
A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music - howsilly
https://www.rootsmusic.ca/2019/03/14/a-brief-history-of-why-artists-are-no-longer-making-a-living-making-music/
======
jedberg
For all of human history, we've been making music and art. And for almost all
of that time, it was done for love of doing, not money.

For a few hundred years, there was the patronage era, where if you were really
good you could get a rich person to feed and clothe and house you while you
made art. Or you traveled around giving performances for money or food or
clothes or shelter.

Then only in the last 100ish years has it been possible to make art for mass
consumption (and mass money), but that's only because of artificial scarcity.

Now that the scarcity is gone, we are back to patronage (see Patreon) and
making money from the _performance_ of music, by doing live shows and such.

I think people making money making music was an aberration in history, not
"the way it should be".

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
You could apply this argument to almost literally anything that people do or
have done for money.

It's a bad argument. It ignores the fact that humans progress by division of
talent and labour. You wouldn't apply it to physicists, engineers, medical
specialists, lawyers, politicians [1], financial experts, sports, or software
developers.

So why is it fine to apply it to an art? The predictable outcome is that
you'll get mediocre unsatisfying art that leaves everyone involved feeling
like something vital is missing - which is more or less where we are now.

In fact it takes _many_ more years of study and experience to become a
competent, productive musician, artist, novelist, or other creative worker,
than it does to become a software developer.

The arts are a profession, not a hobby. Just because most people can have a go
doesn't mean it makes sense to run them on an amateur basis - any more than it
does to run software development in the same way.

[1] The one category it probably _should_ apply to.

~~~
Ace17
> It's a bad argument. It ignores the fact that humans progress by division of
> talent and labour.

I suspect the "bad" argument is actually compatible with division of talent
and labour. Could you explain the link between this division and income?

> You wouldn't apply it to physicists, engineers, medical specialists,
> lawyers, politicians [1], financial experts, sports, or software developers.
> > So why is it fine to apply it to an art?

Because history shows us that "some" art gets done, even when no money is
directly involved. And actually, it's the same for physicists, engineers,
sports, software developers - not sure about lawyers, policitans, or financial
experts.

Now we have to ask ourselves: for all these domains, what's an acceptable
amount for "some"?

~~~
xvVY
People are not pirating "some" art, the generally pirate the best art
available.

The best art has always been produced by professionals and not by some YouTube
narcissists who think they're God's gift to this world.

~~~
tremon
As a rule, people are pirating the most valuable art, not the best. This is an
important distinction, because by conflating them, you are buying into the
industry's point that the most expensive art is the best -- and as the
monopoly cartel controls the price, that becomes self-fulfilling.

~~~
cbmeyer11
It is true that in pop music and movies the best art does not necessarily win,
but even bad movies have some level of professionalism that is absent from
indie productions.

YouTube _becomes_ the cartel these days, and tries to drive down the price for
"content" to zero.

It is far more evil for artists than any middleman taking 60% or more of a
substantial sum of money.

------
MereInterest
> However, with a sampling rate of 44,000 samples per second, there were
> overtones of sound now missing.

Human hearing only goes up to 20 kHz when you are young, dropping to about 12
kHz at the age of 50. 44 kHz sampling gives a Nyquist frequency of 22 kHz,
easily encompassing the full range of human hearing. Any overtones that are
missing in the recording are overtones that didn't make it through the human
ear in the first place.

>I have long since abandoned arguments about the quality of sound. The analog
sound was better. It was fuller and warmer, and it held all the sonic
information.

16-bit samples on a CD can represent about 96 dB of dynamic range. The
cassette tapes that he is arguing for can only represent 60-70 dB of dynamic
range. It certainly doesn't hold "all the sonic information".

I really appreciate the historical view that the author brings. In terms of
the technology, though, he sounds like one of the foolish audiophiles buying
the $1,500 HDMI cables.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
This stuff again. I have several friends who are convinced that a $2,000 HDMI
cable can produce "better" audio and video. I've grown so tired of these
debates, that I just nod my head and move on when they start down these roads.

Because of these arguments, I've been saving articles about them when I run
across them. When I retire, I may make a web site devoted to debunking this
nonsense forever. One good example was a guy who used "cheap" and "expensive"
speaker cables, and COAT HANGERS, and challenged people to reliably tell the
difference in A/B testing. No one could.

It seems to me that we have the cheap and highly-available ability, these
days, to 1) lift audio and video from a source directly, and 2) pass it
through various stages in the reproduction chain, and 3) PROVE that this-or-
that piece of kit ACTUALLY reproduces the ORIGINAL recording any better than
another.

(My favorite piece of gear, in an audiophile catalog, from about 30 years ago,
was a replacement knob for your amplifier. Apparently, the bakelite one that
came with it introduced unfavorable harmonics into your listening experience.
The replacement fixed all that for you. It was a wooden puck, with a hole
drilled in the back. They wanted $500 for it. .... I'm in the wrong business.)

All this boils down to is various levels of equalization. You can say that a
turntable and an analog amp is "better," and that's fine. You may really
prefer it. But don't tell me it's "more accurate." I can demonstrate that - at
the end of the day - it's just an EQ on the original recording, and does not
reproduce the original more accurately. (With math and graphs and everything!)

Unfortunately, I know what I'm up against. The people who believe this
audiophile nonsense will very likely NOT understand the math and the graphs,
and I'll be wasting my time regardless. The entire market is fed by -- and I
hate to say it, because these kinds of folks are GOOD friends of mine --
people with literally more money than sense.

Guess that came out a lot more rant-y than I was shooting for.

~~~
InitialLastName
> it's just an EQ on the original recording

I'll be pedantic and say that it's actually not just an EQ, but a non-linear
compression function. The needle has a different frequency response at
different amplitudes, due to its mechanical properties. They used to master
music specifically for that, but now they just cut the Spotify master into the
record and hope everyone attributes the sound differences to "analog warmth".

~~~
distances
Music got much more compressed in the 90s and 00s, to make radio and tiny
speakers sound "better". I can imagine this may also be a big contributor to
people preferring the old analog recordings.

------
jdietrich
The author's basic premise is false and his article is riddled with basic
factual errors.

The vast majority of artists _never_ made a significant proportion of their
income from recorded music, due to the extremely shady accounting practices
used by the industry to deprive artists of royalties. For detail on this, see
Steve Albini's notorious essay _The Problem With Music_.

[https://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17](https://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17)

The internet has hugely undermined the value of recorded music, but it has
greatly increased the marketability of live music, which is and always has
been the most reliable source of income for musicians. If you've got a mailing
list with a few thousand people who'll pay to see you perform, you've got a
career. You don't need a record contract, you don't need a booking agent, you
don't need radio airplay, you just need 40 or 50 towns with enough fans to
sell out a small venue.

Prior to the internet, building that mailing list almost always involved a
record deal, because there was no other way to reach the public; a few
independent artists made it through 'zines and word-of-mouth and tenacious
effort, but most didn't. If you didn't get on a radio playlist, nobody got to
hear your music and nobody came to your shows. Today, the equation is
completely different. There are a thousand different niche acts with
absolutely no recognition among the general public, who nonetheless make a
respectable living from touring because they can connect directly with fans.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> it has greatly increased the marketability of live music

Yet that might be a blip. Some of my friends who used to be passionate
concertgoers, now say there’s no reason to pay for a concert, deal with
getting to the venue, etc. when bands are uploading full-length concerts in
fine video and audio to YouTube. Also, since musical tastes have fragmented
enormously due to the wider supply, people are less likely to share favourite
bands with friends, and so you might not have anyone to go to concerts with
you. Concerts used to have an attraction as a social outing, but if you’d have
to attend alone, what’s the point?

~~~
Spellchamp
Mind if I ask how old these friends are? This seems like more of a general age
thing. I'm 26 and wouldn't even begin to compare watching a concert on Youtube
to actually being there. I've watched Stop Making Sense 1,000 times but it
would still be my first stop in a time machine.

------
jalgos_eminator
This article reeks of blaming new technology for killing an industry (it
didn't), and resistance to change (i.e. things were so much better when I was
young). He actually (sort-of) acknowledges this in the last paragraph when he
mentions theatre taking a hit when films came about, but music hasn't been
replaced like theatre has so the comparison is moot.

> Now everybody can make a record – and maybe that’s not a good thing

No, that is a very good thing. High studio costs mean that you had to get
funded by a record company to get anything recorded and released. Record
companies were the gatekeepers. Now, you can make a decent sounding record
with only a few thousand dollars worth of recording equipment and a laptop.
No, it will not sound as good as one recorded at a proper studio, but Joe/Jane
Consumer generally won't be able to tell the difference anyway. The magic of
music is not how high quality the recording is, but how well the artists
composed the music and how they played it. I think the punk recordings he
mentions showed that the best, because they objectively sound bad from a
traditional music production standpoint, but that was _the whole point_ those
punk artists were making. There have been some absolutely great records made
in people's home studios, even as early as the 90's. The key ingredient of
good music is creativity, not sound quality, and having decent recording gear
for cheap just lets more people be more creative.

~~~
H1Supreme
As much as I hate sifting through the mountain of music that should probably
have not been released, I couldn't agree more. It's relatively inexpensive to
setup a home studio that yields excellent results. You still need technical
skills, of course. But, assuming you have them, a computer, a DAW, and a basic
audio interface can go a long way.

------
cletus
So this article is largely about the changes in technology, namely that with a
high barrier to entry and when distribution was predicated on moving physical
products, times were good for musicians selling the media of the time
(records, CDs).

But this article makes the same mistake pretty much every article decrying the
zero cost of distribution (ie the Internet) and the inevitable piracy, it
ignores a key point: at probably every point in this era only a very few
musicians could ever earn a living just from selling recorded music.

The primary source of income for the majority of musicians has been for
performances. Even in the Internet/MP3 era, people still want to see live
music. Maybe that's not attractive to those who want to sit at home collecting
royalties but getting in front of a live audience and playing music was, is
and will continue to be a potential source of a living.

And while the income from recorded music situation is unquestionably worse
than, say, 50 years ago, we also no longer have record companies and radio
stations as the gatekeepers of taste. Anyone can publish digital music to
Spotify, Youtube, Soundcloud, etc so it's not all bad.

So whenever you see any articles complaining about low royalties paid by
streaming services or the unfairness of record contracts, look at that article
and see if it anything about income from performances because almost always it
doesn't.

~~~
ilamont
But the sale of recorded music _did_ enable many musicians to earn income even
if they didn't want to or couldn't tour, or couldn't make much money off of
touring, which was the story for most small/indie artists. It was another
income stream, and for the smaller artists, a source of revenue that helped
justify continuing to record. (If they worked with an honest publisher and/or
had control over rights)

As you noted, for a smaller number of top artists, record sales served as the
sole source of income, and enabled them to do amazing stuff. XTC springs to
mind - Andy Partridge apparently had terrible stage fright, hated touring, and
basically stopped after the late 70s. During the 80s they recorded some truly
groundbreaking albums on the strength of their songwriting and studio talents,
and were able to survive on record sales based on a strong fan base and very
limited radio airplay to promote record sales.

The KLF is another example. I worked for their record label in the early 90s,
and they did absolutely no touring at that time (or ever, AFAIK). Revenue was
from the sale of singles, the White Room album, special releases, and foreign
licensing.

------
Townley
A few weeks ago, one of my favorite artists came out with a new album. The day
I tried it out, I played through it several times. My brain was invigorated,
my blood was pumping, and I had an abnormally productive day of coding.

That day of productive coding produced tens of thousands of dollars of value
for my company. That's value that, at least partially, wouldn't exist without
the artist's new album.

My company will reap benefits in the form of added revenue. I'll reap benefits
in the form of bonuses and promotions. But the artist, who produced this value
as an externality, will only receive value if I decide to buy their CD out of
gratitude.

The gap between artists producing value for society, and being rewarded for
that value, is a shame, and we're worse off for it. I can't think of a
solution, but I also can't shake the feeling that this disconnection of value
is at the heart of the "making a living" issue.

~~~
lovehashbrowns
Solutions already exist. Bandcamp allows artists to let users pick their
price, and services like Patreon allow you to support the artist directly. So
all of this would have actually been more difficult in the "good old days,"
and you now have more ways of supporting your favorite artist however much you
want.

~~~
anigbrowl
And those solutions are not so great for quite a variety of artists, which is
what this story is about. Network effects force everyone to deal with a small
number of platform vendors who dominate their market.

------
TheRealDunkirk
I would have included George Orwell as a successful futurist.

For those that are younger: Courtney Love Does the Math
([https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/](https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/)).
Hard to believe it's been (almost) 20 years since that was written.

I'm watching a young, extremely talented guy make his bones on YouTube. He's
now started touring extensively, and working with other up-and-comers. I'm
hoping he can reach the tipping point to become mainstream.

~~~
rchaud
Aha! I have been looking for this article, I believe it's the same one Billy
Corgan referenced in a podcast when he was going over the economics of
Smashing Pumpkins' chart success in the '90s.

------
gumby
He harks back to the "savannah" age but really he's hankering for a much more
recent, 20th century mythical golden age.

The title he should have used was "why musicians and music writers now have a
very hard time exploiting a temporary, and vanishing distribution shortage to
make even a fraction of the money collected by the record companies."

Plenty of artists of all sorts are still making money; maybe not as much as
during the 40-year bubble and of course a small number as it ever was.

------
idiot900
My experience in college radio (a while back) suggests that most professional
musical artists, indie or otherwise, are just not that good. I don't lament
the democratization of music like this guy does. If nobody wants to listen to
him, am I supposed to feel bad?

As for supporting the musicians, I'm happy to pay 10 USD/month for music
streaming, but it's not worth more to me. My totally acceptable alternative is
just not listening to such paid music at all. The musicians owe me nothing,
and vice versa.

------
dmitriid
> There are signs that the royalty-collecting agencies are beginning to catch
> up to the myriad array of digital offspring ranging from the internet to
> satellite television and radio.

They were _never_ behind. Wherever there is music, they have their claws in
it. They are also the single most important reason we can't have good things
and why musicians don't get paid nearly enough.

------
magpi3
I think an even easier way to describe this phenomenon: can you commodify what
you do? If you can, you can sell it and make a living. If you can't, you
can't.

Albums and three minute songs became a popular format to record in because
they could be commodified as a record sales. Novels become the most popular
form of creative writing because they could be commodified as moderate sized-
and moderately priced book sales. Etc.

The title itself is problematic, because it should be "A brief history of why
artists are no longer making a living making _popular_ music." Classical
musicians (with notable exceptions) have been unable to make a living
recording new music for a long time. Only specific genres were able to thrive
during the 3-minute song album era. And now the internet has made that more
difficult because we don't need the commodified form -- records, cds --
anymore.

But people can still make money writing music that is bundled with other
commodities: movies, games, etc.

------
chmod775
I decided to fact-check one random thing while skimming the article, and of
course the article got it wrong. Makes me wary of the whole thing.

> With the addition of multi -track recording, invented by jazz guitarist Les
> Paul, another golden age of recording began.

No he didn't. He was just the first person to buy a system capable of doing so
[1], though he had some influence on the development of that particular
system. In reality it was a lot of incremental work by many different people.
There was also people experimenting with "homemade" stuff long before the
first commercial system.

Giving all the credit to the one guy who was already famous, just because he
happens to be a known figure, always irks me.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_multitrack_recordin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_multitrack_recording)

------
tyingq
Is there a historical chart anywhere that shows earnings for low/mid/top
popularity tier performers over time?

I believe the general consensus that they make less on average, but no idea
how much less, if the hit was even across tiers, what the timeframe was, etc.

------
bambax
Two very bad analogies in the first paragraph.

1/ We don't know much or anything about our prehistoric ancestors; but we do
know that lions don't hunt humans, because where they still cohabit in a
natural state, it's rather the other way around

2/ The story of the frog in slowly boiling water is apocryphal and false; if
you put a frog in a jar and heat it, however slowly, the frog WILL JUMP OUT

------
Causality1
Sounds like sour grapes to me. "I'm done arguing about it, but analog sounded
better" as if he has any evidence to back up his claim. Not all of us can
tolerate music with an assload of white noise splattered all over it. I've yet
to listen to a vinyl without the experience being ruined by analog hiss.

~~~
criddell
My daughter got an inexpensive record player (Audio Technica) and some records
for Christmas and I was shocked by how great it sounds. I remember playing
records 30 years ago and just accepting pops and hisses and skips. Plus I
owned a lot of crappy records (anybody remember K-Tel?)

Going to the record store with her has gotten me back into buying music as
well. She shops the vinyl section and I buy CDs. I think CDs sound better and
I like not having to flip the disc, but there's something very satisfying
about handling a large grooved record where you can "see" the music and the
accompanying booklet or sleeve with lyrics and artwork.

Something I didn't expect is how cheap CDs are now. I've bought lots of stuff
for $6-$8.

~~~
dmitriid
I'd wager that modern vinyls and record players are significantly better than
those produced in the 60-70s, so you get very decent sound.

And the physicality of it surely can't be beat.

------
zon
this feels very 'old man yells at cloud.'

People still make money making music (and other art,) but it's changed. That's
true, but this person has an outsized view of his own impact if he thinks that
hustling to move 100k copies of his own record changed anything for better or
worse.

------
TheLoneAdmin
I checked out Ian Tamblyn on Spotify. He has 319 monthly listeners. His top
track has 11k plays. Is it because analog has more fidelity?

------
jimrhods23
It's the same reason why journalists and whole host of other content creators
are no longer making a living: There is so much out there for free, most
people don't perceive it as having value anymore.

This is why music piracy of the early 2000s hurt the industry: the individual
artist wasn't necessarily losing money directly at the time, but it definitely
made it difficult for all artists to make money 2 decades later.

The same thing also happened to software, which is why so many companies moved
to SaaS.

~~~
colechristensen
>The same thing also happened to software, which is why so many companies
moved to SaaS.

This isn't true. If you make updates paid enterprise customers are going to
drag their feet and you'll be stuck supporting a large number of versions for
a long time. It is much easier to lock corporations into continuous
subscriptions.

Did anyone ever make much of a living on selling recordings?

I think a big problem is the lack of market for the less intense public
performance (live music at restaurants and cafes and the like) which makes
such things rare and usually very poorly paid.

I would love to frequent places with good food and good live music with the
atmosphere of being able to carry a conversation while the band was on. What
I've experienced is bands in big rooms with terrible acoustics and bad mixing
so loud I can't hear myself think or anything really but the drummer. Combine
this with the social and economic situation of everyone staying home and
watching TV most nights makes the demand for live music weak.

There is an opportunity for targeting that kind of market but difficult to
capture requiring a good booker and a sound person that doesn't want
everything to sound like a rock show.

~~~
jimrhods23
"Did anyone ever make much of a living on selling recordings?"

Yes. I know plenty of independent artists before and after the Napster days
and they could no longer make a living. People just expected it for free,
because Napster changed the culture of music..which is the long-term danger of
piracy.

It also made it so the only artists that could make a real living are forced
to sign with a big label, because you now need an entire marketing department
behind your music to compete with free.

Music is now used as free marketing to get people to go to a show...and you
need to be signed with a giant label to play at any decent venue. Small
artists don't have access to any of this.

"I think a big problem is the lack of market for the less intense public
performance"

These were always poorly paid gigs..and for good reason. There is no ROI for
the restaurant/cafe, who are barely eking out a profit.

"This isn't true. If you make updates paid enterprise customers are going to
drag their feet and you'll be stuck supporting a large number of versions for
a long time. It is much easier to lock corporations into continuous
subscriptions."

This IS true. Many software companies went to SaaS because it can't be shared
for free and the cost of server space/hosting is now very cheap. I should
know, I was involved in many meetings with business owners that did just this.

So the unintended consequences of over a decade of software/music piracy is
pushing all of the independent artists out of a living and we now need to pay
a monthly fee for software instead of being able to purchase it outright.

------
zepearl
I don't remember the moment when I first installed in the 90' on Windows 3.x
"Napster" on a PC connected to my 28.8k modem, but I do remember the "oh-my-
gosh-it-seems-to-really-work"-feeling while watching the download bar(s)
slowly progressing towards the ultimate target of 100%.

And then the "oh-my-gosh-this-technology-is-incredible"-feeling after
doubleclicking on the downloaded file and seeing/hearing Winamp playing it
(not sure if I was already using Winamp right from the start).

That's when I really realized that I was connected to the whole world.

Nowadays I still usually first download songs/CDs but only to be sure that
they aren't bad (in the 90' I often had to pay 30CHF for a CD which contained
only 1 good song) => if they're good then I buy the CDs or the single digital
files (I have to "own" the media, hehe) => many people think that I'm more or
less stupid/weird doing this but personally I just try to motivate the artists
to keep creating what I like (kind of similar to opensource donations) and I
do not want to have dependencies towards 3rd-parties => this (that for other
people it's weird that I really "buy" the CDs & songs if I have anyway already
downloaded them) makes me think that "ethics" have recently been lost not only
in the big/high areas (e.g. big mixed scandals like Enron/Andersen,
AIG/Lehman, Madoff, Volkswagen, ...) but as well on an individual level.

On the other hand Spotify & Co. are anyway changing all the rules (except for
me, as I have to "own" the song, hehe), so what I mentioned above is now
probably not relevant anymore.

------
benji-york
Aside from the history and opinion in the piece, there are technical errors
that are addressed by this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM)

Anyone interested in the argument over digital audio vs. analog will enjoy the
above.

------
bashwizard
Popular music will always sell one way or the other. It's that simple.

I've been producing for +10 years and I used to dj almost every weekend for
two years but eventually I stopped because even though I loved doing it, it
just wasn't bringing in any significant money. I'd probably make more money by
creating sample packs and sell them through various of sites but it would be
the equivalent of "buy my mix tape!" and I'm not doing that.

I produce a very niche genre where there isn't any real money to be made
unless you're one of the absolute top names in that genre and they're not rich
by any means but they do make a good living doing it.

It's not a right to make a living making music or art and neither should
anyone expect doing it unless you set out to commodify it. Very few people
will succeed in doing so.

------
TheMagicHorsey
The author is out of touch.

Plenty of people are making a good living making music. They just aren't
making their money selling CDs and MP3s.

I wish the author would read up on self-made artists like Post Malone and
Logic. They have made tons of money ... starting small, selling merch, and
then finally filling stadiums at $50-$100 a ticket.

~~~
adamnemecek
Those are household names and it also requires that the artist wants to tour.

~~~
slothtrop
Touring isn't a new requirement for making real money

------
shams93
Meanwhile some poor fool is spending over $50,000 a year to get an MFA in
music always do your market research before going into tremendous debt to
enter a field of work that no longer exists.

------
tahoemph999
The title of this needs to be changed go "A brief history of why artists are
no longer making a living recording music". Live music is still huge and there
are great musicians who make the majority of their income making something
unique every night. Much like how people have made money off music has changed
from selling sheet music to live performances to recordings we are back at
creating music. Not selling its reproduction.

------
jancsika
Ok, so further down in the comments there is this:

> Superficially there is some sense - the higher frequency signals are
> rendered less and less accurately, and nearer a binary on-off. Who knows
> what nuance and harmonics may be lost affecting what's heard at lower
> frequencies.

It's true that at a given sampling rate, if you choose a sine wave with a
frequency right below Nyquist it is composed of fewer samples per period than
a lower frequency sine. But lots of audiophiles-- like the one I quoted
above-- seem to equate "fewer samples" with "less accuracy" which does not
follow[1].

So here's the question-- what would it sound like if you built a filter to
make this common misunderstanding true? So the closer the frequency content
gets to Nyquist, the more the filter distorts that frequency.

It would be fun to build so that people could apply it to digital input and
realize just how awful the output would sound if their misunderstanding of
digital audio were true.

[1]
[https://www.xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml](https://www.xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
No idea of the technicals, other than sampling at double the audible frequency
does- to this layman - seem logical it would give you a wave more diverged
from reality as frequency increases - and at the absurd extreme a 22khz
(inaudible to most) square wave if sampling at 44, 4 points to represent 11k
etc. I don't see how it can be otherwise, just as interpolating and anti
aliasing is often right but cannot always correctly insert missing pixels -
see the attempts to use AI to make hires versions of Mario and other 8 bit
assets, some work, many don't. It was only an idle conjecture after the main
point, which was meant to be about mastering, so I'll expand that a little.

One of the places I worked at in the 90s was connected with a well known
recording studio. We got to blind demo _from master tapes_ how their latest
attempts at going digital were going compared to analogue a few times. At
least a couple with whatever graphs they'd measured. 25-30 years later, I
don't have much recollection of the how or what. Aurally, it wasn't something
subtle to listen out carefully for, flaws were plain, therefore memorable.
Surprising in the era of digital and CD growth and their supposed "perfect"
sound forever, and DDD being marketed as always preferable to ADD or AAD. Not
so surprising when you realise it was the era of all ADCs and DACs at any cost
being shit.

By the time I left, analogue mastering was still preferred by the engineers
and still the studio's first choice for albums they recorded. Can't explain
that technically either, though they clearly thought, and could demonstrate
analogue was still doing a measurably better job. Were they misunderstanding?
_shrug._

~~~
rcxdude
> No idea of the technicals, other than sampling at double the audible
> frequency does- to this layman - seem logical it would give you a wave more
> diverged from reality as frequency increases - and at the absurd extreme a
> 22khz (inaudible to most) square wave if sampling at 44, 4 points to
> represent 11k etc. I don't see how it can be otherwise, just as
> interpolating and anti aliasing is often right but cannot always correctly
> insert missing pixels - see the attempts to use AI to make hires versions of
> Mario and other 8 bit assets, some work, many don't. It was only an idle
> conjecture after the main point, which was meant to be about mastering, so
> I'll expand that a little.

This is not correct. If the input signal is entirely below nyquist, the
sampled values (ignoring quantisation of the levels, which is a different
thing) _exactly_ capture the signal, should you appropriately reconstruct it.
Now, a perfect reconstruction (or antialias) filter does not exist, which is
one of the reasons why we use 44kHz or 48kHz instead of the 'ideal' 40kHz, but
this recreation is _extremely accurate_ , to the point that modern digital
approaches will outright outperform analogue techniques.

The same is true for images, incidentally, but most media does not exceed the
limits of human vision yet (nor do most display mediums make for very good
reconstruction filters).

I highly recommend watching the video, it demonstrates this very well.

------
musicale
Someone should come up with a system where concert tickets could be sold and
some of the money could be paid to the performers.

It could work similarly to the way stage actors are paid.

------
ineedasername
I was under the impression that music industry revenue had been on the uptick
for the last 2-3 years [0]

But did artists actually make more money during the 40's/ 50's? It was my
impression that large record labels generally reserved the profits for
themselves then too (would love to hear a more knowledgeable answer though
about whether is was easier for a musician to make a living then)

[0][https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-
sales/](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-sales/)

------
skookumchuck
> The value of the work is the key phrase here.

It's another version of the Labor Theory of Value which has been thoroughly
discredited. It doesn't matter how much work was put in. Only the results
matter.

------
larrydag
The lifelong plight of the artist. I don't think it will every change. The
community tends to only respect the artist once they are long gone.

------
tehsauce
Wonderful article!

------
LifeLiverTransp
If all of western society downsizes its eco-footprint by massive media
consumption and the state subsidizes this (panem at circensis) by lawlessness
- im okay with it. Sorry, its hard on everyones dreams, mine was to life from
game-design- wont happen. Nobody will live from music anymore. Thats just the
way it is- your dream is your hobby. But that hobby keeps a lot of people
sitting in front of a glowing rock, like meditating monks, instead of buying
useless tanksized cars and overdimensioned houses. Worth it.

