Thanks for your comments, Shailat, I hear ya.
Important to whom? To the player - singer yes. For educational reasons perhaps..... but for the art form called music ?!?
Does the world need a CD by Bruce Willis ?!?!? Or a guiarist who learned 3 chords last night and now becuase he has a burner is
wroking on his own CD ?!?!?
The problem there is:
who decides what is good art and what is not. Are we worried that a bunch or aliens are going to come down and judge our level of art based on Bruce Willis CDs and amateur musicians? (And anyway, who is responsible for Bruce Willis CDs?
Not the home recordist. More likely some crazy marketing department somewhere.)
Record company head hunters have been saying for years that they have searched the web for talent yet to come up empty handed. How can you find talent if every Dick and Jane are swamping the web with their CD? How can anybody be taken seriously these days?.
I guess the record companies can just go back to finding talent the same way they always did. The Internet should not make it harder for them; they can just ignore it.
I'm not sure what we should do. Should we say "OK, all you people who suck: stop making your music so accessible so the really talented people have more space."
I think there has always been some value in the record companies, though. They've already done the process of picking out the best music so that we as listeners don't have to do that. I think that's a valuable service. However, the problem is that we never had a choice. We only got to hear the music that the record companies let through. Now, I think they can still provide that filtering service, like a music reviewer. But if we want something else, we can still search for ourselves on the Internet if we want, for better or worse.
No hobbiest cooker will cross over to become a chef at a fancy resturant.
No First aid expert will operate on your liver.
If a hobbyist cooker becomes a chef at a restaurant and cannot cook well, then no one will eat there, the restaurant will close down and the cooker will not make a living. If the hobbyist cooker
can cook well and people like it, then they will make money. Who's to say they are not a "chef" if people like their food more than a "trained" chef? Same with music.
The first aid analogy isn't really the same. There is a danger involved when the person doesn't have a certain level of medical skill. Plus, quality of medical treatment is not subjective like music.
I dont see people buying crap home recorded cd's. Maybe I'm wrong here but from my knowledge it isnt happening.
I agree. So I guess money is not being diverted away from quality CDs.
My main idea I'm trying to get across is - if you beleive in your art and you tell the world that is the most important thing to you then give it the outmost care.
Oh, I agree. Who wouldn't? If I was serious about selling songs, you can bet I'd be going to a studio to record them.
My only question was about having the freedom to make your own music available to the world without someone telling me I can't because simply having it out there degrades the "state of humanity's musical art", whatever that is. These are two different subjects.
It was starting to sound like sour grapes, as if the talented pros---both musicians and engineers---are complaining about competition from the untalented. But it's the same in any industry. I think I know what you mean. There may a lot of amateur stuff getting attention. Maybe it's a question of marketing space. Everyone is vying to get the consumer's attention. But you can't prohibit anyone from doing it. I'm a software developer. Since PCs and cheap compilers have come along,
anyone can develop software for almost no overhead, just like making a music CD. This makes for a lot of competition. But if you're skilled you can make a living.
But also to be carefull as to not add to a ilusion.
Once I had an acquaintance turn to me and asked me to evaluate his music that he was so passionate about. Full of self confidence he played me a horrendous song. He finished playing and looked at me with such contempt saying "it's great huh". One look at him and I had to lie....."It's not bad" I sayed. Mistake of my life.......
He is now spending mega Bucks to record it and is building such ilusions that I think it's time I left town....
Yeah, that seems to be a problem even in the whole society. How many kids see Michael Jordan and decide to become pro basketball players. It's great to have role models, but only a few actually make it big. Our media focuses on the successes and promotes the illusions. People should have a better understanding of what their chances really are. But they don't. I mean, how many people buy lottery tickets? It's gambling for the mathematically challenged.
I don't use any of his stuff.