Performance Royalties, Song Royalties, Gripe.

[aisuru]

the PRS collect because each time a song is played on the radio, it counts as a 'sale' of the record. different stations have to pay different per-minute rates depending on the number of listeners they have - for example, Radio1 pays a lot, as they're national, while your local radio station pays comparatively less. it's a principle that goes back to the dawn of commercial radio, when the musician's union objected to their members not being paid for their music, because people wouldn't be buying the record when they could listen to music for free on the wireless - gramophone record sales had plummeted in the USA in the '40s for this same reason. the PRS was thus formed to keep EMI and the like in business, essentially. the BBC was limited to 5 hours of 'needle time' per day, limiting the number of commercial records they could broadcast. Peel sessions were created in order to get around this - if the BBC got the band in to play versions of their records in a BBC studio, the BBC owned the recording and thus it wasn't covered by the PRS' rules.

these days there's little money in album sales, and even less in singles, compared to the '70s or '80s or even the '90s. the real money these days is in live performances, merchandising and so on. what a number of record companies are doing now is signing acts on '360-degree contracts' which cover everything the recording star does, and they get a cut regardless of whether music is involved or not. the record company basically acts as a manager, business manager and agent, taking 8% or whatever of everything out-with actual record sales - gigs, merchandise, public and TV appearances, even movie roles.

the executives have lost control of the music industry, due to technology. the internet allows bands to promote themselves on MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, and so on. project studios can be set up with only a few thousand pounds of budget, and get excellent results. the recording quality of most demo tapes these days is actually comparable to many professional recordings. without this control over musicians, they don't get the income. they'll always find ways to extort people though, it's the nature of the record industry.

[/rant]

 

[Jake]

project studios can be set up with only a few thousand pounds of budget, and get excellent results. the recording quality of most demo tapes these days is actually comparable to many professional recordings

That is complete rubbish. A few thousand pounds wouldn't even buy you quality mikes, let alone the rest of the recording chain (and the skilled personnel).

However, sadly, production values seem to count for nothing in the MP3 age.

 

[mr]

A few thousand pounds might buy you a few days of a good engineers time, not sure what you're going to hire the rest of the kit with let alone the studio space.

Cheers Mike.

 

[tnimble]

Whatever technical tricks the record companies use to control the playing of music as outlined by tnimble, once the music has entered the public domain I doubt that in the future people generally will be prepared to pay for it. Ways of bypassing the security measures will be developed faster than new measures can be put in place.

That is the current situation. If all of the measures persued where implemented it would be fairly difficult and involve high risk to bypass the measures.

Bypassing the security meassures of a recording medium currently involves loading the record into the computer, downloading a piece of software from some website and running the program. With their full wishlist honoured you can't download the software, you can't execute the software, you won't have to ability to run any software other then the software present on the site of the manufacturer of the computer. The music is passed encrypted from the recording media, to the computer CPU, sound card and speakers. The speakers do the final decoding. The sound is played with a non hearable signature that any recording medium reqognises and refuse to record or at least mangle the audio (like all xerox machines recognise certain documents like banknotes to print a distinguished 'this is a copy'). Manufacturing, selling or owning any equipment that does not meet these requirements is illegal with high penalty.

I don't think it will come to this, there is to much and organised resistance.

project studios can be set up with only a few thousand pounds of budget, and get excellent results. the recording quality of most demo tapes these days is actually comparable to many professional recordings

Only if you're talking about the 'kazoink, kazoink, kazoink, kazoink, kazoink, kazoink..." trance music et al. Or if you're talking about rock or punk music and produce the recording more or less lo-fi using the already bought stage equipment.

 

[aisuru]

That is complete rubbish. A few thousand pounds wouldn't even buy you quality mikes, let alone the rest of the recording chain (and the skilled personnel).

no it's not. apart from the fact i clearly said project studio and not 'Abbey Road' or something. :lol:

a few thousand pounds will get you a good laptop, a good firewire audio interface, and a copy of Logic/Ableton Live/Cubase to preference, plus some plug-ins. the quality of plug-ins has increased greatly over the past few years, and many top studios and producers use primarily software emulations, only switching to using hardware compressors etc. at the final mastering stage.

as far as mics go, you can get some reasonably priced mics these days as well, which are more than capable of providing good results when combined with a decent pre and a bit of compression. of course, depending on the music you're making, you may not even need any microphones at all - most electronic music, for example.

Only if you're talking about the 'kazoink, kazoink, kazoink, kazoink, kazoink, kazoink..." trance music et al. Or if you're talking about rock or punk music and produce the recording more or less lo-fi using the already bought stage equipment.

i don't know any trance music that goes 'kazoink kazoink' to be honest; most of it goes 'dee de-de-dee-dee, dee de-de-dee-dee' in my experience. that might be industrial you've been listening to, which is quite different. but either way, yes, you can make dance music with a very minimalist set-up. i don't want to start an argument about the merits of dance music. i like a lot of dance music, but there's a lot of it i don't like - it's the same as every genre, there's s*** and there's gold. if it helps, i'm currently listening to Rush, who i saw on tour last year - Neil Peart's drum solo was probably the finest piece of live musicianship i've ever witnessed. but then, the best show i've ever seen was German techno band Scooter in Berlin. there are a lot of classically trained musicians making dance music, especially trance.

but anyroad, i digress. you can also record rock music with a minimalist set-up too. Shure SM57s are about 80 quid, and you only need two of them, well-placed on a guitar cabinet for a great sound. provided it's a decent amp, of course. a good friend of mine records his Laney in this manner, using a desktop PC and a Firewire interface off of eBay.

However, sadly, production values seem to count for nothing in the MP3 age.

i'm not sure what you're basing this theory on. there's a lot of brilliantly produced music out there... sadly, you just need to look harder for it than you used to.

 

[Jake]

no it's not. apart from the fact i clearly said project studio and not 'Abbey Road' or something. :lol:

Oh OK, if that's what you meant - it is true is that you can make 'garage music' today,which is light-years ahead of what you could have made 20/30/40 years ago. Personally, that kind of production has its place (early albums - albums,I'm dating myself already!)

a few thousand pounds will get you a good laptop, a good firewire audio interface, and a copy of Logic/Ableton Live/Cubase to preference, plus some plug-ins. the quality of plug-ins has increased greatly over the past few years, and many top studios and producers use primarily software emulations, only switching to using hardware compressors etc. at the final mastering stage.

Neve still have their place.

However, sadly, production values seem to count for nothing in the MP3 age.

i'm not sure what you're basing this theory on. there's a lot of brilliantly produced music out there... sadly, you just need to look harder for it than you used to.

Generally, in my view the quality of the 'average' recording has sunk rapidly over the last ten years - of course that's not universal.

I wish all the compressors were dumped - hardware or software!

 

[aisuru]

exactly. 15 years ago an unsigned act would record a demo using a Tascam 4-track tape recorder, complete with hiss, bleed and the sound of the bassist's mum's washing machine in the background. these days, an unsigned band can record a demo in pro-tools, with all the effects and edit techniques you'd expect from a professional recording, and email it to a dozen record companies. what you've got is a sound that just needs polished, so there's still a place for Trevor Horn et al, but the bulk of the work can be done without having to rent a studio for hundreds of pounds a day.

don't get me wrong though, i use software emulations most of the time, but i use the hardware wherever possible. hardware is still better, it's just five or ten times the price of the plug-in. in fact, some of the free plug-ins do an excellent job. when you don't have EMI bankrolling your new album, the choice is easy to make.

on the quality subject, i'd have to argue the opposite. hi-resolution recorders and interfaces are becoming more affordable all the time. 192kHz is going to become the new recording standard pretty soon. that's four times the resolution of DVD audio, let alone CDs, let alone an MP3. a digital distribution format loses a lot of quality over optical media, yes, but most MP3s are listened to on a computer, with crappy 4" speakers, or on a personal MP3 player, with crappy 1/2" speakers. any proper audiophiles will still be buying the CDs... or LPs if they can get them.

please explain your aversion to compression though.

 

[Jake]

I hate their all-too-common over-use, to make everything sound punchy on crappy equipment, at the massive expense of dynamic range.

 

[tnimble]

i don't know any trance music that goes 'kazoink kazoink' to be honest; most of it goes 'dee de-de-dee-dee, dee de-de-dee-dee' in my experience.

The 'typed sound' more or less represented the ever so boring, only to be exceeded by its speed, and often clipped, pounding drum sections. Not to the so-called melody composed of an about brain dead super saw played through an arpeggiator. :wink:

Anywat to produce such music you would have anough with only buying a software synth such as albino, reason etc and optionally add a midi keyboard. Or if you like the touch of real hardware a second hand Roland JP8000 or JP8080. Will cost you no more than 1000 quid (probably far less). Adding a gadget such as a Korg Koass Pad would get you still less than 2000 quid.

That might be industrial you've been listening to, which is quite different.

Luckily it is and very diverse. :wink:


Which brings me back to the record label companies. The record lavels which do mainly or only the dance music genres have the most trouble, shortly followed by the companies doing only pop music.

The companies doing avant-garde, jazz, classic etc have little to no problems with dropped CD and singles sale. (although they do little with singles, but instead do limited and special art editions)