to ever get rich, but getting their message out to a wider audience has got to be a higher priority. And just old-fashioned CDs no longer makes it, when most music is bought on iTunes or as mp3s nowadays and not as a CD, and music is not discovered by local radio, but by Internet radio stations like Live 365. Yes, it is a big change from traditional systems, but there must be a way for small artists to find ways to turn it to their advantage. My cross-posting, the information will get out and hopefully will provide adequate financial reward. Someone like Joyce Rouse ("Earth Mama") does not belong to a few folks who might be lucky enough to hear her in a concert locally - her music should be played all over the world and in many more venues because her message and artistry is so wonderful!
Well dang. I thought artists got more from Spotify/Pandora than that teeny cut. Wow. Rethinking using those services. :/
ReplyDeleteI've heard it said by someone that, "Music is the voice of God" It requires extraordinary love, commitment, and creativity to become fluent in the language.
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, the most effective musicians, the ones that give me "goosebumps," are those I have heard live. I don't think that experience can be reproduced and mass marketed in any way that even approaches the pure love and joy that I have experienced during a live performance; like those performances in a sanctuary, in a concert hall, in my neighbor's home, or in a "hole in the wall nip-joint". Most reproductions of any sort can aspire to be no more than a memory, like a snapshot, albeit, a very pleasurable memory.
Perhaps we need to figure out more ways for smaller, cohesive communities of people, like "Treme" in New Orleans and "Beale Street" in Memphis to support and promote our greatist artists rather than relying upon mass marketers focused on corporate profits.
Don't worry Earth Mama, the message of your music will prevail.
Lovin' you and Livin' large :)