Kickstarter / Bandcamp / etc - C or D?

I mean jesus christ get a subscription to tape op and figure it out.

― Darin, Friday, September 28, 2012 3:49 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Which is only going to cost you single digit thousands of dollars, 20x as much time, and produce a worse result?

I have a subscription to Tape Op and have been recording at home for over 20 years. But it's cost me thousands of dollars and I'm just barely getting to the point where the stuff I'm recording is where I want it to be.

hey guys i think you're paying too much for tape op, i get it for free

For some reason the Kickstarter backlash inspires some kind of rabid free-market feelings in me that I never feel in any other situation. If people want to give money to fund some ridiculous vanity project then they should. If people figure out how to convince others to fund their dumb vanity projects than more power to them! If you pledge money to some flakey indie artist to fund something that doesn't yet exist and that thing never actually materializes, caveat emptor.

oh yeah i know. but i HAVE known people who clashed over that. i knew a band who i think kinda broke up over the fact that the leader got the whole band to pay way more to have a an out-of-town 'name' mix their last record when everyone knew that someone more affordable in town could have done probably just as good a job for a fraction of the price. (xpost)

I don't even think 10K or 15K sounds like an especially bloated budget, name or no, although I've never been in a band that spent that much. We did one record for about $1500 including mastering, but there were serious problems with it because we rushed to record all the songs live in two days, leaving us very little time to get the sound of anything exactly right. Anyway I

uh sorry, about orphan "anyway I"

I have also been involved with the home-recording end of things a couple of times (not as engineer) and it can be kind of nightmarish. One record just sprawled for a year and never got finished. The other one just didn't sound right. It seems a little like doing your own car repair or home renovation -- it's just not going to work for everyone.

Anyway, I'm concerned that the kickstarter backlash leaves musicians at kind of an impasse. It used to be ok to sell music. Now that's not ok anymore. So there's this new model of asking fans to fund you. But those fans are going to decide what's too much to spend on a record, how much money you should make, what they think sounds extravagant in your budget, etc all from a distance. And if you succeed, then you look like a shitheel for using kickstarter anymore, even though, remember, it's not ok to sell your music.

OTM

Which is only going to cost you single digit thousands of dollars, 20x as much time, and produce a worse result?

Initially, yes - but in my experience, the quality/time factors improve exponentially each recording. And 15K (which seems to be the going rate for a kickstarter album pitch) buys you a LOT of good gear. Seems smarter to me to try and set yourself up in a sustainable situation where you can finance your own recordings DIY long as you want. I highly doubt anyone is getting KS cash for a second album.

I have a subscription to Tape Op and have been recording at home for over 20 years. But it's cost me thousands of dollars and I'm just barely getting to the point where the stuff I'm recording is where I want it to be. If somebody wants to just focus on their writing and performing and not learn all of that stuff, then they're a lot smarter than I was. I'm pretty sure that Emitt Rhodes even admitted in a tapeop interview once that the home recording was a big distraction that ultimately slowed him down.

Well, I guess everyone's mileage varies.

I'm just pissy about this lately, since I've been hit up repeatedly on FB for this sort of thing.

studio vs. home recording is definitely a very personal thing, everyone's gotta figure it out for themselves and obviously that involves money as well as the nature of their music and working methods. i'm fortunate to have a friend w/ a studio who's been generous w/ his time, but i also kind of dream of being self-sufficient enough someday to do home recordings that i'm happy with.

I'm also biased by living in NYC, where pretty much no one who is a musician lives in an apartment with a soundproofable extra room, or any kind of extra room.

Also I have a super nerdy affinity for all of the technical stuff and have since I was a young kid. Recording always seems easy and fun to me but I have a lot of friends who really don't have any aptitude for it at all. I think it's the sort of thing that can actually be quite difficult if you don't really enjoy it. Anyone can learn to get to a certain basic level but beyond that I can see how it would be overwhelming if it's not something you love.

i'm a big believer in home recording and being able to substitute time & care for money, but it's easier with electronic/sample-based music i do where many of the elements are in-the-box, and the acoustic sounds are sort of meant to show the limitations in recording. i recognize that it can be a headache to try to make a big-sounding guitar and drums record at home, although i definitely have friends who do it successfully.

I find getting decent drum recordings at home is still close to impossible. That's the one thing I wish I could outsource.

amen

fuck drums

I find getting decent drum recordings at home is still close to impossible. That's the one thing I wish I could outsource.

yeah, I think you glossed over the "good room" part of your original post a bit. easier said than done.

Try the Yeti Blue USB mic. You can place it pretty much anywhere in a room w a drum kit and it sounds really really good.

That's cool - I've been using a snow ball mic for demos on my computer for a few years... didn't know about the other mics.

It's crazy how good it sounds, for just over $100.

Yeah my bro has a Snowball and he loves it.

yeah, they're pretty great

Kickstarter has such a shaky business model, it's inevitable that a backlash would come. I'm surprised no one's started a blog tracking all the projects that haven't materialized and/or gifts that haven't been received. Maybe they have?

fuck drums

― have a sandwich or ice cream sandwich (Jordan), Friday, September 28, 2012 5:27 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

posts very much out of character!

i get decent drum sounds at home but then i have several thousand dollars of microphones helping me out

http://blog.bandcamp.com/2013/01/10/bandcamp-for-fans/

So... has anyone joined up? I have but I've not really bothered to use it yet.

yeah, though its usefulness beyond a reminder of purchases is yet to be revealed

i guess it's appropriate to mention in this thread that two of my favorite records of 2012 were kickstarter-funded numbers: driver friendly's bury a dream and the forecast's everybody left

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nLQK8uqcAY

The bandcamp fan pages are nice for some really basic social networking for artists at a small level. I bought some things that led to making a few connections with artists I like who bought my stuff in return. I think that works better than just emailing people out of the blue which can feel spammy. And I've found some good stuff by browsing though other people's collections. It's hard to tell if it will get better or worse the more popular it gets.

and I think it's kind of genius that you have to pay for something for it to appear in your collection. that's a lot more meaningful than a "like."

Legendary animator Ralph Bakshi doin' the Kickstarter thing:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ralphbakshi/last-days-of-coney-island-0?

why would bjork use kickstarter to raise money for this app thing of hers, rather than use her own many many millions? genuinely interested.

is it just simple greed or was there some bigger reason behind it? either way it failed miserably: 4% then dust

and the forecast's everybody left

Had no idea they had a 2012 album! Of course I never came across the 2010 one either.

why would bjork use kickstarter to raise money for this app thing of hers, rather than use her own many many millions? genuinely interested.

is it just simple greed or was there some bigger reason behind it? either way it failed miserably: 4% then dust

ha, I hadn't heard of that. but I wonder if they got tons of requests for windows and android compatibility and didn't want to bother with it, and now they can point to the failed kickstarter as an excuse not to do it.

http://www.factmag.com/2013/02/07/bjorks-kickstarter-cancelled-after-reaching-just-4-of-goal/

yeah I don't get why all of the headlines are saying it's a failure or embarrassment for bjork. it just seems like there aren't really enough interested android and windows users to justify porting it over, and it's a good thing she found that out ahead of time instead of just financing it herself.

its embarrassing that bjork tried to kickstart an android port in the first place imho

(not cuz i have any strong feelings about android, but its such a mundane project)

It was cancelled way before the end of the kickstarter tho, right? Hard to imagine Bjork doesn't have extremely wealthy fans all around the world.

I mean, "Cheetahmen 2" is getting funded through kickstarter.

why would bjork use kickstarter to raise money for this app thing of hers, rather than use her own many many millions? genuinely interested.

You're making an assumption here

didn't the initial album release have a bunch of multimedia stuff going on? that was presumably funded by her and/or her label? it just seems goofy to do all that stuff, and then over a year later go "hey we want to do more of the same that wasn't in the album budget, you wanna foot the bill for this one?"

and not only that, but the same stuff, just for... WINDOWS PHONES!

sorta takes a bit of the mystique out of the whole bjork aura imo

You're making an assumption here

Which assumption? I'm guessing this isn't accurate: http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/singers/bjork-net-worth/ but I'm certain someone of Bjork's standing can easily come up with 375k (she charged a fortune for her recent gig at MIF). If there's another, less graspy, reason she went to Kickstarter then I'd like to know, hence my question.

maybe google or microsoft offered to sponsor it so they cancelled the kickstarter

xp I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying it's an assumption. I can't think of any activity of hers in the last ten years that would've equalled a big payday, if anything, the opposite. That said, I wouldn't be surprised either if she is actually worth $40m (and good on her if she is)

I'd be v surprised if Bjork can't come up with the money to fund this herself, or her record label. Whole thing smacks of greed, syphoning money off her gullible plebs. Could well be wrong though, looking forward to finding out from upcoming interviews.

yeah i mean the Biophilia box set was $800