The importance of perpetuity

​Our society today, driven mainly by profit motivation, is devaluing music and art at levels never seen before. If artists don’t take necessary steps to protect their art & careers, there will be no art - just consumable content driven by the appetite of data centers for more files. This post should serve as a warning and notice of what is happening and what musicians can do to protect their future.

Imagine a world in which there is no art.  A world in which everything has been reduced to 30 second pictures, videos or sound bites.  And then look at what you see on your phone with the likes of TicTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.   Then imagine the 20 year old musician today, working tirelessly to hone their craft, develop their instrumental skills, write that song and expose their soul for the world to see.  Those that choose to suffer for their art, rather than taking that 60 hour a week job at a bank, don't want their life choices and achievements to be marginalized.

Then imagine that 20 year old, 45 years from now.  Their grandkids come up to them and say, "Gramps, what did you do in your 20s?".  The grandparent tells them of the wonderful journey they had as a musician - the clubs they played, the other musicians they performed with, life in a van traveling around to share their art with an audience.  The kids say, "Can we hear what you did?".

That's the scary part.  In 45 years time, the answer will likely be, "No, I'm sorry I don't have it."   They shut down the data center and streaming service we had all of our music uploaded to.  It was no longer profitable because the computers decided that they could fabricate their own music, and the consumers were hypnotized to accept AI generated content over human content, and no longer needed to pay the power bill to house the historical content.  Maybe some government library of congress stepped in to store some archive of this, but which government?  Who has the appetite to spend money on this sort of thing?

Digital streaming is not storing for perpetuity

Musicians and artists need to understand that data centers don't care about them.  Streaming services don't care at all about them.  They are just fodder for "content".  Content that empowers a service to charge a monthly subscription fee to a nameless customer for the ability to stream nameless content.  The data center and streaming service is in the business of buying real estate, filling it with a warehouse of server hardware that will devalue in 3-5 years to nothing, powering it with energy and pushing out data bytes through bandwidth pipes.  What goes out over the wires is of no interest to them.

Yet the musicians today are dealing with two currencies - the currency of fame and the currency of fortune.  Fame is measured in how many fans (which are nameless IP addresses on a network) that listen to their stream.  For how long, or how engaged are they?  Who knows.  The musician certainly doesn't.  But they see that X number of people listened to their stream.  The data center corporation doesn't care - they will pretend to the artist that they are successful, but the real analytics of their art is irrelevant to the data center that is pushing bytes over a pipe.  If they tell you that you had 100,000 streams, they are probably lying.  But it makes the artist feel validated in some way.  Ego is a fickle thing.

But the other currency is fortune - money.  The artist needs to make money to pay the rent, feed themselves or their family, and not live in a world of constant struggle.  They need to have a decent and reliable car, be able to afford medical care if they need it, and not have to devote a majority of their attention to some day job that is taking them away from what their real purpose is - to create art.  Yet in the western world, this is our lot.  It would seem that artists can not devote more than a sliver of attention to their real purpose because the landlord needs his or her rent, and their credit card bills are due.  

To rely on streaming to somehow sustain one's existence is (from a business perspective) stupid.  Considering the economics here, it costs no difference to record and produce music for streaming than it does for any other destination purpose.  It takes the same amount of effort to originate the song, pre-produce it, play it, record it, mix and master it, etc.  No difference at all.  And yet artists think that the only end point destination for the music is streaming.   A form that has no guarantee that all the hard work will ever pay off economically, and that their art will be around and served in perpetuity.  These things are the antithesis of what drives artists to be artists.

You might go viral.  But even with 100,000 streams on Spotify, you will not likely be able to make your rent payment.

The understandable rise in popularity of CDs and Vinyl

Physical media used to be the endpoint of recording.  It was controlled by the gatekeepers - the record labels.  They acted as a combination of financiers, quality assurance and curation and marketing to an artist.  The things most artists didn't want to do.  They wanted to focus on their art, and if a record label felt that the artist should focus on their art, they would sign them to some predatory contract to allow them to do that.  But even as bad as some of those record deals were in the past. they did allow relatively unknown talent to emerge and grow in popularity.

There was a complete industry around this.  From the recording studios who produced content worthy of physical media, to the record stores that sold it.  All of that changed in the early 2000s as digital versions of music became portable through the iPod.  And from that the world turned from convenience to dependence on digital files and a high speed Internet connected world of data centers.  The record labels reduced to just marketing companies, and budgets dried up.  The only place to buy a CD was on Amazon or EBay.  

But physical media can survive the test of time.  Sure the players might need to be dusted off and refreshed, but when that grand kid comes to their grand parents and wants to hear what they created or what their world was like, physical media can meet the demand.

And that is why physical media is on a resurgence.  Artists like to have something tangible to show for their work.  Liner notes show photos and pictures of their vision at the time.  They can physical hand it to a fan and really see if that fan is a real fan.  They can sign it, they can carry CDs with them to gigs and sell them at the merch table.  This is the old skool way of doing commerce between the artist & the fan and a way we should protect.

Most importantly, a product that has a relatively low cost to produce, although the upfront cost to originate the recording might be substantial, can be made by the artist.  Imagine if you made $7 profit per CD unit, and sold 100,000 CDs?  I don't think you'd have a problem paying rent then.

The artist can be the record label today.

Can we return to this model?

The only thing missing here is the listener having the ability to play your music.  Since Apple stopped including CD-ROM units in their computers in the early 2000s, the other computer hardware manufacturers followed suit.  Eventually cars didn't include CD players.  And now most people don't have one.

We have seen artists trying to sell their material on a USB thumbdrive, but they are not something a fan will spend $10 for.  But they will for a CD and 3x that for vinyl.

What is needed here is that the artists have to promote to their audience (by example) a world in which their listeners go out and buy a CD player or record player.  The dedicated fans will do that.  But if the artists are not understanding the currency of fame vs. the currency of fortune, they will forever be just "content" to the data center.  And that is undermining their value.  Those faceless streams that they think are driving their sense of value, may not even exist.

But if they meet their fans at a show and sell them a signed CD, they have a real fan.  That relationship really should be valued because it is real.  The proof is that the fan has given hard earned money to the artist to prove their solidarity, and that money puts gas in the car, pays the rent, covers the cost of a burger, etc.

If artists invest in producing 100 CDs and sell them for $10 each at a show, and they net $7 profit per unit, that's $700.  If they play to 100 people, 3 nights a week, you can see how quickly they can make an actual, sustainable living, being an artist.  Try doing that on Spotify.

Artists need to promote to their audience that they have a CD for sale, and that the audience should go and buy a CD player.  If they listen to music on their computer, buy a USB connected CD player.  They are cheap - Amazon have them for sale for less than $20.

If they prefer to sell vinyl, prices are typically 3x the retail price of a CD.  And there are Bluetooth & USB connected record players from companies such as Audio-Technica out there for the true music fan.  Most probably already have them.

Don't cheapen your value with streaming

We, in the recording studio world, understand that many will still want to record and stream.  We get it.  Just know that at Troubled Clef it is our goal to record and produce music that will stand up with the best in the world - the fidelity will rival the music most audiophiles listen to.  That will make the client feel proud of what they have created and that it was done so well that it will live on in perpetuity.  What leaves our studio is the best we can humanly make it, given the budget constraints of the client.  But after it leaves our studio, then it lives in the world of the client.

We only hope that the client knows that if they think to value themselves only in the currency of fame - the illusion the data center companies will perpetuate to make them feel better for a short period of time, then this is likely to be the lifespan of their art.  If they value themselves as creators of something historical that should live on in perpetuity, then they should desire physical media creation.  And there are plenty of companies such as DiscMakers  that can create physical media for prices most would never believe.

The economic argument could never be stronger to do this.  This will allow artists to finally make money again.