

Why Bebo Doesn't Owe Musicians Anything - mattmaroon
http://mattmaroon.com/?p=342

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dazzawazza
I interact with a lot of small bands on the fringe of the music scene (death
metal, thrash, black metal etc) some signed and some not. All but the very
large are having a really tough time. While the internet gives them exposure
it's not really giving them a revenue stream. Not everyone has the pulling
power of Reznor.

A lot of these small bands can't see a future at the moment and whether you
like this genre of music or not all the fringe genre's are suffering.

It's hard to see if things are worse in their world then ten years ago but
according to them and their publishers things are indeed worse. I wish I knew
the answer to this.

~~~
procrastitron
In the mid 90's MTV did a salary survey of moderately successful bands and
found that the average yearly salary was about 30k, putting it in the range of
an entry level office job. These weren't the biggest names in music, but they
were definitely on the high end. This was long before the rise of peer to peer
downloads, and even then professional music was not a viable career path.
Blaming technology advancements for artists not being able to make a living
off of their art is just a scape goat.

The concept of a "starving artist" predates the rise of computers and
transcends all media. The only difference between the music industry and
painting, sculpting, writing, or any other form of art is that a myth of past
profitability has been propagated in recent years. The (unchanged) reality is
that artistic expression doesn't generate revenue streams except for the very
few, lucky artists.

