I've contacted Demos to try to get a copy of their full survey, so I hope I'll be able to update this with some more interesting data in the future.
Update: You can now download the full report from their website here(download will start: it's the only permalink I could find)
It has often been suggested that the people who download music illegally still pay more for music than those who don't. This piece in The Independent - from a press release by Demos - seems to support this claim. However, as Helienne Lindvall notes at the Guardian, it's hard to say that the survey really proves anything at all. She goes into detail as to why the survey is somewhat suspect, so I won't linger on those issues. Assuming, however, that there is a kernel of truth in the Demos study, what are the implications?
The problem that I can see is that people tend to have a slightly odd perspective on this issue. When hearing that illegal downloaders spend more on music than others, people tend to take it as evidence that downloading isn't having the negative effects that record labels claim. After all, they're still making more money from illegal downloaders than they are from those who only purchase music legally. However, this isn't really a useful comparison. The real question is how much these people were paying for music before they started downloading it for free. It's likely that the people who download the most music are those who, ten years ago, would have been the music industry's biggest customers anyway, and that they would have been spending a lot more money in order to be. The fact that they remain the biggest buyers of music now is likely little comfort to record labels, who were used to seeing music lovers spend much more of their income on albums.
Of course, this could partly explain why live revenue has increased so much in recent years, as I dealt with in my previous post, from this piece in the Times Online. Perhaps the amount of money that fans spend on music is the same as it was ten years ago, but, because they download much of their music for free now, much more of that money goes to seeing live performances. If this is the case (and I can't find any data to support this hypothesis), this is probably good news for nearly all musicians. If a fan forgoes paying for your album, but uses that money to see your gig instead, you're better off.
If you read this blog, you've probably already seen this article (via @virginia) from the Times Online blog, which looks at the UK music industry, and makes the case for the possibility that artists are making more money now than they used to, despite the massive fall in album sales over the past decade. I'll likely be looking at a few of these ideas in future posts, but for now I'll just point out that, due to this being a UK-based study, the results may be massively different if one were to conduct the same research in Australia (and I'd love to see those results).
There are a few reasons why I would expect Australian statistics to vary at least slightly from this study. The first is that there are much fewer internationally successful bands from Australia than from Britain (although, as a ratio in relation to number of performing bands it may be similar). The second is that there are much fewer "legacy" Australian acts - barring AC/DC - who, as this study suggests, may be the ones making the vast majority of live touring income. The third is that musicians in general have fewer opportunities for touring in a way that will generate a profit: there aren't many cities in Australia, and touring internationally is vastly more expensive for Australian musicians than it is for bands based in Europe or the United States.
Nevertheless, it's an interesting read, and I'm always happy to see this sort of thing: music industry reporting that actually looks at figures, rather than slavishly toeing the major-label line.
I found this post over at Way Cool Jnr. In it, Julian Ensbey deals with the idea of intellectual property laws being in place to give incentives for artists to create better music. I'm linking to it largely because - aside from it being a provocative angle - it tackles an issue I also tried to deal with here. Here's what Ensbey asks:
It is true that musicians who earn enough to be able to work on their music full time have a big advantage and will, on average, produce more or better music than those who have to keep a day job. But beyond a minimum level of financial security, does more cash for the musicians actually lead to better music? Would Kanye have thrown it all in to become a merchant banker if his only revenue was from gigs?
Here's what I wrote:
[O]ne of the hidden premises is that the average level of quality of work created by full-time professional artists is higher than that created by those people who work regular jobs to support their art. This may be true, but it can't simply be taken as fact.
I'm actually surprised that Ensbey is prepared to concede this point. I think his rationale is that the general level of quality is higher amongst professional bands than in amateur bands, which is probably a fair argument. And he's probably prepared to grant this point in order to move onto his actual question, which is about whether the additional income of royalties adds to that level of quality. But it's taking a very short-term view of musical quality. Many amateur composers were elevated to the ranks of the great posthumously. While it would be nice to think that the best musicians will earn more than the worst, it's difficult to prove that this is the case.
Plastic Palace Alice flew up to Brisbane on Thursday, and returned to Melbourne on Tuesday night. In that time, we played a nice gig at the Troubadour, and recorded seven tracks for an upcoming album. It was a busy few days. Tomorrow we're heading off to Perth, so I apologise for the lack of posting. In the meantime, here's a photo of Quinn in the studio (well ok, it's more of a photo of the keyboard behind him):
A little while ago I linked to a post on Mess and Noise which was written by Andrew McMillen. While I was in Brisbane I found another piece by him, which he's hosting on his blog, entitled "For the Record: An Album Retrospective". It's a considered series, which seems relatively rare, and one that relies on actual data.
28 October 2009 —
Q How To
Q has recently (I think) started a series of short instructional videos on youtube. It features well-known artists explaining, briefly, how to play one or two of their songs. It's not necessarily the most insightful information, but I like this kind of thing. (Via Stereogum).
In a rare change of pace, Mess and Noise interviews some indie label heads about their views on the state of the music industry in Australia.
Das Racist's response to Sasha Frere-Jones' New Yorker article "Wrapping Up" made me feel slightly embarrassed. While I often find myself disagreeing with Frere-Jones, I enjoy his writing and I rarely read against the grain: too often I take his premises as being true, while forming minor disagreements with his conclusions. Das Racist point out so many flaws in his premises that I had to go back and re-read the piece, surprised that I'd let so many comments through that I likely would have objected to if it had been written by someone else.
As can be expected from a spirited rebuttal, I think that Das Racist push back a little too hard. Victor Vazquez immediately gets stuck into Frere-Jones for using "language [that] is typical of that (white) journalistic voice which presupposes the (white) journalist’s authority." Which is fair, but he hedges his bets a little. On one hand, he wants to point out that the language Frere-Jones uses to begin his article has the overtones of white racial superiority, but on the other he doesn't want to come right out and accuse him of actually holding that attitude. It's a good thing to call someone for their use of dodgy language, but you walk a fine line if you want to both use examples of such language to dismantle the argument, while also taking the author on good faith by claiming that you're "not saying he’s consciously and intentionally trying to assert his superiority".
This is a minor point though. Frere-Jones, like most New Yorker writers, uses an incredibly authoritative voice most of the time. It makes him an interesting writer, but it's worth pointing out that just because someone writes with authority, it doesn't mean that they are an authority on their topic. Vazquez rightly highlights this fact, among other things.
It should be noted that I came across this piece on Frere-Jones' blog, so he at least deserves credit for linking to such strong objections to his own writing. I wonder if Das Racist find his comment a little bit patronising though?
On Saturday night I saw My Disco, for the first time in years. My Disco are generally well-liked by critics, and they have a loyal fan base, but it was nice to see a band with a decidedly un-pop aesthetic fill the Forum. The two people standing in front of me at the beginning of the gig were less than impressed, though. I overheard them saying things such as "this song has only been one chord" and "they could have at least had a guitar solo", etc. Now, I would hardly expect that everyone should like this sort of band, and it's perfectly reasonable to dislike a band because they don't conform to particular standards, such as playing songs with chord progressions. But I got the impression that these people were saying that the band was in some way bad as a result of their minimalism. It got me thinking about how people hone their critical faculties, and what it means to be a critical listener.
The problem is, of course, that being critical of art is vital. Art criticism is an important cultural process in many ways. On the personal level, at some stage we have to make choices. While I try to be open-minded about new things, I also don't want to spend a lot of time listening to bad music. The fact that qualitative judgements about art are subjective doesn't mean that these judgements are meaningless to others: people develop critical frameworks for discussing art with others that allows us to engage with the art, and with other people's opinions about it. Therefore, the development of our critical faculties is an important step in allowing us to respond in new ways to the art that surrounds us. But our critical faculties can lead us down the wrong path if we use them in the wrong way. I don't think it's wrong to dislike something because it isn't something else. But when a band like My Disco deliberately makes music that doesn't conform to a traditional rock aesthetic, you are using the wrong tools if you try to evaluate them in the context of rock music.
I rarely listen to My Disco at home: I find their music more confronting than I generally feel like listening to. On the other hand, I tremendously enjoy them whenever I do listen to them, and I'm always amazed at how good they are at what they do. To criticise them in a way that makes them out to be in some way less competent than an average rock and roll band is dishonest. Dishonest, but common. Whenever I hear a band like, say, Slayer, I'm tempted to call them a bad band. But given how little I listen to Metal, I don't really posses the tools to even know whether they're good or bad: I just don't really like Metal. It would be wrongheaded of me to criticise them for not being more like Bob Dylan.
There's an article in The Age today about former Australian Idol winner Damien Leith, which you can read here. I have watched very little Idol over the years, but I vaguely remember Leith, who was probably most known for his falsetto, and his cover of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game".
A lot of the things that seemed to have happened to Leith as a result of being in Idol are what that many people were afraid of happening, and certainly what precluded a lot of talented musicians from auditioning. It's been three years since he won, and he is only now releasing an album of originals, having been pigeon-holed as a covers act by both his audience and, apparently, his label. But it's the quote further in that must raise a few eyebrows:
(Leith's) debut album The Winner's Journey sold hundreds of thousands of copies but a complicated deal with the show's producers meant he did not see a cent of it.
Now, this is a fairly alarming prospect. Few artists are ever lucky enough to sell that many copies of an album, and fewer still are able to do it more than once. While "hundreds of thousands" of album sales is never going to net a musician a huge amount of money, it would be nice to think that it would be of some financial gain. Of course, the wording is deliberately vague. What is considered a complicated deal? I wouldn't be surprised if it was simply a case of so much money being spent on recording and producer's fees (which all gets recouped by the label out of the artist's share of the profits) that they simply didn't sell enough copies for the album to start generating profit for Leith himself. This is common with big-budget recordings, and it highlights what a difficult situation Idol winners are placed in. I doubt Leith himself had any say in the recording budget, or who would produce the album, so he didn't have the option that indie bands do: of making low cost recordings that are paid for upfront.
On the other hand, a lot of my concern about the Idol phenomenon is that it seems designed to create stars with no potential for lasting success. However, is the period of popularity an Idol winner enjoys any shorter than the average hyped indie rock band, who often disappear without a trace a year after their debut album, with even less money to show for it?
