17 Indie Artists on Their Oddest Odd Jobs That Pay the Bills When Music Doesn’t (not a poll)

we're friends with a legitimately great singer/songwriter who went back to work recently, partially because she's been a single mom with two kids. she doesn't really fit in a particular easy hip niche except being amazing at what she does, and despite being enough of a name to have a c/d thread on here and maybe 10-12 albums released along with several others in a group, she's likely never going to make a living at that alone unless there's an unexpected breakthrough, but if she was releasing albums 30-40 years ago she'd likely be doing pretty well for herself. as it is, i'm proud of her for just having a positive attitude and holding down a music career and a day gig and having kids.

I've narrowed it down to three possible candidates and I love all three artists

oh no there will only be 2150468741857139850 indie bands

yes there are 2150468741857139850 indie bands making a living playing music in 2019. Why, I cant even order a latte these days without being served by one of them

if she was releasing albums 30-40 years ago she'd likely be doing pretty well for herself

she almost definitely would not be going back to work

xp ok? i'm sure ppl who sell fidget spinners probably have to do more than solely that btwn now + eternity to make a living too. who cares.

(xp) Would she have had 10-12 albums out? There were a lot of singer songwriters back then who were pretty talented who never got beyond one album and guess what they did next? They went back to work.

There's re-writing the history books and then there's re-writing the history books and turning them into fairy tales.

Yeah, the catalogs of the week in the ‘70s & ‘80s are littered with obscure bands and solo artists who had one or two albums, maybe a few, and then were dropped and that was that. I have a hard time believing that it’s somehow “more difficult than ever before” now to make a long-term career as a rock ‘n roll artist.

(Somehow the phrase “major labels” got changed to the word “week”(!) in the first line of my post above)

And saying “well Steely Dan did it” is coming it at from the wrong end.... Open that “Terrible ‘70s album titles” thread and tell me how many of those people never had to go back to work. Maybe they didn’t need side jobs in the few years they were under contract, but what does that amount to? If indie labels had existed then like today, they maybe could have kept releasing albums, but still would have needed day jobs.

paul i don't get this assumption you have where not using social media is evidence of some crippling mental condition

the problem with social media to me is not that some people are too shy or whatever to use it - i haven't found social anxiety any kind of impedance to using social media, which is probably one of the reasons it's so popular!

Guess the hope is to become a band like Spoon which makes indie rock into a sustainable grown-up lifestyle, there’s never been many like that though.

depends on how you define sustainable ... I think one of the things going on here is that America has such wildly varied costs of living that what can mean a "sustainable grown-up lifestyle" in Asheville, NC equals living with 3 roommates and having the equivalent of a post-college / barely scraping by lifestyle in a major city. This is just for a person who is single, or partnered without kids

Oh, for sure... Spoon lives in Austin, yeah?

Who are some other indie-rock “lifers” — at it for decades, maybe with kids, families, etc., and no side jobs needed? Malkmus (Portland), YLT (Hoboken still?), Built to Spill (dude lives in Boise), Will Oldham (Louisville)... this is just off top of head, I can think of others who have been in game for decades but don’t know for sure if any of them solely “make it” from their rock earnings.

Again, it feels a little weird speculating about the personal finances of these people, but you raise a good point about most f those artists living in relatively inexpensive cities. I always thought it was cool that Wayne Coyne has, as far as I know, remained in Norman, OK.

xp Asheville is not what I would call an inexpensive American city, exactly. Less expensive that New York or LA, sure, but definitely not cheap by southeastern (or midwestern) standards.

Brett from Spoon I thought lived in or around Portland. Yo La Tengo ... I could have sworn they have a place in Manhattan now? (And no kids). Built to Spill ... yeah, Idaho is pretty cheap, much cheaper than Portland/Austin/Hoboken for sure.

Low has it figured out, it seems, and they have kids.

Frankly surprised that the "lesser" cities of the Midwest aren't more sought-out as "liveable places for musicians". Madison, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Iowa City all seem like lovely places!!

Oh, for sure... Spoon lives in Austin, yeah?

I don't think all the members of the band do? I could be wrong ... but I think at least one lives in SF bay area

xp Asheville is not what I would call an inexpensive American city, exactly. Less expensive that New York or LA, sure, but definitely not cheap by southeastern (or midwestern) standards.

let's say you're a musician who earns $4000 a year from ASCAP royalties -- how many months of expenses at a "middle class adult lifestyle" would that pay in Asheville, or a similar city?

lotta weird assumptions in this thread, the main one being that there is a direct relationship between quality of music and amount of time and money spent on it, which, uh ...

but it also doesn't follow that most musicians do it only for the love, but to me recognition is more important than money for my music (but, i am lucky to not hate my day job)

also in the box is indistinguishable from hardware/hybrid mostly these days; listen to teflon dawn and tell me it sounds tinny (completely digitally mixed)

i think most pop music sounds bad not due to lack of funds or expertise, but producing and making music designed to be listened to streamed into earbuds (voice way up in the mix and hyper compressed/EQ'd, everything else a rhythmic and harmonic slurry supporting the 'personality' that is really what animates the song)

Frankly surprised that the "lesser" cities of the Midwest aren't more sought-out as "liveable places for musicians". Madison, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Iowa City all seem like lovely places!!

― flamboyant goon tie included

sure, but there's more to livability than affordability. i can't speak to iowa city specifically not having been there but it's still in iowa, which is not necessarily a great place to be non-conforming. and in the midwest, "non-conforming" encompasses fairly broad categories like "non-white" and "female".

(voice way up in the mix and hyper compressed/EQ'd, everything else a rhythmic and harmonic slurry supporting the 'personality' that is really what animates the song)

What are some examples of this? I think recent pop hits sound well-produced (even if I don’t always dig the songs).

I also recall the ‘80s, with those booming gated drums over everything; that didn’t necessarily sound “good” (etc.)

LOL @ this 'Boohoo, there may never be an "Abbey Road" or "Dark Side of the Moon" again' nonsense tbh.

most pop music sounds bad not due to lack of funds or expertise

I mean, there are pop artists pulling in 8-9 figures in a year. Surely, they could afford good studios and producers if they wanted. I also do think that Jordan is right that technological changes have drastically reduced the bar to entry when it comes to making good-sounding recordings (which is not the same as saying that making something entirely in a DAW is equal to recording and producing Dark Side of the Moon).

The artists named in that link do use good studios & producers, though

Oh, I don't deny that. Even when I dislike some of their sounds, I don't think it's because they're making recordings in their basement with an SM57 and a laptop. I'm a little sceptical of some of the claims being made.

A number of ambitious contemporary recordings get discussed in Sound on Sound and Tape Op, not just Daft Punk - mostly from established artists but that had to be true in the past too?

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/ben-folds
https://www.soundonsound.com/people/inside-track-muses-drones

I feel like pop music has never sounded better in my lifetime (even though I pay less attention to it as I get older).

Take a few random tracks like “Bad Liar” and “Fetish,” by Selena Gomez... I feel like I’ve waited my whole life for pop songs to sound like that!

(And I know “trap beats in pop songs” will sound really dated soon, but I’m still a sucker for them)

in the box is indistinguishable from hardware/hybrid mostly these days

Hmm. I can't agree with this - I think recordings done "in the box" have a specific sterility, even airless and artificial feel to them, like the sonic equivalent of those square cheese slices.

i think most pop music sounds bad not due to lack of funds or expertise, but producing and making music designed to be listened to streamed into earbuds (voice way up in the mix and hyper compressed/EQ'd, everything else a rhythmic and harmonic slurry supporting the 'personality' that is really what animates the song)

I agree that all of that is a conttibuting factor to recent recordings sounding terrible. Pop music has always been mixed as a compromise between higher-end setups and the lowest common denominator (i.e. radio) ... Unfortunately, as you've pointed out, the increasing trend is to mix/master with earbuds in mind these days, and it shows in a lot of remasters. Combined with the way that records are generally made at the moment, the end result becomes sonically unappealing.

A number of ambitious contemporary recordings get discussed in Sound on Sound and Tape Op, not just Daft Punk - mostly from established artists but that had to be true in the past too?

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/ben-folds
https://www.soundonsound.com/people/inside-track-muses-drones

― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Sunday, April 14, 2019 6:39 PM (forty-five minutes ago) BookmarkFlag Post Permalink

Both from established acts rather than a relatively new act that the record company have thrown the chequebook at/invested money in etc.

Isn't that also true of Abbey Road and DSotM?

I also recall the ‘80s, with those booming gated drums over everything; that didn’t necessarily sound “good” (etc.)

― get your hand outta my pocket universe (morrisp), Sunday, April 14, 2019 6:10 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag PostPermalink

Say what you like about "gated drums" (you're wrong, btw) but at least the way that '80s recordings were mixed and mastered felt fuller, richer and easier to listen to as a consequence of being EQ'd reasonably and not being compressed to an insane degree of ear fatiguing level.

Mods, please delete ilm

Isn't that also true of Abbey Road and DSotM?

― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Sunday, April 14, 2019 7:30 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In that context, it would be better to refer to Sgt. Pepper's, which was one of the most expensive records made to that point. If that hadn't been a success, they wouldn't have got to make Abbey Road. Even with The Beatles' popularity, I would suspect that EMI would still have considered throwing that much money at a pop record to have been a gamble.

It's true that Pink Floyd had been around a while when they made The Dark Side of the Moon, but given that they'd spent four years since the departure of Syd Barrett essentially pissing about for the benefit of a small, cultish fanbase, I'd say that The Dark Side of the Moon was a risk, too.

I don't know how expensive "Dark Side of the Moon" (aka Pink Floyd's most boring album) was to make tbh - I'm not sure how it would compare to Razorlight's 2nd album (joke).

yall are using so many records as shorthand for expensive sounding when barry white's catalog is just sitting right there

they'd spent four years since the departure of Syd Barrett essentially pissing about for the benefit of a small, cultish fanbase

I mean, from a quick scan of the history on their website, Atom Heart Mother reached #1 in the UK, Meddle #3, and Obscured by Clouds #6. They played to 15K in 1971. Not the level of international success they reached after DSotM (although their Billboard placements were respectable) but seems like they were more than a minor cult band by 1973.

Remember everything turrican says is ill-informed and wrong

Circling back to the original thread topic: Eleanor Friedberger has talked pretty openly in interviews about the difficulties involved with making a sustainable living in indie rock; having to move away from NYC, because it became too expensive; wishing the FFs had started their career 10 years earlier, so they could have built up a bigger following and garnered more momentum/success; etc.

i was a big furnacehead (that's what us ff fans call ourselves) and i mean... they put out at least 6-7 widely distributed albums, got music press coverage and accolades, toured extensively for years, and must have grossed at least a couple hundred thousand if not more over the course of a relatively short stretch of time, all on the back of music that, had it never existed, might have less of an effect on the world than a flap of a butterfly's wing?

I mean, from a quick scan of the history on their website, Atom Heart Mother reached #1 in the UK, Meddle #3, and Obscured by Clouds #6. They played to 15K in 1971. Not the level of international success they reached after DSotM (although their Billboard placements were respectable) but seems like they were more than a minor cult band by 1973.

― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Sunday, 14 April 2019 20:07 (one hour ago) Permalink

I was talking relatively. Still sufficently small enough at that point to be considered a gamble.

What gamble are you talking about?

I was curious so I looked up known budgets of a few "classic" albums. "Pet Sounds" (which was a "Tusk"-like indulgence) reportedly cost $75,000 at the time and took 10 months. For comparison, "Sgt. Pepper" cost 25,000 pounds (not that the Beatles had a budget, per se), but I mention it since "Odyssey and Oracle" (recorded right after "Sgt. Pepper" at Abbey Road, some with Beatles equipment left behind) reportedly cost only ("only") 1000 pounds to record, but the band was tightly budgeted on time as well and had the songs totally rehearsed and worked-out (which of course has its own costs in terms of time, etc.). But it's an example of an ambitious classic album that cost a fraction of its peers' similarly ambitious output. So I think that what tons of money and studio time seems to truly afford is the luxury of spending months in the studio fiddling around, but if you have your shit together you can record something pretty awesome given limited time and money. And that's probably always been the case.

First Ramones something cost something like $6000 to record, which was cheap for the time but still nuts, because that's thousands of dollars on an album that imo doesn't really sound it. But that's an example of a classic that a lot of people could probably record today for a fraction of that budget and get a similar (or superior) sound. But of course those bands are not the Ramones.

Somewhat related, I read a piece in TapeOp about an engineer who got his start assisting (in the most boring of ways) Flood in the studio. So it was Flood producing 30 Seconds to Mars, in the band's home studio, for something like a year and a half. Now that is an indulgence.

What gamble are you talking about?

He's saying that investing a lot into DSotM would have been a commercial gamble for the label, compared to the present-day risk involved with investing into ambitious recordings by Ben Folds or Muse, I think? If that's true, I think it would be because the cost of recording and production has gone down thanks to technological advances. Folds in 2015 was surely not more bankable than Pink Floyd in 1973.

"Hysteria" reportedly cost $5 million and took 4 years to make. (Which is inconceivable to me.)

That's p incredible, although there were some famous, uh, complications that occurred during those four years, which probably drew out the process a little.

I suppose I've never thought of "Dark Side of the Moon" as being a famously expensive or extravagant recording.

Lorde took 18 months to record her second album, and worked in 4 studios between NYC and L.A. (according to Wikipedia); during which time she lived in Manhattan (I don’t know on whose dime).

Anyway, all that can’t have been cheap, and it was a luxury afforded recently to a young and still relatively untested artist. If I’m following the “debate” here...

For comparison, "Sgt. Pepper" cost 25,000 pounds (not that the Beatles had a budget, per se), but I mention it since "Odyssey and Oracle" (recorded right after "Sgt. Pepper" at Abbey Road, some with Beatles equipment left behind) reportedly cost only ("only") 1000 pounds to record

I assume that £1000 figure is in old money (£/s/d - don't forget, our coinage system was different in the '60s) and not adjusted for inflation, but it works out at £18,000 in new money (£/p) plus inflation adjustment. Not a cheap record at all. Has that Sgt. Pepper's figure been adjusted?

Odessey & Oracle is nowhere near as ambitious in the production department vs. Sgt. Pepper's, even if I do think it's the superior record.