tegs07

It’s not necessarily an age thing. Some middle aged, middle class professionals will go regularly to gigs at random. I would not rely on them randomly stumbling across my band though if I was trying to make a living from music.

Or weekends. Most of the time I have commitments and strangely enough getting in at gone midnight doesn’t gel well with getting in to work and doing a decent job. Your rant is not for me. If you don’t want to prostitute your self on the socials or want people to use streaming platforms that is up to you but as you said “no effer want to get off their fat one” So I guess it’s everyone else who is at fault for not knowing about you? I will continue going to see relatively unknown artists who I discovered in the digital space. I hope that I contribute in some small way to them making a living. As I have already said most of these bands have an audience no larger than The Fall in their early days and from what I gather previous members hardly made a fortune from record sales even in the good old days.

I am in my mid 50s. The days of frequenting random gigs mid week are 30 years behind me. The generation that you need for that are teenagers to mid twenties and like it or not they get their information from the digital space.

I do. I just tend not to blindly pay £25+ for tickets, £7+ plus a pint and £15 plus on transport on a whim. Like most people.

This is getting very circular. How do I find these musicians? Talk to my middle aged IT mates? Ask my kids? How do they find the bands? Streaming and social media, they don’t read the NME or listen avidly to John Peel (largely because he is dead), they don’t join bands by taking the little serated number from the add in the local corner shop. Like it or not the world has changed and it’s digital. I don’t do social media as I genuinely have concerns about the political and social ambitions of the big tech companies so streaming is the least worst option.

Do you think that you are missing the point? No is the answer. Do I think people are going to start buying records and CDs again and restricting their social lives to pubs and working man’s clubs? No So we can’t re write history. We can utilise technology. Even in the glory days I have read enough autobiography from people in smaller bands like The Fall, Spacemen 3 etc to know that they earned very very little from sales of recorded music.

The key phrase is by recorded music. Musicians made money by selling records and CDs for probably about 40/50 years in several centuries. Musicians made money before the gramophone. They make money in the digital age. The important part of the debate is how. Not moaning about the change. Embracing the technology that is available to make a living. I would say that even in the glory days getting well known relied on getting a record deal, getting a promoter etc and unless bands were hugely successful they saw very little money. In many ways smaller bands are better off without the good old days.

Not like the good old days! Things have changed though. The music industry has changed. People’s priorities have changed. How people spend money has changed. Their aspirations have changed. Taking advantage of these changes is far more constructive than moaning about the good old days. The propensity of the UK moaner is something to behold. No matter how much resistance we have the next generation will see things differently, they will use technology differently and they will spend their money and time differently. Musicians made money from recorded music for a very brief period in the big picture. Probably a couple of decades in hundreds of years. That era is over.

I remember even in the late 80s early 90s pubs being rammed to capacity when the most established local bands were playing so can well believe it. It’s not something I witness now but I have limited exposure. It may well still be a ‘thing’?

The one musician I know who makes a full time living wage and has been at it for years, has established audiences and booking agents tends to get around 250 to 300 max under their own steam so if the venue takes a punt on unknowns to fill that number it must be a very successful venue with a top notch team.

Local unsigned artists playing 300-500 capacity? Wow that is pretty incredible.

Yes true but ultimately it is pointless going all Don Quixote. This technology is out in the wild. Some of it is useful, some of it is deeply destructive. Ultimately we can only learn to use it and make our own decisions about what elements to embrace and what elements to resist. In the same way I never gave Cowell a penny of my money or willingly watched any of his abysmal TV shows I will avoid AI generated music. I have to let other people make their own decisions about it though.

when it’s relevant to a the discussion at hand I am. Otherwise I have limited interest. You rarely seem to have anything to add other than to tell everybody else that they are wrong.

I noticed a thread where you have got rid of all your televisions. Personally speaking we are in the golden era of TV. Streaming services like Netflix and Apple TV have created utter gems with outstanding writing, acting and soundtracks. I am currently listening to the soundtrack of Down Cemetery Road on Spotify and will check out the artists I like. The world has changed. Some technology is incredibly useful. Narrowing your sources down to physical print media or analog media is going to severely restrict your access to news, culture and information, not to mention your ability to understand the world of the younger generation. The generation who don’t remember a time when Spotify didn’t exist and are using an entirely new toolset to create, communicate and educate.

Interesting thanks for the replies. I am not a gigging musician but a punter. I tend to rely on Spotify to find new artists and Dice to let me know when they are touring. As has been mentioned AI is a threat but for now I think people are safe. Formulaic music has been around since forever with the likes of Stock, Aitken and Waterman and later Simon Cowell. I am not convinced that AI music is anything different but just another step. Some people will go and see a holographic performance of AI content. I can envision this unfortunately. I am sure that just as people went to whatever boy band was going through the motions, many others will continue to seek something different.

I would also ask that with out the good old days of music press and A&R men and local radio and local newspapers and all of the other things that made a local music scene get national attention how does anyone get people to their gigs? I’m not sure that TikTok works well for everyone.

This is me as well. I would also add I bought physical copies of the albums from the artists I like for years. I have them already. Any new bands I discover are via Spotify pretty much exclusively. I try and see as many live as possible and really does it matter if I buy a CD or a TShirt at their gig? It would only be one or the other in any case so T Shirt it is.

The sad thing is that it doesn’t have to be. Collectively there is a lot of potential for change. I honestly believe that understanding the cause of a problem is the first step towards solving it. My experience with trying to deliver technical and workflow solutions to increase productivity in the workplace and futile attempts to explain or at least introduce economic concepts that can be investigated further have led me to worry a bit though. I think that our comfortable past has given false confidence that the future will be the same. It will all come good. Maybe it will but I am not taking it for granted. For the tiny amount of people who are interested this guy gives very clear explanations: US centric but totally relevant for us in the UK.

So what you are saying there is anyone relying on their income to get by in the world rather than their wealth (the sum total of the assets they own and possibly extract rent/revenue from) is going to struggle and this struggle is getting worse over time? I would argue that the term ‘housing ladder’ is another way of saying ‘inflation resistant alternative to cash’ or a hedge against currency debasement. I don’t know why this is such a difficult concept for people to grasp. Those who are reliant on wages only get shafted by the current system * . It’s simple. Creating more money (wages) won’t make any difference. Replace the colander rather than try and fill it with more water. Edit: This system is not capitalism. What we have lived through over the last couple of decades is not capitalism and it’s getting worse. The global south can see this and are retreating from it and creating a new system as I type while over here in the west we get more dystopian, more insular and more aggressive towards our allies and competitors.

I think you have lost me Tim. Sure there are plenty of people doing very well in this economy. There are some very wealthy people without a doubt. Broadly speaking though the general impression I get is that there is a high degree of uncertainty and even people on decent wages are cutting back a little. For those on the margins - the precariate, the rapid increase in accommodation costs have made life much much harder. This is Bristol in 2025 where my property has gone up by 150% in 20 years: I am sure someone will tell me how rich I am. It’s my home. It makes no difference to me if it’s worth £50K* or £850K!!! The only people benefiting from this are banks, governments and increasingly hedge funds. The rest of us just want somewhere to live. Again yeah I go on a bit, but this is the reality of the way the financial system is structured. The relationship between debt, liquidity, yield curve control/quantative easing, deficit, bond markets and inflation are just dull words. That video is what they lead to and it’s going to happen again. https://www.bristol.gov.uk/residents/people-and-communities/vehicle-dwellers-in-bristol  Edit: * This is not true. It makes a big difference. If it was £50K my stamp duty, interest payments to the bank over 15 years and undoubtedly soon whatever extra taxes I will be scalped for being a beneficiary/victim of money pumping.

Bristol is the same. It’s shocking and kind of links back to the original topic. Do artists need a basic income or does everyone deserve to live in a society where the purchasing power of their money isn’t eroding faster than the cost of assets, goods and services? Apparently because of a basket of hair curlers, organic miso, a rice cooker and a bowler hat (or whatever shit is in the CPI this week) every thing is tickety boo and we are in the land of honey.

I have mixed feelings about streaming. In the good old days I bought lots of physical music, bought the NME, had friends in bands and who went to loads of gigs and kept me in the loop. Now not so much. I use Spotify but the last 2 bands I saw live and the one I am going to see next I would never have heard about without Spotify.

I would like to think people are becoming more aware that these ‘free’ services are anything but free.

It seems that the solution is simple. Delete your social media accounts.

True but I think it’s even deeper. Every time there is a liquidity crisis (one is brewing right now over the pond) the distorted Keynsian response is to open the pumps and flood the financial system with money (usually at minimum repayment rates). It’s then like the Gremlins with water scenes. It’s loaned out over and over again chasing scarce hard assets as the game is up. Nobody in their right mind (unless they are Warren Buffet who will stash it to buy distressed companies) will hoard the cash, I guess a few brave souls might start a business or keep their zombie one going. I would argue however that the majority of it ends up in assets and puts prices up across the board. The people doing this find many ways of not paying any tax so the Government have little choice but to cut services - again who in their right minds (other than pension funds obliged to buy the crud) is going to fund the government deficit by buying bonds that are going to pay a rubbish return as the currency loses purchasing power. Yep I know. I know the dogs bark and the people are forced into caravans. Edit: Gary Stephenson has a series coming out on Channel 4 soon which will be worth watching. I don’t 100% agree with everything he says but he is trying hard to make the case that change is crucial if we don’t want to see Victorian levels of poverty again. A big part of my preoccupation with this issue is I honestly think it’s a possibility we will end up with a system where people are either in Victorian levels of poverty or are effectively indentured servants leasing every thing from their financial overlords.