Do you still care enough about music?
I am asking you the question in the header, because i feel i have something to tell, something not many music consumers will realise, or understand, and i feel people need to know.
“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
To all of us that like music, we can say that Music is the lifeblood for humanity, we listen to it in all sorts of settings. To relax, at work, when we are sporting, having dinner or a romantic time. There’s all sorts of music, in to many different genre’s to mention. And it has been like that for age’s
For us that create music, it can be an escape, sometimes even a healing experience.
“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
― Victor hugo
a little bit of recent history
*With the rise of the internet, humanity as a whole started to consume even more music.
Music freaks had napster on which they could share with others, and so p2p was born. The downside to this was, the record moguls started to mention this with their sales. And so we had the big METALLICA lawsuit. Which killed napster in 2001, this was the same year that Apple opened the Itunes store. So now there was now a legal and easy way to buy your digital music.
But out of the napster ashes, we got many p2p services like kazaa, limewire and many others, music was shared on bittorrent, piratebay and other sharing services, record sales dumped even more, but people still bought music.
In 2008 spotify was born. A legal Swedish alternative (in corporation with the big record moguls) whereas the consumer has the option to pay a subscription, or have a ‘free’ service, where you pay with listening to the advertising*.
History lesson is over
Ten years later we have many streaming many services like Spotify, Deezer and Apple Music on which we can listen to almost every album that’s ever recorded.
These Tech companies are totally disruptive, and they do what disruptive corporations do.
Nowadays we are consuming & listening to more music then we have ever done before, and you would think this is great because of what Nietzsche said, and it is, ... but there’s also a downside to this!
Now in the age of streaming, the original composers are not receiveing almost 50 dollar cents (or more) for each individually downloaded song (like we did on iTunes). No, we the content creators get payed approx 0,0004 cent a stream.
To put this in perspective, to make a minimum wage of approximately a thousand dollars a month, you as an artist now need to have about a million plays each month on services like spotify. Whereas on Itunes you just needed to sell approximately 2 thousand songs.
And most independent artists don’t reach that kind of plays, they survive better on selling a couple of albums. But what makes it even worse, nobody buys any music anymore.
People think that, since they are paying their streaming subscription, everything is fair and square, and they are supporting the artists. While their subscription actually supports the shareholders and boardmembers of these huge corporations.
People don’t seem to care about the ownership of a physical album, cassette or CD. They don’t have the urge to touch the sleeve, inspect the lyrics, the pictures and try to understand what the artist really has to say, and what they probably have worked on for years.
These days the consumer wants instant gratification
And so, huge crowds waiting in line for the release of an artist new album, are a long forgotten history
Now is your change to be different ....
The pre-order for the forthcoming Warfield debut Album ‘Black Rainbow, Grey Sky’ is now for sale for just $1 on the bandcamp platform, and you read that right one dollar.
That is one dollar to get a private look into the mind of a haunted artist, that is now working for more then two years on this ambient album that will take you on a journey between heaven, hell and everything in between.
Bandcamp is a platform which supports the independent artist
But that is not all ....
We are also having a huge giveaway sale on the complete discography of the abandoned Subliminal Noize project.
All of these albums, including many extra’s, but also the Elektro Punkz compilations, Acid Test (a tribute to the roland 303) and Dance 4 Syria (60+ artists, 3 compilations EDM, Industrial & Unclassified Genre’s) are now off to just $0,50, and yes, you did read that right, just 50 Cents (No pun intended to the artist with the same name)
If you liked this article, please upvote, resteem and help me get the word out there ... and maybe support the artists i mentioned. Their sales are PWYW (pay what you want)