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.
