'big cigar' guys not smiling at all

[>BKA< T Wrecks]

Well, a band like Bon Jovi (just as an example) sure earns loads of $$$ on a tour - but smaller bands often earn nothing more than the net revenue from their own merchandise sales (T-Shirts, Patches, CDs and stuff).
A free music platform would indeed be nice - especially since many smaller bands offer much stuff on MP3 anyway. However, it's difficult to dig through scores of band homepages to grab that stuff. A centralised platform with short genre info (or better, description), maybe even from the band itself, would be nice. And a rating system, why not. I mean, if I was a big fan of stoner rock and I saw some songs by a an unknown, but top-rated band that describes itself as a mixture of, say, QOTSA and Spiritual Beggars, I guess I'd go ahead and d/l that shit. And if they had a comment in their MP3 tag saying that you can get their entire album as a nicely packaged CD with some material not available on the net, complete lyrics and everything for a reasonable price (like 10-12 $) directly from the band, why not?
But the music industry... nah. They'll never get it - and IMHO, they don't deserve any better if they can't come up with better stuff than what they're offering right now.

[TruB]

you seem to know what you are talking about.. agree..

[stefanhendriks]

i think when there is a reliable system with the ease of Kazaa, you will get a cool set of free music. And probably that quality of that music aint that bad at all. Put in some band info , track info and whatever and i bet the music industry will gladly 'take a peek' in there, or hence, even begin to fear it because the artists do not need a music industry to 'sell' their records. Internet will be growing, and slowly replace everything... even the cd's, dvd's or whatever they come up with. I'd like to see dynamic, internet connected, shared, disks.. wohoo. I'd like to play something of my HD when i am driving in the car, just select 'my computer' and hit 'play music'. Ow well, perhaps within 500 years orso

[TruB]

ill give it 10 years.. max.. in 500 years internet is crap..

[SoUlFaThEr]

in 500 years this planet will be a desert with no life on it. OR
people will never actually SEE each other unless they have a job making stuff for your computers at hiome. i think the internet creates homebodies like all of us i dont mind .if someone makes me mad.....i close the window........if someone makes me mad outside my home.he gets bashed and i get fined.....
back on topic tho:

small bands like mine for example without a real big cigar label NEED to produce MP3's of our music just to get any pull at all.....i had friends add my music to thier libraries in the different download programs like emule and kazaa etc and after a while....they were noticing people actually downloading them.........so its a way to spread your name as a nobody on the world music market....

frankly i quit singing for a band to try to get a contract and get on big stages because its just not possible anymore unless you , as a girl have an awesiome body to show off, or as a dude are thin like a stick with a perfect looking set of stomach muscles.....i dont know many GOOD musicians that look like that.........and when you take Nirvana for example......they cant even play thier instruments live cuz they are are too fuckin drunk/drugged to see the monitor in front of them.
but those bands sell........but then again not anymore because of techno/hip-hop/R&B who makes most of thier publicity on MTV showing off awesome looking MODELS. truthfully......i dont turn on MTV to hear the latest cool tunes.......i turn it on cuz im compiling a map and want to see some fine babes dancing around half-dressed. who doesnt want to see kylie minogue rolling around on the floor.......ummm what was the name of her songs?

music is dead. i havent bought a CD in over 3 years besides from one single band. Dream Theater.
and on top of that im starting a blues band project just because i can play on a stage with that...thats all i want to do is play live...rock died, which is my roots. cant play anywhere with that. its sad.

life sucks for us creative and song-writing musicians.......

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

I beg to disagree.
Punk rock at least is not dead. I've been going to punk rock concerts almost every weekend now for a couple months and I've found that this community is very tied. People write good songs, often auto-produce them, and make them available to people who want to hear them. They don't earn big bucks for sure, just enough for continuing... there are more and more of such concerts and punk bands around here, it's a lot of fun
I don't see this as a "dead" music at all, I can assure you

*edit* where can I download your music btw ?

[>BKA< T Wrecks]

Well, that "Rock is dead" thing is a complex matter to discuss. I guess it all depends on what you actually mean. One thing is for sure: The era of bands, mainly and especially of rock bands, is over and dead as a doornail. Just some dinosaurs (Stones, Purple) keep touring, but... nah, that's not really the same. You can't even blame them, I think. I guess they still like playing their music and stuff, but when they started they made something revolutionary. Now this aspect is lost. Alice Cooper put it in a nutshell when he stated something like this in an interview:
"In my early years, whenever I was in town, parents started trembling and fearing that their kids might go to my concerts and become corrupted. Nowadays, kids start trembling and sweating because they fear that their parents could drag them to one of my concerts"... 9_9
And really, the time when real, long-liviing bands released album after album and more or less regularly went in the charts are definitely over. The age of bands has died, and the age of musical laboratory products and short-lived fashion & trend vehicles has begun.
But as Pierre pointed out correctly: This mainly (or even exlusively) applies to the mainstream - if you look beyond, you will find that Rock, for example, is definitely not dead! Listen to Albums like "Total 13" (Backyard Babies), "Payin' the Dues" (Hellacopters), the latest Gluecifer album or whatever, and you won't be able to say that the music itself is dead. I think it's more society and its relation to music (and, in fact, the interaction between society & music) that's dead. We are accustomed to seeing and hearing almost everything nowadays, but not to actually experiencing anything. We are a consuming society, no living society. I mean, back in the sixties or seventies, a rock concert wasn't just a concert - it was a statement! And the fans were not just fans, they were a social (and often political) movement! If you say that all this has died, then I'd agree. But the music itself, no...

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

Originally Posted by >BKA< T Wrecks

I mean, back in the sixties or seventies, a rock concert wasn't just a concert - it was a statement!

8D Word!

And the fans were not just fans, they were a social (and often political) movement! If you say that all this has died, then I'd agree.

Not punks! It's RARE over here to find one punk band that is not explicitly politically engaged (to the left - all commies and/or anarchists )
It's very true for french punk, since Bérurier Noir almost all french punk bands are touring along with the altermondialist movement - not to gain fame, really by conviction. I've found that english/american punk rock has a much more pessimistic eye on society and generally stays far from political problems - going like, "the world's fucked up, everything's fucked up, no future". There is never such a speech with french punk at least. These guys ARE engaged.

[>BKA< T Wrecks]

"Altermondialist movement" - hey, that's a nice word. A nice English / French combination. You know, I really envy you French for your effort to maintain your language - most Germans actively help in destroying their own language and replacing it with wannabe-English. There is no powerful commision that invents words or proposes German word creations in order find good expressions for any new inventions / technologies / phenomena.
But back to topic: I believe you that Punk bands are politically or socially engaged, and beyond pure "fuck society" (we live from it, but still, fuck it anyway) lyrics... many Metal bands are, too, although there are also Nazis around - which sucks big time. I just think that these directions have lost homogenity and importance. Maybe the relative (and in many cases, superficial) freedom of our current societies prevents the outbreak of a rebellious attitude and the uprising of a homogeneous movement just by making lives comfortable enough for most people to keep quiet.
Besides, it's one thing to support an "altermondialist" attitude by going to a Punk concert, but it's something different to live according to that attitude. The Hippies, for example, had a whole lifestyle of their own - if they wanted, so what? They got stoned, put some flowers in their hair and walked stark nekkid through town - until somebody arrested them. They really started living in a different way, educating their children in a different way (by allowing them to do almost anything), and so forth. Nowadays, people go to a concert, shout some anti-globalisation, anti-capitalism, anti-[insert what you most hate here], and then they go home, get some sleep, and the next day you will see them sitting at their office desks with shirt and tie, doing what everybody else does. I wouldn't even exclude myself from that, btw. It's kind of sad, but then again I can understand quite well that many people simply have lost hope, while those who still keep talking about "A different world is possible" are a suspicious mixture of commie / anarchist relicts from the 70's, labour union guys and harmless, but also clueless and permanently stoned social work students with rastas, Bob Marley buttons and military jackets scribbled with age-old left-wing slogans - not to forget the mandatory Che Guevara flag over their beds... *yawn*. This is so outlived, so stale - I am yet to see a protest movement that has the potential to be taken seriously by those in power, that fights for realistic goals and is not necessarily either outdated left-wing or arch-conservative, stupid Nazi scum.
Am I talking you guys down, btw? That's sure not my intention... you gotta kick me in order to get me to stop, that's all... just wanna keep some kind of debate alive - after all, that's the place for such stuff, right?

[stefanhendriks]

i dont know about you guys, but i kinda noticed that the society here is more like "i dont give a fuck how things are going, as long as I am going well". Sort off individualism.