PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic What are your reasons for making music?

Nothing has changed but the technology, and it was around long before Napster.

If they buy it:

Back 'in the day' local radio stations, in order to boost ratings used to announce, "Tonight at 11 we will play _____'s new album without commercial interruption."

Thousands of people would have their tape machines cued up and ready to push the REC button. Then the station would play the LP and when flipping sides, the interruption would be "You are listening to W(or K)???.FM ___ on your dial."

When they buy it:

Cassette copy after copy would be made and shared with friends.

The differences are:

• The Internet makes it easier to share with people you don't know
• Music just isn't as important to this generation as it was to previous ones

I hear people moaning all the time that they can't make money recording music anymore. Well, most musicians never made money with recording. For >99% of all musicians, playing live has been the way to make money. Only <1% made any money from recordings.

For every Beatles, Pink Floyd, Elvis, or whatever there were at least another thousand bands working clubs, parties, hotels, and so on.

Plus most 'one hit wonders' or 'one CD wonders' ended up never making a penny of their recordings, and in many cases ended up owing the record company in the end.

When Motown was courting us in the late 1960s, and they made their final offer, it was $.02 per record. Out of the royalties came inflated recording costs, inflated promotion costs, inflated production costs, and inflated distribution costs. Our lawyers figured that we'd have to sell a million copies of our first recording just to get break even and not owe Motown money. That's when negotiations broke down.

The streaming services aren't doing anything that the vinyl and CD merchants did. Exploiting the artist.

The real difference is that today music isn't as important to the screen generation. Not too many years ago, every hotel from a Holiday Inn up had a band playing 6 or 7 nights a week. Usually a pop band 6 nights and a jazz band on the 7th.

Plus singles bars, restaurants, country clubs and dozens of other venues had to have a band.

The only bars with TVs were corner taverns with a dozen or so bar stools and no tables. Discos came later and they put the first nail in the live music coffin. Now people stay home and watch TV and the 6 night gigs are all but gone.

Music just isn't as an important to this generation. And I don't see a change coming any time soon.

Why music isn't that important is another subject altogether, but I think I've hijacked the thread enough.

To get back on topic, I make my living doing music and nothing but music because it's by bliss and I'm able to make a living at it. If I couldn't make a living at it, it would be my hobby and it still would be my bliss.

Someone mentioned the high. I get into "the zone" almost every gig. That space where there is no place, no time, and no me -- where the music seems to flow through me instead of from me, and the time between when the gig stops and ends seems both infinite and instant. In any case, the gig is over too soon, and although I'm tired, it's a good kind of tired.

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