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0 pointscoldtea5y ago0 comments

>I don't disagree with you, but are you aware of how things were before the vendors you listed existed? it used to be VERY difficult to get anywhere as a musician

If you were any good, I'd say it was the opposite.

You could get signed and live off of 50-100K records sold per year (from Indie labels where you got a bigger share of your sales revenue) globally. You didn't have to compete with anybody in the world that had a guitar or some synth and an audio recorder, only comitted musicians with deals.

The "company screwed me" stories of that era come mainly from suckers that got signed as starry eyed 17 year olds or something into major labels with crappy deals. And even those stories were somewhat overblown when it came to big bands (the company did made millions, but they did get plenty in advances too, enough to buy cars, houses, and support constant parties and a few drug addictions).

Any small indie band/musician in the 80s to 00s has found the mp3/streaming era much worse with regards to industry income.

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7 comments · 3 top-level

kortilla5y ago· 3 in thread

Survivorship bias. You don’t know how many good people were completely missed and were left with nothing in that super inefficient discovery system.

coldteaOP5y ago

I do however, and they weren't that many.

Retric5y ago

Of ~20 decent bands I knew of at creation, 1 signed a independent record deal and personally they where far from the best.

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Judgmentality5y ago

That is a laughable claim.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=152&v=M2RpseaDw_o

I miss when you could add timestamps to end YouTube links as well as start them, since I only want the first 3 seconds of that clip. Ah well, it's never a bad time to rewatch old Family Guy.

1 more reply

bawolff5y ago· 1 in thread

> If you were any good, I'd say it was the opposite.

I dont know, i think the systems of yester-year selected more for "image" and "attractiveness" than musical talent.

wombatpm5y ago

Monkees Menudo Back Street Boys 98 Degrees

When the record label has open auiditions/ casting calls it very much is a image and attractiveness industry and not a talent industry

endisneigh5y ago

you may be right, but the point is that it's much more accessible and more music is ultimately produced as a result by a larger amount of artists under the current system versus the previous one. the previous system simply didn't allow those who were not good enough, as you say, to participate at all.

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