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help fund Rocco prestia's solo album


funkgod

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$30 just gets you a download? Pass. Particularly as it'll presumably be on streaming sites in the future anyway.

Not that I'd have been interested in the first place, but those rewards are awful

Edited by Graham
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This isn't going to sound good, but I really hate the crowdfunding idea.

Especially when it's the ones that have been around the block - had a good life, lost/ripped off/blown it, then want their fanbase to keep them going. Let's face it, whose best years are many years behind them. There, I've said it!

Band makes album - album gets panned - you don't have to buy it. Crowdfunding? Too late, you've already laid out for that sucker!

 

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4 hours ago, Nicko said:

Bass payer, solo record.  Be afraid.  I'd probably pay $30 to not listen to it

In fairness, i have his first solo album, some killer tracks on it. and for the most its mainly the tower of power rhythm section,

it even inspired me write a song we still do live  called "Everyone on the funk bus"

should be interesting to see who he uses for this project. i think if gariboldi, and thompson are on it then its going to be good to go, and if he gets bruce conte or jeff tamelier as well then whats there not to like, we will see, i hope he gives jimmy herring a call tho, then that would really be something, else.

 

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Guest oZZma
41 minutes ago, spongebob said:

This isn't going to sound good, but I really hate the crowdfunding idea.

Especially when it's the ones that have been around the block - had a good life, lost/ripped off/blown it, then want their fanbase to keep them going. Let's face it, whose best years are many years behind them. There, I've said it!

 

 

3 hours ago, Jonse said:

$50,000!? 

Heh. And lots of people made great records, even masterpieces, without a penny in their pocket. I would be ashamed to ask money for something like that. 50.000$? A bit arrogant kind of "expectation" IMO.

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I think that the way Marillion do it , is OK .

They get their fans to donate the cost of a CD upfront , which then pays for the album .

Then after it's been recorded and mastered etc , the fans get the CD .

So they've only in effect , pre-ordered it .

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Guest oZZma
36 minutes ago, la bam said:

We recorded our album in our guitarists house. Cost nothing only a few pizzas.

He probably thinks he is above that.

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On 20/06/2019 at 20:23, oZZma said:

He probably thinks he is above that.

I've heard some interviews with him, and he always seemed a down to earth kind of guy.

I think it's more probable he's just used to do things differently, you know, old dog, new tricks and all that. I still think that 50k is quite a bit. But especially if he records in expensive places, which is very likely (I'm guessing NYC), that's not too much money. He probably saw some indie get crowfunded and thought 'hey, I'm actually a known bass player (in the bassworld niche) so I could get that much?'

 

At the end of the day, it's a crowfunding campaign. The only weird thing to me is that nobody in his circles offered to produce it and push it to some platform for revenue.

He's not going to reach the goal, and will do the record differently. He gave it a go :P 

 

As far as I'm concerned, he should get Mike Stern on guitar!

 

(By the way, 'Rocco Prestia Solo CD' sounds way, way too old for a 2019 crowdfunding campaign. It's not like appealing to the vintage vibe. He named it that way seriously. Someone should definitely help with settings these things up xD )

Edited by akabane
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As an artist I think it is somewhat presumptuous and disrespectful to your (potential) audience to expect them to crowd fund your recording. It is my experience as a artist that if your music is worth releasing you will find a way to do it without resorting to begging.

It is also my experience as a fan of bands who have used crowd funding to release their music that the incentives being offered aren't really that special. What I am primarily interested in is the music. I'll be able to buy that for £10 when the album comes out. Nearly all of the other stuff is irrelevant to me.

And in this particular case $50,000 just seems to be far to much money to ask for with no explanation of exactly how it will be spent. Is it just for recording costs? Getting your music on-line with all the major download and streaming sites only costs $50 for an album, so unless he's going for a large volume physical release that seems like an awful lot of money. For that kind of money just for recording plus mixing and mastering I'd be looking at a couple of weeks lock in with a name producer and mixing engineer with the aim of producing a fantastic sounding album and turning at least one of my band's songs into a potential hit single.

Getting your music recorded and released has never been cheaper. My last studio recording (made earlier this year) was charged at the same hourly rate (£6/h) as my first back in 1980 and while both were made in similar locations (converted garages) the quality and range of the equipment (as well as the acoustic treatment in the studio and control room) used for this year's session was vastly superior to 1980's semi-professional 4-track tape machine fed from a modified 12 channel PA desk and the sole effect available being reverb and echo from a spare 2-track tape machine.

Maybe the way forward for crowd funding recordings would be instead of offering useless "special" incentives would be to give everyone funding the album a cut of the sales? I might be tempted to throw a couple of hundred pounds at my favourite bands in return for 1% of the sales of their next album.

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2 hours ago, BigRedX said:

As an artist I think it is somewhat presumptuous and disrespectful to your (potential) audience to expect them to crowd fund your recording. It is my experience as a artist that if your music is worth releasing you will find a way to do it without resorting to begging.

It is also my experience as a fan of bands who have used crowd funding to release their music that the incentives being offered aren't really that special. What I am primarily interested in is the music. I'll be able to buy that for £10 when the album comes out. Nearly all of the other stuff is irrelevant to me.

And in this particular case $50,000 just seems to be far to much money to ask for with no explanation of exactly how it will be spent. Is it just for recording costs? Getting your music on-line with all the major download and streaming sites only costs $50 for an album, so unless he's going for a large volume physical release that seems like an awful lot of money. For that kind of money just for recording plus mixing and mastering I'd be looking at a couple of weeks lock in with a name producer and mixing engineer with the aim of producing a fantastic sounding album and turning at least one of my band's songs into a potential hit single.

Getting your music recorded and released has never been cheaper. My last studio recording (made earlier this year) was charged at the same hourly rate (£6/h) as my first back in 1980 and while both were made in similar locations (converted garages) the quality and range of the equipment (as well as the acoustic treatment in the studio and control room) used for this year's session was vastly superior to 1980's semi-professional 4-track tape machine fed from a modified 12 channel PA desk and the sole effect available being reverb and echo from a spare 2-track tape machine.

Maybe the way forward for crowd funding recordings would be instead of offering useless "special" incentives would be to give everyone funding the album a cut of the sales? I might be tempted to throw a couple of hundred pounds at my favourite bands in return for 1% of the sales of their next album.

What are you on about? There's no more 'album sales', like, ever. 

The curve of listeners actually BUYING a record has been going heavily downhill for the past 10 years or more. You go make at least a nation-wide survey asking people when was the last time they got into a shop and bought a CD.

Otherwise, if you're talking about the revenue that comes from streaming (which is where everyone listens to music from nowadays and will only get more accentuated the more we go forward), these are pretty much nil, unless you're one of the top-20/30 artists on spotify or apple music. 

The only way left to actually 'sell an album' is through BandCamp or similar services. Most artists at this point would just start taking payment and donations from their website directly.

Quite literally, the only way left to make money out of music 'old school' is with touring (let's exclude major publishing deals, which are still down by massive landslides vs 10 or 20 years ago). If you want to adapt, you build a community of fans online, they'll buy your books/recordings/whatever AND come to your gigs.

By the way, your sound engineer's rate is one of the lowest I've ever seen.

 

But I do agree with you that those 'incentives' are pretty ridicolous, and should be thought more thoroughly :) 

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How much? $30 for a download? $10,000 for a day in the studio and a bass that costs around £1100.00. I was never a fan of the crowdfunding thing. It always seemed like a begging bowl situation. I know it has worked for bands, and worked well but to me, it's a business and if you believe in your product, you invest in your product and hopefully with hard work and a bit of luck, like anything in life, you can recoup / make a profit and continue to work at your business.

$50,000 for a solo bass album? Really? Sorry if my comments p**s anyone off, just my opinion ;) 

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On 20/06/2019 at 19:58, spongebob said:

I'm not sure of any other medium that you pay for something upfront that you've not heard/experienced. 

It's like the artist saying you like me, so my name is enough for your cash! 

Every time you buy a cd with tracks you haven’t heard in the radio.

 

Every film you’ve gone to see at the cinema, or bought as a preorder.

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An alternative take on crowdfunding: visual artists (painters, sculpters, etc) always used to struggle to make a living by producing something and selling it. Similar story with composers. But if they could get a wealthy benefactor - a patron - to fund their projects, they could devote more time and resources to making bigger and more challenging works.

Wealthy benefactors are a bit hard to come by these days (not that it was ever especially easy). However, a large group of people could stump up a similar sum of money for a favoured artist if they all threw a tenner into the pot*. If they already know your earlier work and are interested in hearing more, they might consider it a decent investment to hand you some money to pre-order your next record.

Disclaimer: I've crowd-funded an EP in the past, and I know a couple of people who've used it as a model to fund several albums to date. It seems the most important thing is not to abuse the good will of your fans...

...to wit, I'd agree with everyone above whose ghast was flabbered by the target sum. If I were considering donating, I think I'd want a little more transparency around what a $50,000 fundraiser pays for.

 

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@akabane the bands that I like are still releasing music on physical formats and their fans are still buying them, so for the music that I would be interested in supporting there is a good chance that I would see a return on my investment. However these bands are selling their product off the back of gigging, and it has been my experience that unless your band is very well established (to the point where you shouldn't need crowd funding) the only way to continue generating sales for physical formats is to gig and sell copies to people who come to the gigs.

Maybe as an alternative strategy in this age of streaming would not be to record albums at all, but to release a single song/piece of music every 3-4 months as a promotional item, and the only way people are able to hear the rest of your material they have to come and see you play live.

Also, if as an artist you are serious business venture (as I suspect Rocco Prestia is), rather than just doing it for your own enjoyment then your business model needs to be one where income from each previous release funds the production of the next release. You might need to put in some of your own money in the first instance, but from then on it should be self-funding. That was certainly the way one of my previous bands operated. I put up the money to record and release our first EP, but the recording and production of subsequent releases were funded from sales of the back catalogue and other merchandise. If you can't do this then either your "product" isn't appealing enough or your business model is wrong. Start small and work your way up to an album that is going cost $50k to produce when your income from your back catalogue and royalties support it.

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