Music and the Money

Streamed and illegally acquired music have been my only source of music since I was a kid. Other than my parents’ three Eagles CDs, I was musically barren until I discovered LimeWire: so juicy. Without it, I would not have been able to indulge my middle school self in Breaking Benjamin, All American Rejects and Slipknot. Naturally, I have a little bit of a bias towards free internet and cheap streamed music. But let’s try to talk ethics.

Streaming music is inexpensive and relatively unfair to musicians. Discrete songs have become undervalued with the spawn of Napster, says Jessica Hopper of Pitchfork Review. Songs used to be about a buck. A CD could cost around 15 bucks and have around 12–16 songs on it. Now, as the article says, it’s about half a cent. Yikes, that’s a drastic decrease in revenue.

Unfortunately for artists, streaming and piracy is not going away any time soon. So, in the meantime, how can musicians work their way around this insane depreciation?

Off the top of my head, I can think of one: perform live. Prior to recording and playback technology (pre-gramophone), if you were a musician you were required to play live to make money. That is just how it was. If no one heard you, you would not make money. With recording technology, one could argue that musicians did not have to work as hard. If musicians are making money not performing live, why would they have to leave the studio?

Technology is at a point in time where the gramophone may as well have been taken away. Musicians simply are not making money from jamming in the studio. If they want to adapt, it is time to take on a new business model. One that does not generate revenue from recording, but from performance. Imagine the opportunities and the sheer musicianship that can emerge out of this.

If bands are truly determined to make it as a band, turn every concert into a performance. Have you seen Queen Live at Montreal? Its on Netflix and it is an incredible display of both musicianship and performance. It is a show, not just a place where you go and bob your head. It is a place where you jump and scream and stage dive. It brings the fun back to music like records could not.

While I am not saying there are no performance based bands now, bring back good live music.