ant1
Offline
uhajdafdfdfa

--- derail ---

low-gain wrote:

And most people are too cheap these days to buy chip music. they just assume it should be free.. to which i say, "fuck that"
You pay for quality, and effort. both artist (investing in doing their record right) and consumer (buying a cd/record).

You don't pay for quality, you pay for having music by someone who expects you to pay for their music. This has absolutely nothing to do with quality.

I think with the amount of great, free music in the chipmusic scene over the last twenty-something years, people aren't going to be fooled by the "it won't be good unless you're paying for it" argument. And with the price of making chip music being close to nothing (how many of these people book out a recording studio, etc), I can't see why we should pay for it. Nobody/almost nobody is trying to make a living off chipmusic, why should they be have to be paid to do something they enjoy in their free time? - they should be doing it anyway. I don't expect anyone to pay me for making stupid argumentative posts on internet forums!  wink

Free music foreverrrrrrrr

http://freemusicarchive.org/
http://iimusic.net
http://8bitpeoples.com
http://ubiktune.org
http://calmdownkidder.com/records/
http://kittenrock.co.uk

RG
Offline
Milwaukee, WI

I'm am now officially bowing out of this here discussion. Shitstorm detected.

undergroundclouds
Offline
Spokompton
ant1 wrote:

And with the price of making chip music being close to nothing (how many of these people book out a recording studio, etc), I can't see why we should pay for it. Nobody/almost nobody is trying to make a living off chipmusic, why should they be have to be paid to do something they enjoy in their free time? - they should be doing it anyway.

As much as I love free music, I disagree with this argument. It seems to suggest that you should only get paid for stuff you don't enjoy doing, and frankly that's depressing. I still buy records, and I'm grateful that new records are still available for purchase. I'm happy to support the effort put forth by artists to create a quality piece of work.

Dauragon
Offline
Washington DC

The one problem that I have for selling music (at least in physical form) is that unfortunately it takes money to make money. I can't currently afford to make CDs or vinyls or whatever at the moment, so having my stuff out there for free is kind of the way to go until I have some kind of disposable income. Or any kind of income really.

I am thinking of selling my next slightly more ambitious project through bandcamp though.

BLEO
Offline
Geneva, NY

fwiw, iimusic puts out quality free releases AND quality releases you must pay for.  I've enjoyed both from this label.

10k
Offline
nɐ˙ɯoɔ˙ʎǝupʎs

I have heard the figures from releases on a few of the more popular chip netlabels and I know my sales figures (CDs) and downloads figures to date for both of my recent EPs. It is interesting seeing how these facts fit into peoples ideas of what goes down as well as other people's experiences in this thread.

I think there are a few interesting things at play in chipmusic and I would like to share some of my opinions and ideas with you.

~With reputation comes the value of your product.
~With access comes reputation.
~People will always have a way to get your music for free.
~CDs/music sells better at shows in my experience.
~A lot of music buyers buy for packaging/aesthetic.
~Each artist/act's needs/ideals/music/location/etc should decide how material is best written/recorded/released.

My plan was to have online chip communities download my music and to primarily sell my CDs at shows and have smaller numbers purchase online. The model seems to be working for me and I hope it continues to do so. People seem to want to buy shit from you at shows if they liked your set, even if you tell them they can get it free online.

I almost certainly would have had more online sales if there was no free download, but I guess my goal was to expose the music I have written, in the hope of building a reputation that increases the value of my future releases as well as my live performance. I am not sure what I am going to do next...

Chema64
Offline
Mexico City

Some people are narrowing music to "the music business" (that is dying as it is anyway), think music as art and it totally changes the way you distribute the goods. Museums dont look for revenue and they survive by donations and support by government or NGOs, and they only try to bring art to the masses even if they "lose money" doing it. As a curator that's the way i try to do things when i decide to put a new album in the label, just amplifying the voice of and artist and trying to preserve their music for the future (as corny as it sounds).

Analog
Offline
Ciudad de méxico, MX
ant1 wrote:

.... Nobody/almost nobody is trying to make a living off chipmusic, why should they be have to be paid to do something they enjoy in their free time? - they should be doing it anyway. I don't expect anyone to pay me for making stupid argumentative posts on internet forums!  wink

Free music foreverrrrrrrr

As long as I support free access to media, unfortunatelly there's no way that an artist can live charging for his/her work for free. However,
just like the linux guys, it is free to download, but they offer support or other kinds of bussiness, so they can make money out of it.

there are plenty other ways to make money out from it. For example, i have played on payed gigs like everyone, also made some payed workshops, and i'm planning to make a proyect with the goverment support.

xero
Offline
▐▐▌▌▐▌▌█▐ ▐▐▌▌▐▌▌█▐ ▐▐▌▌▐▌▌█▐

im a big fan of giving away 1/2 the album free...
and having the other 1/2 a download for $$$

if the music isnt good, it was a free preview, no loss.
but if it is really good, it will continue to entice you
until you are forced to buy the whole album ;D

ant1
Offline
uhajdafdfdfa

If you want cold hard facts, EIGHT PEOPLE listened to my album (which was for freee).

Last edited by ant1 (Jun 24, 2010 4:19 pm)

RushCoil
Offline
PDX

People should be free to charge for physical albums without ridicule, due to the time and expenses involved in mastering, cover design, and printing. And many people still buy and prefer buying a CD, because it is the most direct way of saying, "I love your stuff, I want to hear more in the future."

As far as digital downloads, Band Camp-style is the future for this. People can preview the entire album (or whatever portion you allow). Then, if someone has a serious connection or response to the music, they can download it and pay whatever they'd like (even $0), not for the bits of data, but for the enjoyment experienced and to directly support the artist.

And keep in mind, the chip community "free music" philosophy is about 5-10 years ahead of the rest of the world, or else iTunes would not earning $3.6 BILLION a year.

When I made my first album, the thing I heard the most was, "How can I buy this?" or "How can I buy the CD?" Of course, these are just regular people, not high-minded chip auteurs.

People like to support artists they really enjoy, and the biggest difference between chip and mainstream artists is, they can support you directly, and you can enhance their experience by being accessible. This is something of immense value that I think chip people overlook - there is a lot of value in being able to talk to your favorite chip artist on a forum, email, or Facebook. Who will a fan support more, some untouchable celeb or some guy they can drink with after a show?

nickmaynard
Offline
rochester, ny
RushCoil wrote:

People should be free to charge for physical albums without ridicule, due to the time and expenses involved in mastering, cover design, and printing. And many people still buy and prefer buying a CD, because it is the most direct way of saying, "I love your stuff, I want to hear more in the future."

As far as digital downloads, Band Camp-style is the future for this. People can preview the entire album (or whatever portion you allow). Then, if someone has a serious connection or response to the music, they can download it and pay whatever they'd like (even $0), not for the bits of data, but for the enjoyment experienced and to directly support the artist.

And keep in mind, the chip community "free music" philosophy is about 5-10 years ahead of the rest of the world, or else iTunes would not earning $3.6 BILLION a year.

When I made my first album, the thing I heard the most was, "How can I buy this?" or "How can I buy the CD?" Of course, these are just regular people, not high-minded chip auteurs.

People like to support artists they really enjoy, and the biggest difference between chip and mainstream artists is, they can support you directly, and you can enhance their experience by being accessible. This is something of immense value that I think chip people overlook - there is a lot of value in being able to talk to your favorite chip artist on a forum, email, or Facebook. Who will a fan support more, some untouchable celeb or some guy they can drink with after a show?

100% agree.

Decktonic
Offline
Westfield, NJ
celsius wrote:
Decktonic wrote:

I've been putting my stuff on Bandcamp with the requirement that people enter their email address to download my EP. Is this a bad idea?

Are you telling them upfront in a very obvious place why you require their email? Are you being very clear about the frequency of mailouts? If not that would put me off. Also as you are a relatively unestablished artist I might think twice about downloading your album (having not heard your material before) if you are making me jump through hoops to get it.

In short, I think it does more harm than good.

OK, the truth is I required email because Bandcamp recommended it, and it seems to be the norm among Bandcamp downloads, but I've been thinking the same thing you just said and just needed someone else to say it. I'm going to remove the restriction from my downloads and just add a small text file to my EP that tells people where they can go to sign up for my mailing list if they wish to. Thanks for the advice.

Edit: No more email address - http://decktonic.bandcamp.com/album/ret … y-promo-ep

Last edited by Decktonic (Jun 24, 2010 5:17 pm)

8bitweapon
Offline
Los Angeles

It would interesting to know the numbers of peoples downloads/sales but I dont think it really matters at all. Just focus on making and/or enjoying the music~! wink

BR1GHT PR1MATE
Offline
BOSTON

im totally with CDK and rushcoil.

Here is my obnoxious businessman 101 side: From the web, at this level you need to look at downloads as a marketing tool, not necessarily a product: you want to make it as easy to get people interested in your music as possible. Since there is little or no production costs to you per download, there is no reason not to make listening free for a potentially interested person. That said, including the option to pay for it is easy and not obnoxious to the listener. The idea is to get people to shows, or to be interested in value-added stuff which you DO sell: CDs, LPs, Tshirts, whatever.

Now, at shows, you definitely want to have a physical product of some sort. At the boston8bit show last night, disasterpeace sold like 8 CDs and facundo/jdd3j/cream in all mustache sold out of what they brought. And this is all to "fans"; not scene people at all, cuz' no offense, but scene people are cheap (and as mentioned, totally saturated). We (bright primate that is) have actually been doing REALLY well with selling download cards (from bandcamp, natch) at shows, and have *sold out* our batch of 200 from febuary. We do a "pay what you want" model for the download cards (which look awesome), and people usually pay from anywhere from $5-$20 (seriously) for a DOWNLOAD CARD of music that they know is freely available online (but if they only have a dollar, we'll give it to them for that too)

Now, I'm really passionate about the availability of free music online, but I think that its because we play a lot of shows and are really visible that the model that we use works for us. I can definitely understand how artists that are less inclined to tour would want to use the web as a marketplace instead of a marketing-place, so its damn tricky (especially with people like myself undercutting the market with free shit). So even though I'm high-and-mighty about free music, I never would look down on someone for exclusively selling their music online, provided they aren't being too obnoxious about it, and I think that most people would agree with me on that. We all need to find what works for us I guess.


*edit* Also, i think this thread is far from a shitstorm and has been a great exchange of ideas on how to get stuff out there. thanks too all for good ideas, imma prolly steal some ;D

Last edited by BR1GHT PR1MATE (Jun 24, 2010 5:07 pm)

RushJet1
Offline
Lawrenceville, GA

I agree with RushCoil, which is fortuitous because we have similar names.

Anyway that is what I was planning on doing with Kingdom Death's soundtrack once it's done--releasing it much the same way that Radiohead released "In Rainbows," where people can pay what they want to download the album (probably with some kinda DONATE button and a link to a big zipfile or individual files on my site, I don't know).  I could use Bandcamp possibly, but we'll see.  I figure that this album has taken quite awhile already (about a year?), and it will be probably at least another 8 months until it's done, unless I (and the guy making the game) work like 5x faster.  Hell, it's probably already close to filling a CD as it is, so it'd basically be a double-CD release.  Maybe I'd charge for physical copies tongue

Edit: Oh wow, me and BR1GHT PR1MATE both posted within a minute of each other.  Neat.

Last edited by RushJet1 (Jun 24, 2010 5:08 pm)