No More Money In Records? Try A Video Game With Your Record

[MikeRivers]

This is a kind of interesting interview with Will Sheff (no, I never heard of him before I heard this piece on Marketplace this morning) who combined his interest or nostalgia for 1980s video games with his music.

It's just another idea for making money with music. He has a realistic view of what recordings have become and why listening to them isn't as much fun as they used to be. The audio interview is here:

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/okkervil-rivers-will-sheff-tech-and-nostalgia

 

[blue2blue]

Honest to gosh, I don't know why people are so obsessed with kvetching about how it's not fun to listen to music anymore -- or whining about how the top 40 is so lame. 

The top 40 is lame. That should come as some kind of surprise?

Everyone (almost) probably has a soft spot for the mind-numbing hits of their youth, but, let's face it, the top of the pops is seldom the best music out there. It was the music that biz types shelled out the most to make hits of, doling out payola to DJs and record stores, sending out shills to buy armloads of albums at the old pre-Soundscan 'counting stores,' and worse. 

Sure, if you're around 60, you look back at the charts from the 1960s and say, Damn, there'll never be another era like that again! 

But if you're in your 40s, you probably look at the 80s charts and, say, Damn, so many fine hits! Too bad about the stupid hair and clothes, though. (Nostalgia can only distort so much reality, eh?)

 

There's great old music,  there's great new music. Once in a great while, I imagine, some of it may even manage to get into the charts. (I stopped listening to commercial radio circa '85 so, you know, I'm assuming.)

I stopped listening to commercial radio back then because I was worried that if I didn't, I would just continue getting more cynical about the music biz (pretty tough, actually, I was wary going in and disgusted backing out) -- but, worse, I knew I didn't want to become one of those people bitter because 'their time' had passed them by. I love my record collection, but I'd already plundered it repeatedly for my listening. I wasn't going to retreat -- but I wasn't going to be led by the nose by a bunch of shiny suits, either.

Good music is out there.

But you've never been able to count on the music industry to make it easy to find. Much the contrary. They are usually burying it in dross. So it is. So it has been. 

[martygras]

I think some of the best music being written/recorded today is being done in people's home studios.

They may not be engineered as well as a pro studio, but I have heard some great local songwriters here in Oregon.

They'll never be picked up by a label or indi label though.For every 1 band that gets signed there's probably a boat load that didn't, but had the same potential for a recording contract.

We are in a changing time where the album/cd sales have pretty much dumped and individual sales of songs has skyrocketed.