STEVE ALBINI

piece is written like a true libertarian

I mean he's not wrong but there's some serious social darwinism implications to his stance (ie if bands can't make a living at their music it's their tough shit for not being good enough, and the old system that protected them was wrong to do so)

remember back when Albini would take potshots at like, Fugazi. now he's just making Miley jokes like everyone else.

Albini thinks the old system didn't protect the vast majority of bands at all. That's basically the whole thesis of the first "Problem With Music" and he reiterates it in the new one.

I think his point is that it's a wash. Yes, people make less money from selling records, but the flipside is that distro is virtually nothing, recording costs are a fraction of what they once were, and (at least established) bands potentially make more money playing live than they used to.

ie if bands can't make a living at their music it's their tough shit for not being good enough

this is true tho. how many bands do we really need? only a couple are really entitled livings imo, the other 100000000 bands the world is currently blessed with? extraneous to literally everyone... no?

if bands can't make a living at their music it's their tough shit for not being good enough

I would bet an amusingly large sum of money on this not being an accurate reading of his views

to answer the OP, albini is currently waiting for a train

what's interesting about his argument (well one thing interesting about it) is that the atomization of culture doesn't bother him. He thinks it's great to have a million different micro-scenes sustaining themselves but essentially isolated from each other. Which okay yeah it has its virtues. But it makes every scene feel so *small* and insignificant.

xp

only a couple are really entitled livings imo, the other 100000000 bands the world is currently blessed with? extraneous to literally everyone... no?

exactly. the market works!

I see an awful lot of packed shows these days. These micro-scenes get out the vote.

Is his point that it's a wash? The thesis seemed stronger than that, on my first reading. I read Albini as saying that things are better now, given how critical he was in the past:

I’ll start by saying that I’m both satisfied and optimistic about the state of the music scene. And I welcome the social and technological changes that have influenced it.

Although they are largely anecdotal, the picture he paints of the pre-Internet industry seems more or less right. The radically increased accessibility of recording technology is definitely great for musicians, although this seems related only tangentially to the changes in the distribution system of the finished products. And the increased accessibility of music is obviously good for listeners, at least in the short term. However, on first reading, I do not see that he really makes a strong case for how 'the new model' allows musicians to make a living from their music, aside from charging higher prices for live performance: it seems to depend too strongly on the voluntary goodness of audiences and on sales of "ephemera and merchandise" (in which case musicians are really making living from things that are incidental to the music).

he seems much more positive to me

he does not actually address what musicians who have seen their incomes collapse are supposed to do, or whose fault that is

I think that's what he's saying "optimistic" - that he doesn't see the effect of these changes on the "industry" as cause for concern, as he thought the industry was pretty shit

definitely libertariany and I'm bummed he devolves into pop-baiting at the end just in case anyone forgot he could, but he does give a little more historical context beyond "my hit in the 90s used to make me this much, now i get this much"

also, from albini's perspective, most musicians who've seen their incomes collapse were already "fucked" in his pov twenty years ago

Also, first four Def Leppard albums obv = classic

xpost

he's saying what I always wished more indie lifers would say -- music becoming much much cheaper to record, cheaper to distribute, cheaper to hear is a net win for everybody, and it hurts people at the top far more than it hurts people who just wanna make whatever they want and/or hear whatever they want and aren't too considered with becoming rich rock stars.

I do wish he'd made clearer that he must think Spotify is a sick joke. It's going to be too easy for people to ignore the bit about "hybrid approaches" and pretend he's signing off on every type of "brave new world" we're being offered

it hurts people that used to be at the top of the music industry. It is absolutely awesome for people at the top of the tech industry. old boss same as the new boss etc.

xp

it's funny how he can get so het up about the intense machinations of the gargantuan dinosaur music industry and then give not a single sentence of consideration to the tech industry, which has basically just replaced the tech industry and still funnels money upwards, away from musicians.

lol replaced the OLD MUSIC INDUSTRY that should say

OTM

I mean who does he think really makes money off of youtube etc

miley

I mean I'm sure radio appeared ABSOLUTELY INSANELY AWESOME to the first musicians that got played on it, and they were more than happy to do whatever just to be on it, sign away rights, not pay any attention to where money was going etc. until oh wait it's four decades later look how that whole industry turned out oh what do you mean someone else owns all my publishing and has been collecting my royalty checks...?

I really like how he pointed out internet making international distribution so easy to do now, it'll be interesting to watch music culture be less and less America-centric in the future.

he's definitely in that realm of indie iconoclasts who focus their bile on peers but get a little vague when it comes to the world outside. quick to point out how someone is failing to be as cool as music dude as him, strong feelings about the ethical treatment of room sound. less confident when it comes to evils he doesn't see first-hand.

i mean when the dude from cracker is going on about how the majors found a new way to steal his "low" money, steve's going to be a little more interested in saying "told you so, shoulda stuck with pitch-a-tent" than "yes, start-ups are evil"

that sounds about right

outic otm. it's just a new industry sorting itself out, capital catching up to a pretty radical technological break that has made a temporary space for culture that will lose/is losing the battle again.

it's definitely his own fault he's getting sum-ups like this

Stereogum ‏@stereogum 59m59 minutes ago
Steve Albini still loves online streaming, hates Miley Cyrus http://bit.ly/1uFPe2c

hope somebody makes an image for a spotify debate article with Taylor Swift and Bob Seger on the anti-side and dave grohl and steve on the pro

I'd actually love to see a breakdown of what a band makes now vs. 15-25-35 years ago (be most interesting by some sort of median success metric so the platinum artists of their era vs. whatever exactly approximates that these days on down to the bar bands). Obviously return on recorded media is going to be lower, but cost/distribution of same also less and I do wonder if touring is more lucrative now.

Has touring ever been lucrative since recordings became the mainstay of the industry?

let's ask Mick Jagger

"ethical treatment of room sound"?

Anecdotal but it's far from lucrative for the serious rock musicians I know. If the purpose of touring in the 'old model' was to promote recordings, i.e. it was not profitable in itself, have ticket prices (or audiences) really increased enough to make this a sustainable income source in and of itself?

2xpost

I wasn't (and am not) talking about the handful of stars on Jagger's level.

xp Probably not but I don't think under the "old model" touring money plus recordings = to a sustainable income for most people either.

Tbh, I haven't really noticed a radical jump in ticket/gig prices, relative to inflation. Would be curious to see stats.

Definitely much more expensive in San Francisco.

"ethical treatment of room sound"?

sorry, acoustics

yeah I know just joeks... seriously from my anecdotal evidence it seems p lucrative on the high end and then as you move down the ladder it gets less and less lucrative. To the point where a four-person band in a van is going to be constantly struggling to break even from city to city. But it seems like this has been the case for a long time.

xp

long Alibini disqusitions like this are pretty rare anyway and this one's fun imo

i was with him until the hall of fetishes

he seems really hung up abt sex

Songs About Fucking Over Managers And Labels That Used To Make A Comfortable Living

What if your fetish is to be fucked by a corporation? Do you get a pass?

Tbh, I haven't really noticed a radical jump in ticket/gig prices, relative to inflation. Would be curious to see stats.

A new CD, when The Problem With Music was published, cost $27-31, and an international band’s show cost $30. Now a new CD costs $13-22, and as he says in the speech, an international band’s show costs $60-120.

Well, I was comparing gig prices to inflation, not to CD prices, which have obviously dropped. But yeah, the Bank of Canada's inflation calculator says that a basket of goods that cost $30 in 1993 would cost $46.79 today so if ticket prices are 2-4x what they were, that would be considerable.