

Everything popular is wrong: Making it in electronic music - tintin
http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/feature/everything-popular-is-wrong-making-it-in-electronic-music-despite-democratization/

======
JonnieCache
The electronic music scene has always had lots of very unusual and interesting
business models going on, right back to the late 80s. People in the early rave
scene in london were doing stuff in the early 90s that looks modern today.

Consider the idea that there have always been some records out there that DJs
consider too good to even _play,_ except at very particular and infrequent
times and places. There are artists who keep their identities and even their
music and their entire existence secret at the behest of their label manager.
This is not just artistic preciousness, it is a key part of a very well-tested
business model. There is lots of music out there that is too good to be
released, if every guy on the street had a copy it would devalue it and hasten
its passing into unfashionability.

It's more than just controlling supply (although thats a lot of it,) its about
making the people that _have_ managed/been allowed to hear the mythical secret
tunes feel special, part of a lucky few. They are in a sense indebted to the
DJ, even though they paid to go and see them perform.

They will tell all their friends, "and then halfway through Blackdown's set he
drew for these unlabelled CDRs, it was too much. I've never heard anything
like it. I asked him who it was and he wouldn't tell me." They will then post
the same thing on message boards, asking if anyone else knew who the tunes
were by. Many times, I have paid to go and see a person play just because I
know they have access to tunes that nobody else does. That could be the only
time I _ever_ get a chance to hear those tunes. That could be the _only time
those tunes are ever played._

I plan to write some blog posts about this stuff at some point.

~~~
sandGorgon
Please do - I have been following electronic music for a few years now (DI.fm
subscriber, head-fi) and never knew about this stuff.

~~~
JonnieCache
You are getting a one sided view from DI.fm, it's very centered around the
continental europe based trance scene.

Try listening to some <http://rinse.fm> shows, particularly the Dusk and
Blackdown show. Rinse is the top dog of london pirate radio.

Blackdown's blog is here: <http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.com/>

For more about the UK scene, see the writings of Simon Reynolds:
<http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/2009/>

------
samlevine
For what it's worth I lived in LA for several years after graduating college.
Dispite playing in bands and being knee deep in the music industry I found
that almost all of the new music I was introduced to as being "great" really
sucked, notwithstanding the awesome stuff my late 20's roommate had on his CD
rack. This was about 9 years ago.

Fast forward to today, and I've found more great DJs and bands based in
Seattle in the past 4 months than I did the entire two years I lived in LA.
And the 4 months before that, and the 4 months before that. And this is
dwarfed by all the great music new being made all around the world.

I find most of my music through fliers, last.fm friends, hyperlocal news and
forums dedicated to particular subgenres. We're so much better networked than
we were a decade ago that not being amazed at what is being made (and what has
been made under your nose) shows a lack of being hooked into that network, not
that great art isn't being made today.

It's easy to mourn the death of an industry. Some really great people were
involved in making and promoting some really great things. But it's silly to
expect the death of art. The kids are alright.

------
jasonkester
Interesting to note that his strategy for musicians to differentiate
themselves from the Million-man race to the bottom in music is so close to the
strategy you need to differentiate yourself from the Million-rentacoder race
to the bottom in software consulting:

Differentiate yourself by being _better_ , not by being cheaper or willing to
bend over further than the next guy.

There's always a place in any market for really good stuff at a premium price.
Slot yourself firmly in to that position, and you have a lot better shot.

------
norswap
This piece speaks of the democratization of the access to electronic music,
but fails to properly address the democratization of its production. It is
mentioned, but there is no suggestion that it may affect the sales average per
producer.

Its basic supply/demand imho : internet brings perhaps a tenfold increase in
electro demand, but also a hundredfold (or more if you count in the likes of
<http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/>) increase in production.

There is also that, while demand rose, I don't believe that the core group
that would buy the music if they couldn't get it for free augmented that much.
Those are typically the people who pay for vinyls and for live performance
nowadays.

~~~
leviathant
I posted a comment on this page when it was originally published, pointing out
that his analogy to political science misses the mark - it's not
democratization, it's full on marxism. The means of production (and
distribution) have rather suddenly become accessible to the workers.

This guy's rant is just another example of someone in the traditional music
industry not quite getting it.

~~~
hugh3
That's not really what Marxism is about. Marxism is about the workers taking
over the one big factory from its owners, not about someone inventing an
efficient cheap small-scale factory so that all the workers go home and become
small businessmen.

Democratisation isn't really the right word either, of course. It's more like
the Industrial Revolution in reverse -- increasing technology shifts
production back from huge centralized facilities to one-man operations.

~~~
radiowave
Reverting to a cottage industry.

------
tintin
Posted this because I think it applies to a lot more than music alone.

~~~
chipsy
Indeed, it suggests something very core to entrepreneurship - the good money
is always in new places, not existing ones. Oneupmanship in an existing field
always turns into a game of capital and manpower, bigger risks for less
reward. But "breaking out of the box" and finding that new place can be a
really tough thing too.

------
Roboprog
Thanks for the article. This brought back memories for me of learning and
making electronic music in the college lab back in the 80s -- analog gear on
reel tape, and later digital + MIDI.

It requires some _real_ dedication at this to make a living, and I wish the
practitioners the best. I live in the sticks, so I don't think I'll be
catching many performances (plus the family vs concert attendance). However, I
think the download services (e.g. - Amazon, iTunes) do have something to offer
if you can get hooked up, and get word of mouth support from friends of
friends.

------
airlabam
Interesting article, but I definitely do believe that it is a bit muddled and
oblivious. Yes, you should not study Ricardo Villalobos as a template to
emulate any more than you would for Mozart -- if you like that music, you
digest it and enjoy it and then create something that is intrinsically yours;
how could you genuinely just want to produce something that is exactly someone
else's vision and aesthetic? I am a bit skeptical of the author's potential
embedded assumptions about what ought to spur and what currently does enable
music composition as a full-time career path.

My biggest issue with that article is how much weight it seems to place on the
"lucky idiot" theory: why assume that the cycle of the guy who 'makes it' for
a few weeks of popularity and then abandoned for the next hot thing actually
implies anything general about "making it" in electronic music? I don't want
to jump to conclusions, but I detect a hint of an entitlement complex there --
namely that if one wishes to be a musician badly enough and works hard enough
at it with enough genuine passion and self honesty, that person deserves a
career. That's ridiculous. Those qualities are always important, but being a
working artist of any kind requires an audience--that's not just an
afterthought that's tacked on after the fact or something which can be
separated from the production process itself, but something that's embedded
into the whole creative process.

If you are not able to discover a desire to experience something that a large
group of people express and are not able to find, why should you get any money
or indeed any indication for you to continue your current strategy of earning
a living by producing art? You can't ever just jump on a bandwagon and ignore
your own individual vision, but you need to balance it with an ability to
connect with supply and demand forces of a market if you want to making a
living out of it. You can complain all you want about the imperfections of the
current system (it has its warts), but shouldn't you be focusing more on
continuing to develop an audience whose desires align with your creative
vision, and just generally experimenting with the understanding that some
experiments fail? I don't understand how anyone can ever feel entitled to
being an artist as a stable, full time job without the risks, hard work and
inevitable rejection that must be dealt with along the way.

Further thought about the "lucky idiot" idea: of course fashion trends exist
and have their girth, but the cultures connected to various strains of art
(along with their surrounding environment) are always a more meaningful lens
to look through. Of course, I am looking at this through the eyes of someone
who loves composing, mixing, experiencing and thinking about the nature of
electronic dance music while simultaneously being skeptical about committing
to making it a full time job. It's certainly possible, but it's not guaranteed
--there's a lot of competition and a tough market, which requires a decent
exit strategy if one tries and fails at it. I know some talented musicians who
do not have trouble making music their day job, but they 1) are talented,
2)understand and have experience with the reality of being a performing
artist, and 3)have a direct connection and investment in their audience. The
last bit is the most important part for me -- the direct connection part. I am
not sure if I will ever want to make music my day job, but it is an important
part of my life, so I invest a lot of care into it--I've got to say, the
environment for making electronic music nowadays with just ONE site
(Soundcloud) is wonderful.

For what it's worth, I really love Soundcloud. As a programmer, I really have
to admire how minimalistic and useful its design is as well as how it well it
implements the freemium model. The free account is usable, but the premium
levels are worth their costs, enough for me to actually have one because of
the value it provides to me. That's pretty cool. As an artist, It's probably
the web application that has helped my artistic endeavors the most in a way
that I really don't think would be so possible without. It has succeeded in
creating an application that connects an enormous community of musicians with
each other through as directly as possible: the music. It's really cool to
observe how it has actually made a geographic space from the virtual space of
the signal trace of an audio clip -- when you comment on a track, you can make
either a general comment or a timed comment. For a timed comment, a blip
appears over the point in time in the track that you're making the comment
over, so anyone who subsequently listens to that track can experience not just
the music as it plays back in real time, but what other people have said about
certain parts of it, as those parts come up when you listen to it. For someone
who creates music, this opens up the way you and your social network connect
to music. If someone starts following you, you can immediately grasp some of
the music they've written and the responses they've got and vice versa. If
there's a producer you really dig, you can muster up the courage to send them
a track of yours and ask for their feedback -- I've done that lately, and I've
been amazed that they even respond at all. They're producers that have
enormous followings and are already really successful, but they can still find
the time to listen to a track I wrote and give me feedback.

To witness a producer you respect and admire give you positive feedback about
a track you wrote is a pretty incredible and deeply validating feeling; that
kind of feeling is the kind that motivates you to keep working on your music
and keep going on it despite how challenging it is. It's also independent of
your ability to turn it into a profession. I dunno, but that throughout the
article, I never got the impression that the author's analysis was aware of
that whole evolutionary process of creating music, connecting to others who
create music and giving/receiving feedback that I experience/am in awe of with
my soundcloud. (<http://soundcloud.com/airlab-am> if you're curious--I feel
weird about plugs but I think it makes sense in this case so you can
contextualize how I am responding to this article's description of the music
making process relative to my music own music)

Goodness. That's a really long wall of text. I hope someone enjoys it. I'm
glad that this kind of thread can come up on hackernews and get this kind of a
lively discussion though!

~~~
leviathant
Bravo! Well said, all around. The world is changing in so many ways. Those of
us who work day-in and day-out in technology are probably among the most aware
of how if you don't adapt, you can very quickly fall behind while the rest of
the world moves past you. But your post touches on a lot of other points the
guy made, and how they're kind of ... not quite right. Anyway, thanks for the
wall of text. Good read - better than the original blog post even.

------
teyc
The same can be said for 99cent apps. The access to sales channel has been
democratized and this creates a massive inventory of software. Some of which
are very good, but still forced to price at a very low level. A piece of
software like iPad's GarageBand at 5.99 - who could have believed this?

------
zandorg
I used plugins and Cubase for years, then I bought the greatest analogue synth
ever (Oberheim Xpander) for a fortune - noting that it's gone up in value -
and then in 2009 I bought some mixing desks, 2 samplers, and a 24-bit, 96k Emu
soundcard for mastering. The basic idea was, if everyone else is doing it with
plugins, I'll make it sound different by using analogue gear everyone is
throwing out cheap on Ebay.

Techno was in a big way about cheap synths in thrift shops, and I think it's
coming full circle: mixers and samplers are the new wave.

~~~
msutherl
Sorry to break it to you, but people have been going "back to analog" for the
past 20 years.

------
owlmusic
Looking at the "Closer to what today’s typical studio looks like" picture, it
appears this setup is sans speakers, and I don't think the two Apple Macs
compensate for this...

~~~
highpass
The setup in the picture doesn't make sense... There isn't room for a set of
studio monitors. Even if there were you'd be too close to them.

I'd guess the guys speakers are behind him and he just fancied doing lots of
180 deg spins throughout the day. Some people.

------
highpass
Anyone know Venetian Snares' business model?

I don't believe he has such a thing.

~~~
JonnieCache
He writes an enormous quantity of harrowingly insane music and Mike P from
Planet Mu releases it all. And he has a good agent. It seems to work. Even if
it does occasionally involve imagining that he's a pigeon on top of the
hungarian national opera house.

------
ALXfoo
Proof that good electronic music with artful classical influences gets zero
attention is that this comment would be at the bottom of the page with a sub-
zero rating. <http://soundcloud.com/alxander/cravings>

~~~
ctdonath
Proof that there is no such thing as bad publicity is that parent comment
managed to differentiate itself and draw attention to its core content by
leveraging, intentional or not, a sub-zero rating.

~~~
ALXfoo
I'd like to point out that the initial comment said something along the lines
of hi I'm part of the computer science community and I make unconventional
sounds you might like. I only changed it after it was ostracized to reflect
the reality of our disconnection.

~~~
mojuba
Let's start with that I didn't downvote the comment you've now changed that
one into. I downvoted something else and I think it's at least a bad tone to
liberally edit comments.

Second, the original comment said nothing about you being part of the
community. It looked like poor self-promotion of some musical piece I didn't
find interesting, let alone unique or "unconventional".

I don't really understand what kind of "disconnection" you are trying prove.
In any case, please don't vandalize others' votes.

