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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | "Bowman, KC" <kcbowman@oaklandnet.com> |
| Subject | Zero Budget - Mass Consumption |
| Date | Thu, 20 Feb 2003 14:30:49 -0800 |
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Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 14:45:33 -0500
From: Andrew Chalfen <chalfen@pobox.upenn.edu>
To: audities@smoe.org
Subject: Re: Owsley-related
Message-ID: <5.1.2.1.2.20030220142515.012e4168@pobox.upenn.edu>
kcbowman@oaklandnet.com wrote:
>"...basically, for the first time in the pop era, a musician can create
>recordings for mass consumption with pretty much ZERO budget. Record
>tracks on a home computer, make some mp3's, post 'em on a website, and
>practically anyone in the whole universe has access to them."
>>Well, true except for the mass consumption part.
By mass consumption, I mean that anyone, anywhere, anytime can have access
to one's mp3 simply by virtue of having a computer, a modem/DSL/T1, and an
mp3 player.
>>It's easy enough to make
a home recording and slap in up on a webpage, but if you are a rock band
and you want to make something sound nice and large and "radio-ready" like
everyone's favorites like Weezer or Cotton Matther or Jellyfish or
whatever, you're either going to need over a hundred thousand dollars worth
of your own recording gear or else go to a place that does: a decent
recording studio with an engineer or producer who knows how to get a great
recording of a great performance.
I never said anything about quality. If Andy Partridge recordied something
on a Fisher Price cassette tape recorder, I would be at the very least
interested in hearing it. The 1994-era GbV recordings rank as some of my
very favorite recordings of all time, and they were recorded on a beat up
cassette 4-track.
I am definitely guilty of gear lust in my own studio, and am always looking
to improve the sounds I get. But even if I only had a beat up PC with a $30
Radio Shack mic and a bootlegged copy of CoolEdit pro, I'd certainly
continue to record songs and post 'em.
>>What is going to lead people who aren't fanboys and
fangirls like ourselves to check out your mp3?
Nothing at all. But it's there for someone to find if they stumble across
it. Note that I never said anything about promotion or sales or pop music
careerdom...Just the fact that a guy in Bosnia (or girl in Tokyo) has the
*ability* to have a copy of a recording by a guy from Binghamton (or Girl in
Temecula), with basically no production or manufacturing cost. Not possible
in 1993 or really even in 1997 - back then cassette, CD or vinyl copies
would have to have been manufactured... mailing and shipping costs would
have been incurred. Now, one could type "Our band sounds like Saga and Rush"
into Google with the prospect of being two clicks away from downloading a
track by a Saga-esque, Rush-like band for free...It'll probably suck, but
maybe, just maybe, it won't...at least it cost you nothing.
>>Well, promotion, which
leads to reviews and airplay.
Who said anything about airplay?
>>Even then, no guarantees. Getting on the
radar of public consciousness costs money.
Who said anything about doing anything more than creating a recording and
posting it for whomever finds it?
>>your "ZERO budget" statement
is way misleading.
Yes, it costs money to promote a recording. Yes, it costs money to sound
like Jimmy Eats World (or whatever "radio-ready" band). But one can make a
recording of *reasonable fidelity* using gear which costs next to nothing.
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