Is the cost of living crushing music?

[sammybee]

5 hours ago, SumOne said:

How many people under the age of 30 have commented on this thread?

 

I can't speak for them either, but I don't think many young people want to be in bands that are basically using the same music formula that their parents and grandparents used (Bass, Guitar, Drums, Singer - promote by travelling around to gigs in a van). Technology and society and popular music has moved on - they don't expect to make a lot of money from selling an album, plenty don't even do albums, but will be quite focussed on getting a lot of Spotify streams and Instagram and Tik Tok followers and getting to a level where they are sponsored to endorse things, that is where the audience and fame and money is and they know it.

 

It's potentially a great time for music where most 16 year olds can now access a cheap computer to make music and record their vocals and a use a phone to record videos and self-release and market their stuff to a global audience. It's just different to how their parents and grandparents did it.

 

Older people writing off music like rap and Electronic music as they are not using the same formula as they did must be quite similar to how parents reacted to rock n roll.

 

There are some absolutely fantastic (young) musicians producing some great music these days. It's a great time to be a musician - there are so many channels to get your sound out there, the cream will rise to the top as it always has done.... And the price of gear... it's so easy and cheap to access great sounding equipment compared to when I was a lad. 

[Downunderwonder]

On 08/01/2024 at 00:57, Dan Dare said:

"Forced into a job"? What makes a musician so special that he/she shouldn't have to work for a living?

That is not what was implied by being "forced into a job". Being forced into a job is being unable to make a living as a musician.

 

The question was is it worse now for musicians in bands than it was before the current crisis.

 

You really have to wind it back to before Covid.

 

Bands are struggling to get any more out of venues who are also struggling. Must be harder for the musicians to make bank.

 

I couldn't do it back in the 90's when live music was stronger than it is now and houses were a bloody sight more affordable than they are today. If I had had 5 gigs a week I would have been going great great guns and a mortgage would have been half paid off by now. I would drive a Tesla Model Y.

 

I would be in big trouble about now as a full time muso. No way in hell I could keep up my mortgage these days playing 5 nights a week.

 

That does not bode well for the aspiring band player who doesn't get a real job and treat music as a hobby. So essentially the OP is quite correct if you ask me.

[Downunderwonder]

On 07/01/2024 at 23:26, la bam said:

 

Is new music and new bands strictly a rich kids game going forward?

There will always be new music.

 

New bands have a bigger problem than before when a couple of gig fees would cover the rent and some meager provisions.

[prowla]

On 07/01/2024 at 11:20, Bolo said:

Was it much different in the late 70s-early 80s? 

Back then it was the norm to leave school and go onto the Dole.

[tegs07]

I would go further than the OP and argue that the cost of living (which is a systemic failure by governments and central banks) is not just crushing music but it is crushing the social contract and eroding the democratic process. Unless we are careful (and this involves tackling the thorny issue of politics, global rather than party politics) western liberal democracy is in trouble. Far right political parties are on the rise in Europe. Trump is on the path to re election in the USA.

 

This is a pivotal year for elections. Choices made will have a profound impact. Tensions (internal and global) need to be calmed not exploited. 

 

Anyhow this is political (thread lock alert) and a personal issue for me that is always in the back of mind these days as we are sleep walking into dangerous territory and the media (mainstream and social) are getting hung up on all kinds of peripheral issues but ignoring a very real threat.

Edited January 10 by tegs07

[Al Krow]

Yes let's not get political. However let's please get the economics right. 

 

The current cost of living crisis is primarily down to two things:

1. Covid - governments around the planet printed vast amounts of "free" money (and gave it a fancy name: "quantitative easing") whilst locking down the economy. Inflation is pay back for that. The alternative would have been the mother of all depressions. 

2. Putin's invasion of Ukraine and its impact on energy costs, which feeds into all costs of production. 

 

Edited January 10 by Al Krow

[peteb]

25 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Yes let's not get political. However let's please get the economics right. 

 

The current cost of living crisis is primarily down to two things:

1. Covid - governments around the planet printed vast amounts of "free" money whilst locking down the economy. Inflation is pay back for that. The alternative would have been the mother of all depressions. 

2. Putin's invasion of Ukraine and it's impact on energy costs, which feeds into all costs of production. 

 

If we're not going to get political, at least actually get the economics right. The current 'cost of living crisis' in the UK is primarily down to political decisions made following the fall-out of the crash in 2008. Over countries have recovered from the Covid lockdown much quicker than the UK. The conditions for the current state of the UK economy pre-date the invasion of the Ukraine. 

 

This is all getting unnecessarily political. Essentially, the answer to the OP is that the cost of living is a factor that is making it difficult for today's young musicians, but the main issue is the changing nature of the music business, changes in demand for popular music, other entertainment options becoming more prominent, etc. 

 

Edited January 10 by peteb

[Lozz196]

I still think back to the 70s/80s where a musician would have one decent-ish guitar & one amp (often paid for by student grant, and said musician if no longer a student would more than likely be unemployed as unemployment was a big problem then), would be living in squalor eating virtually nothing all day (which is why they were all stick thin back then). Sure we have a cost of living problem at the moment but there were plenty of hard times years ago as well. 

 

 

[BigRedX]

On 09/01/2024 at 07:38, Burns-bass said:

I’d politely ask who decides what’s good music and who decides what’s derivative rubbish that should be avoided? 
 

All individual artistic expression should be encouraged, even if you don’t like the output. The music you make I simply have no feeling for, but I’d damn near fight anyone for your right to make it and share it. Why deny that to someone else?

 

You are perfectly right. I'm probably being a bitter old man, but:

 

Personally I think there is too much music available nowadays. The figure being headlined is 60,000 new tracks being uploaded to Spotify every day. Various attempts to to debunk this have resulted in revisions down to between 5000 and 40,000 track daily. However, just 5,000 tracks a day is staggering, considering that in the days of vinyl there were probably significantly less than 1000 new singles and albums each week (That's just a guesstimate - I have been unable to find any serious stats on this if anyone has them please post). This combined with the dwindling number of listeners prepared to buy recorded music, means that there is an ever growing number of songs vying for an ever shrinking audience's attention. When anyone with a computer, an internet connection and $50 can produce and album and upload it to all the download and streaming sites, it's not surprising at lots more people are doing it. Unfortunately all that "background noise" makes it much harder for listeners to find new music that they like.

 

And as a listener in the 70s when I started getting into music beyond what was on TotP, my sources were John Peel and Alan Freeman on Radio 1. I'd probably hate at least half of what they were playing and be indifferent to a lot of the rest, but there would be a handful of new records played every week (out of the 120 or so I'd heard) that I would like enough to consider buying. By contrast last week I listened to a 500 track modern post-punk/goth playlist on Spotify. That's 500 songs in specific genres that I really like. However I found less than 10 new bands that I enjoyed enough to warrant further listening. What particularly struck me was how derivative and how poorly recorded much of it was. I've always been worried that my band's home-produced recordings weren't up to scratch, and while so far we've not managed to emulate Trevor Horn or Martin Rushent, by comparison with most of what I heard we are doing pretty well. When someone like myself is struggling to find interesting new music from curated playlists what chance do most casual listeners have?

 

Also when you consider that if my band puts out a single we are in effect competing with every other song ever released for listeners. In the days of releases on vinyl and CD a single (unless it was very popular) had a life of no more than 3-4 months, so it was only ever competing with a few thousand other songs at any one time. These days Spotify and other on-line sources have to apply negative weighting to streams of "back catalogue" tracks otherwise hardly any new music would make the current charts.

 

It's not the cost of living that is crushing new music. It is the sheer amount of music available

[Burns-bass]

12 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

You are perfectly right. I'm probably being a bitter old man, but:

 

Personally I think there is too much music available nowadays. The figure being headlined is 60,000 new tracks being uploaded to Spotify every day. Various attempts to to debunk this have resulted in revisions down to between 5000 and 40,000 track daily. However, just 5,000 tracks a day is staggering, considering that in the days of vinyl there were probably significantly less than 1000 new singles and albums each week (That's just a guesstimate - I have been unable to find any serious stats on this if anyone has them please post). This combined with the dwindling number of listeners prepared to buy recorded music, means that there is an ever growing number of songs vying for an ever shrinking audience's attention. When anyone with a computer, an internet connection and $50 can produce and album and upload it to all the download and streaming sites, it's not surprising at lots more people are doing it. Unfortunately all that "background noise" makes it much harder for listeners to find new music that they like.

 

And as a listener in the 70s when I started getting into music beyond what was on TotP, my sources were John Peel and Alan Freeman on Radio 1. I'd probably hate at least half of what they were playing and be indifferent to a lot of the rest, but there would be a handful of new records played every week (out of the 120 or so I'd heard) that I would like enough to consider buying. By contrast last week I listened to a 500 track modern post-punk/goth playlist on Spotify. That's 500 songs in specific genres that I really like. However I found less than 10 new bands that I enjoyed enough to warrant further listening. What particularly struck me was how derivative and how poorly recorded much of it was. I've always been worried that my band's home-produced recordings weren't up to scratch, and while so far we've not managed to emulate Trevor Horn or Martin Rushent, by comparison with most of what I heard we are doing pretty well. When someone like myself is struggling to find interesting new music from curated playlists what chance do most casual listeners have?

 

Also when you consider that if my band puts out a single we are in effect competing with every other song ever released for listeners. In the days of releases on vinyl and CD a single (unless it was very popular) had a life of no more than 3-4 months, so it was only ever competing with a few thousand other songs at any one time. These days Spotify and other on-line sources have to apply negative weighting to streams of "back catalogue" tracks otherwise hardly any new music would make the current charts.

 

It's not the cost of living that is crushing new music. It is the sheer amount of music available

Yes, this all makes sense. I also really value the time you’ve taken to spell this out as it’s not something that I’d considered in this level of detail. 
 

Some years ago I read a great book called “the paradox of choice” about this. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice)

 

I guess new music also has to directly compete with music from heritage acts (endless reissues etc).

 

Lot to think about!

[la bam]

I suppose as well, rising costs and lack of custom killing pubs and venues has a large effect on things. I remember round here you could go out 6 nights a week socialising in the 90s and it'd be buzzing any night. People, drinkers, all ages, live music, djs, sports, karaoke, all sorts. Now, nothing. They only open maybe Fri, sat, there's little entertainment if any on and they're all mainly empty. 

[hill76]

35 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

It's not the cost of living that is crushing new music. It is the sheer amount of music available

 

Or maybe the sheer amount of new music? Self-publishing on the internet combined with cheap home recording technology means anyone anywhere in the world can release their own music rather than it being something just for the lucky few. The downside being even fewer get to make a living from it as there's simply too much competition.

[Lozz196]

32 minutes ago, la bam said:

I suppose as well, rising costs and lack of custom killing pubs and venues has a large effect on things. I remember round here you could go out 6 nights a week socialising in the 90s and it'd be buzzing any night. People, drinkers, all ages, live music, djs, sports, karaoke, all sorts. Now, nothing. They only open maybe Fri, sat, there's little entertainment if any on and they're all mainly empty. 

I wonder how much of that is also due to the change in lifestyle. Our younglings at work consider they’ve partied like rock stars if they’ve drunk 4 glasses of wine or had 4 Bud Lites. Very different to my day where similarly to the above we were out every night, every pub was packed every night and there were always bands playing somewhere. 

[TimR]

I think most of us have been in bands where we thought it would be a great idea to record a CD and sell it. 

 

I know people who spent a lot of money on a minimum production run of 500 CDs and still have 490 of them in a shed once every member of the band and their girlfriends had been given a copy. 

 

Spotify just shows <1000 if you've only had a few plays of your track.

 

I don't think there's anything different between now and the 90s in that respect. £1000 would get you a week in a studio and a massive box of CDs. Which on reflection seems a lot of money but a decent bass and amp would cost you that. Cash flow has always been an issue. We used to scrimp together money from gigs to pay for gear, recordings, PA hire etc. 

 

I wonder if there's more parental pressure now, I knew a load of "full time musicians" in the 80s, who basically did nothing all day, other than day dreaming, and just practiced and gigged. They didn't make any money from gigging, they were all on the dole. 

 

I wouldn't be surprised if some of those guys still are. 😁

 

I worked as a temp for 2 years, you could turn up to work, or not, depending whether you had a gig that day. Was very low paid, some of it was hard labour and some easy office work, but I lived at home. My parents complained all the time. I don't know if temping is still a thing, seems to be all zero hour contracts now. So I'm guessing there's plenty of scope to being a "full time musician" and pizza delivery guy on the side.

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, la bam said:

I suppose as well, rising costs and lack of custom killing pubs and venues has a large effect on things. I remember round here you could go out 6 nights a week socialising in the 90s and it'd be buzzing any night. People, drinkers, all ages, live music, djs, sports, karaoke, all sorts. Now, nothing. They only open maybe Fri, sat, there's little entertainment if any on and they're all mainly empty. 

 

I don't know where in the country you are, but here in Nottingham while the kinds of opportunities for gigs have changed since I moved here in 1980 there is very little difference in the numbers of gigs available for originals bands and IME these gigs are now far easier to come by.

 

Back in the early 80s in Nottingham there were almost no weekend gigs available for originals bands, and from what I saw from gigging out of town that pattern was repeated throughout the country. If you wanted a gig it was Monday to Thursday only and also you would have to take into account hiring a PA system as none of the venues had their own. This started to change in the late 90s when some venues had the occasional weekend slot for originals bands and in-house PA systems were beginning to appear. Nowadays mid-week gigs are almost unheard of and unless one of the bands playing has a couple of popular albums out and consequently a decent following you'll be struggling to get an audience.

 

One of my bands did a Wednesday night gig in November, and while we managed to get a decent sized audience and came away with a profit, it required a lot of work on social media and with friends on our part. Also it couldn't compare with the turn-out the following Saturday at the same venue when my other band was supporting a minor synth-pop band from the 80s and the promotor was turning away punters who didn't have tickets because the venue was rammed.

 

IME changes in work culture have made going out on a "school night" much harder than it used to be, with punters saving their money and energy just for the weekend.

[cetera]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

Personally I think there is too much music available nowadays. The figure being headlined is 60,000 new tracks being uploaded to Spotify every day. Various attempts to to debunk this have resulted in revisions down to between 5000 and 40,000 track daily. However, just 5,000 tracks a day is staggering, considering that in the days of vinyl there were probably significantly less than 1000 new singles and albums each week (That's just a guesstimate - I have been unable to find any serious stats on this if anyone has them please post). This combined with the dwindling number of listeners prepared to buy recorded music, means that there is an ever growing number of songs vying for an ever shrinking audience's attention. When anyone with a computer, an internet connection and $50 can produce and album and upload it to all the download and streaming sites, it's not surprising at lots more people are doing it. Unfortunately all that "background noise" makes it much harder for listeners to find new music that they like.

 

And as a listener in the 70s when I started getting into music beyond what was on TotP, my sources were John Peel and Alan Freeman on Radio 1. I'd probably hate at least half of what they were playing and be indifferent to a lot of the rest, but there would be a handful of new records played every week (out of the 120 or so I'd heard) that I would like enough to consider buying. By contrast last week I listened to a 500 track modern post-punk/goth playlist on Spotify. That's 500 songs in specific genres that I really like. However I found less than 10 new bands that I enjoyed enough to warrant further listening. What particularly struck me was how derivative and how poorly recorded much of it was. I've always been worried that my band's home-produced recordings weren't up to scratch, and while so far we've not managed to emulate Trevor Horn or Martin Rushent, by comparison with most of what I heard we are doing pretty well. When someone like myself is struggling to find interesting new music from curated playlists what chance do most casual listeners have?

 

Also when you consider that if my band puts out a single we are in effect competing with every other song ever released for listeners. In the days of releases on vinyl and CD a single (unless it was very popular) had a life of no more than 3-4 months, so it was only ever competing with a few thousand other songs at any one time. These days Spotify and other on-line sources have to apply negative weighting to streams of "back catalogue" tracks otherwise hardly any new music would make the current charts.

 

It's not the cost of living that is crushing new music. It is the sheer amount of music available

 

This ^

The one good thing that could be said about record companies etc back in the day was that they acted as 'pooh filters'. A band or artist had to at least have a modicum of talent, or a decent song, in order to be invested in and released. Now, should you feel so-inclined, you have to wade through hundreds of thousands/millions of bedroom-made tracks to find something half decent. It's unsurprising that so many people just don't bother.

The 2 or 3 huge media companies that now own all the radio stations don't help either as the 'knowledgeable DJ playing exciting new music' is now a rarity and people are force-fed the same homogenised nonsense (new or old) over and over again.

[TimR]

22 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Back in the early 80s in Nottingham there were almost no weekend gigs available for originals bands, and from what I saw from gigging out of town that pattern was repeated throughout the country.

 

Yes. Same in London. We did a few 'pay to play' gigs in Covent Garden. If you bought a big enough crowd* on a Wednesday night (on a multiple band night) they'd give you Saturday afternoon. 

 

*They'd always fiddle the numbers so you never got your money back. 

 

In the end we would book our own hall and PA and make money. I'd guess booking whole music venues now might be easier, but more expensive outlay to start with. 

Edited January 10 by TimR

[prowla]

3 hours ago, Lozz196 said:

I still think back to the 70s/80s where a musician would have one decent-ish guitar & one amp (often paid for by student grant, and said musician if no longer a student would more than likely be unemployed as unemployment was a big problem then), would be living in squalor eating virtually nothing all day (which is why they were all stick thin back then). Sure we have a cost of living problem at the moment but there were plenty of hard times years ago as well. 

 

 

...and we used to have to sweep the lake...

[JoeEvans]

To my mind the problem regarding cost of living isn't that it makes it harder to make music - it's cheaper and easier than at any time in history to record an album and make a video.

The problem is that so many people are struggling financially that it's harder than ever to get an audience out, especially for ticketed events as opposed to pubs. Venues are closing down, audiences are falling and you can't make up for the low fees by selling self-published CDs any more. It's live music that's suffering, not music within digital media.

[Aidan63]

2 hours ago, JoeEvans said:

It's live music that's suffering, not music within digital media.

 

yet all the old bands still play (or reform again specially to tour) to huge audiences at sell out gigs at wtf ticket prices, sucking out the available spend from the music economy. I worked the Rolling Stones gig at St James' back in 1981 or 2 and realised that in 2 nights the RS had sucked out the equivalent of 6 months local bands nights out of our local impoverished community, that was really the beginning of pay to play for local bands who a few months previously would have got £50-150 per band per night and some beers for playing a 100-300 people venue that would have been glad to have them, and many of them had such a following they could sell out the bigger small venues - anyone remember DanceClass ? for example. Used to get local bands on the Tube too, and some of those were filmed at odd venues like Coach Lane Campus of the Poly (now University of Northumbria) rather than in the TT studios, and the union put on the Eurythmics on the top floor (the RedBar) to a paid up audience of something like 38, (ex the Tourists who ?) they turned up with a mini Bose PA and were amazing despite the lack of punters; 2 nights later Sunday disco in same room 250 plus packed out and whizzed and up for it. 

[Dan Dare]

12 hours ago, Downunderwonder said:

That is not what was implied by being "forced into a job". Being forced into a job is being unable to make a living as a musician.

 

I realise that and my question remains. There is no automatic right to make a living as a musician, dancer, artist or anything for that matter.

 

I kept a day job for the great majority of the 50 years between leaving education and retiring whilst playing in the evenings and at weekends, with occasional, usually brief, spells of playing music for a (just about) living.

 

There are many reasons why someone cannot make a living from playing music - including lack of ability, not wanting to play what people are prepared to pay for, not being fortunate to be in the right place at the right time (luck always plays a part - I know plenty of great players who just haven't had the breaks), face not fitting and so on.

 

There is always a living to be made on the function circuit. Having slogged around playing functions and similar during my attempts to make a living from music, I can assure you that there are plenty of regular jobs that are preferable to doing that. Not only because the gigs themselves are not enjoyable, but because you can find yourself becoming fed up with playing music itself if that's all you have time to do because you need to put food on the table.

 

The advantage of having a day job is that you can afford to decline the soul-destroying gigs you would have to accept if you were solely dependant on music, meaning you can look forward to the ones you enjoy and keep your interest alive.

[peteb]

One of the big reasons for the decline of rock music discussed by Rick Beato and one of his mates, a former record company exec / A&R man / producer: 

 

 

 

Edited January 10 by peteb

[Staggering on]

I just saw this and I think fits in this topic.

 

 

 

 

Music streams hit 4 trillion in 2023. Global acts and Taylor Swift fueled growth - ABC News.webarchive

[BigRedX]

30 minutes ago, Staggering on said:

I just saw this and I think fits in this topic.

Music streams hit 4 trillion in 2023. Global acts and Taylor Swift fueled growth - ABC News.webarchive 9.95 MB · 1 download

 

Can you save this as a link to the web page it came from?

[Staggering on]

41 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

Can you save this as a link to the web page it came from?

 

I'll try. I have had computers for quite a while and I know how to do the basic things I need to do but have only very basic skills. I will talk to someone here who can help me with this and try to post what you want, might not happen right away. 

 

Edit: I'm old.🙄

Edited January 11 by Staggering on