BroKen_H
Re-member
I get lots of free downloads. I buy lots of music. I've never bought a song that I got for free. That would be ludicrous. But I've often bought songs from artists that gave me free songs.
Saying that people lose the incentive to buy music because they hear it repeatedly is kind of self defeating as well. That's what has DRIVEN sales in the good ol' US of A. Pop songs on radio since the 20s have driven sales of music. People hear a song they like a couple dozen times and then go out and get the music.
The main difference is that the digital age has made it much easier to steal the music. Yes thieves have always been around, but our current generation has been aptly named "the entitled generation" We have too many young kids coming up that believe they can take whatever they want (and I know there's a lot of exceptions). But piracy HAS driven the music business under. It's also driving the software business under. It's starting to wear on the movie business. When you have to consider 80-90% (probably a very low estimate) of the music/software/movies that get to the public will be pirated it tends to drive your drive down.
If you have 2 million people with your album, you've likely only sold 200,000 copies...Having said that, software comes up with new, invasive, anti-pirating schemes that keep people from stealing/pirating. Which drives pirates to come up with new ways to hack the schemes. Ad infinitum. The movie industry is doing the same. You are correct in assuming that the music industry needs something similar. What that is may be the best debate we can get into here.
BUT, there's a problem with that. There's SO MUCH music out there from SO MANY different genres that people like. You can write 20 hit songs that NEVER GET HEARD. There are a few writers that I know (of) that do nothing but write music for other artists, because THEY HAD ONE BIG HIT. After that, they may have several more, but the point is, somehow they got the ear of someone who could make a hit. They got a song in their hands and got it recorded. They got their song on the radio and etc. in the capable hands of a "great" band (or artist) and now they are in demand. They're making their living off music in the same way that every musician has ever made their living off music...dumb luck.
Yes, there are exceptions where people make their living off music by hard work. God bless 'em. I admire Lt Bob and Mutley and the few around here that do. But even most of the guys that are making money off their music (or engineering skills) have full time jobs or businesses elsewhere.
RAMI, Greg, Jimmy, Steen...all make excellent sounding music. Great mixes. They also all have full time jobs.
Yes, marketing plays a very important and vital role in the music business. Few of the major bands of our time would be where they are if they just wrote the music they love and put it up on soundcloud.com. Doesn't work that way, never did. But the biggest role in becoming "The Next Big Thing" has always been luck. Won't change. Right place+Right time--Superstar. The rest, meh.
Yes we're all cynical, most of us are in our 40s to 60s and have been trying to get into the music business and gave up on making money and are doing it for love...maybe that's where we should have started.
