Scott Henderson Sounds off on Internet/Music Business

[brain21]

Good point, but if w keep with the initial example.
I left the band and the band split into 2 separate bands, either of them still having pretty much the same draw yet fetching 1800 less.
In the end it doesn't affect me, but I find it still fucked.

OK, well in your example didn't you say that the other bands were drawing less?

Either, I know what you are getting at.

The scenario that you are putting forth (I believe) is you draw $2500 and the place is packed. Then another band comes in (lets say for arguments sake you didn't leave town, but you are trading weeks with another band) and says they draw the same, but will take $700 rather than $2500. Well first of all, if the COULD get $2500 and say they will only take $700 then they are idiots! But say they harbor some animosity towards you. Lets say they are trying to sell amps on eBay and find out that you are a rig-talk member And their goal is to muscle you out of the picture permanently. Well first of all the people will want variety and will eventualy get sick of the same band week after week, but lets ignore that.

So at this point, you have a couple of choices:
1) Undercut them. Offer to do the gig for $500 - not an attractive option obviously. However, if you can endure the pain, maybe you can muscle them out long enough so that they have a gig somewhere else and then renegotiate with the bar. Still, not the most attractive solution.
2) Go to another bar. Tell them what you were getting and what you were drawing. Don't mention the new band, or anything. Offer the bar "I can get my old crowd in here. We were getting a % of the door, up to $2500. We will play here, and we will take a % of the door, up to a max of $1500 for a month. After that we can renegotiate" Or something like that.

Even if the club owners talk and he comes back to you and says no way, then you can tell him "well thats what they are asking. Not everyone gets the best deal. If I am a car dealership and I have 1 model Mercedes for sale for $30k and the other ones are $37k, just cause one guy bought the $30k one doesn't mean they all sell for $30k. THe other ones have different options, etc. to distinguish them. That other band is booked solid. You can go with us and work with us and we can get you a packed bar on the weekends, and you keep all the liquor sales and it costs you nothing, or you can go with someone else that may be cheaper, but won't bring in as much in liquor sales. Its your choice."

Depending on the market that might work. You can be mad at that other band for putting you in that position, but thats competition man. You were in a monopoly position and someone came along and took that away.

Now if your town is filled with bands and they are all charging $700, then maybe you were over charging for the market. It happens. Its all about supply and demand. With a greater supply the higher the price goes, the less demand there is. If you are truly offering something superior for the money, then thats justification for you, and you have to sell the club on that. Convince them that you deserve the extra $$$ because you offer them greater liquor sales that will more than offset the cost.

3) Move on to a different town. I dont mean move 200 miles, but play bars on the other side of a major metropolitan city. Generally speaking here in Atlanta the cover bands usually have a "territory" where they play. It's not because of a territorial environ, but more if you do weel in one club, the others nearby hear about it and will want to have you play as well. So you end up in a small area of town, with ventures out every once in a while. Original bands will sometimes play local suburb clubs, but most play the clubs downtown, that generally don't do cover bands. So if your "territory" it the northern suburbs, then you move to the western suburbs.

So you give them a reason or justification for why they should want you and not the other guys, and why getting you at $xxxx dollars is a good deal for them (greater value and greater return), you move around a bit, or maybe you were getting paid what was good for the market at one point, but not good now that there is more competition.

IOW, don't get mad, get competitive. If you've got the draw, go about it smartly and you will prevail in the end.

Around town here, coverbands are in it for the money. Otherwise they'd be doing originals. No cover band is going to play for free unless its some sort of "we play for free 1 friday night so you can see if you like us, then after that you pay". Original bands is another story. Hell for original bands there are still some club owners/bookers trying to do the pay-to-play thing. Those are the ones that you want to stay away from!

 

[brain21]

uploading stuff that is my copyright in a better quality than I can legally sell through itunes or CD Baby and giving it away without me seeing a penny. I coulda have had label release my stuff for that kinda deal.

Like I said, this is an issue. A big factor these days is simply bandwidth.

If I torrent your album in FLAC format, lets say its 300Mb. If I am connected to a bunch of people I can download that album in 10 minutes. Its a small number of people all sharing bandwidth, right? Lets say I connect to a torrent and 20 people are sharing, and all have 6Mbps of up/down BW. Thats 120Mbps total bandwidth, and it is distributed. So downloading of high quality is feasable and easy.

Now lets say iTunes offers it in the same format. What do they down when they have the same 20 people downloading it for a total BW of 120Mbps, and they have 200,000 people downloading OTHER songs from other artists as well? All of a sudden a single server farm needs 1,200,120Mbps of traffic to the net (1,200Gbps). The fastest connection that we have right now (and I think there are only 1 or 2 in the world) is OC-768, which is 37Gbps. So to support the amount of bandwidth you would need to trunk about 32 OC-768 lines together. Considering there are not that many segments in existence....

torrents are distributed, iTunes is not. So it's an issue.

Also if you had a label release the stuff, you'd be in the same boat anyway

So, there are always going to be people who steal the stuff. Right or wrong, doesn't matter on which side of any argument you reside. The facts are the fact. So what do you do to combat it? How do you compete? Well some options I outlined in my previous posts.

What people need to do is come up with some sort of an embedded protection scheme where the credit card number used to purchase is premanently embedded in the file. Then some hacker will figure out how to reveal the number. People will quickly stop sharing if they think their CC# is in the file! Sure they could buy the CD and then share, but as I stated before this simple restriction will lower the number sharing too.

 

[brain21]

Like I said I was under the impression that he did just fine, heck he lived in a nice place in Malibu. But from what I was told I was wrong...but who knows.

I wonder if he was doing well, and then cancer treatments, etc. ended up sucking up all his money? Probably not best to wildly speculate, so scratch that.

 

[brain21]

I wonder...if you were a musician of Scott's stature, playing for a living, how you would feel if your positions were reversed? Would you give your music away to a download site?

Actually, some artists do exactly that. Prince did it. Didn't Trent Reznor? I think Radiohead or some such band did it as well. I can't remember the names of the acts off of the top of my head.

End of discussion.

Famous last words....

 

[redrol]

The problem with this whole argument is these guys just assume that people would buy their stuff if it weren't available online for free. WRONG. THats really it. If someone has 100 bux in their pocket, spends all of it on food, rent, whatever, then downloads an album for free. They would not have bought that album at all, therefore nothing is lost. Stealing is another topic for discussion of course.

Personally I felt cheated that after tape, CDs were supposed to cost half what tapes did, yet they cost twice as much.

 

[Bob Savage]

The problem with this whole argument is these guys just assume that people would buy their stuff if it weren't available online for free. WRONG.

I've not seen anything that supports that assumption, but perhaps I've missed something. What I have seen is the statement that if you're not going to buy it, don't download and/or burn it so that you can own it for free.

 

[MOAAH]

The problem with this whole argument is these guys just assume that people would buy their stuff if it weren't available online for free. WRONG.

I've not seen anything that supports that assumption, but perhaps I've missed something.

What about your own album Bob?
I'm sure I'm not the only one who waited until it was free to DL it?
I still think it's great, BTW.
But would I pay for it or another new one along the same lines?
Nope, sorry.

I've paid for 3 new albums in maybe 20 years,
The Black Crow's first two, and Nirvana's Nevermind.

 

[Bob Savage]

What about your own album Bob?
I'm sure I'm not the only one who waited until it was free to DL it?
I still think it's great, BTW.

My situation is not comparable because it's just a hobby for me. I went into the project knowing I would be fortunate to even break even, which I didn't, and that I'd probably give away 800 of the 1,000 CD's that I had pressed because I certainly wasn't going to sell 1,000. So, I knew I was throwing money into the wind from the getgo but wanted to do it anyway. My livelihood in no way relies on music nor am I an accomplished, respected player/artist like Henderson is.

I'm glad you're still enjoying Retrofitted, Rob! See, this is why I did the album; the hopes that others would enjoy it. In that respect I'm very pleased with my "success" because I often run into people that tell me the disc still gets regular rotation in their playlists.

 

[Bob Savage]

But would I pay for it or another new one along the same lines?
Nope, sorry.

I've paid for 3 new albums in maybe 20 years,
The Black Crow's first two, and Nirvana's Nevermind.

Missed your edit.

This is not unusual. If I would have sold as many CD's as people told me were going to buy it, I'd have easily made my money back, but I know all about the cost of talk. In the end as much as I wanted to at least break even, it didn't matter how many would sell, I would have done it anyway. It's up at my site for free because again, if even one other person downloads it and the music rocks their world, it's a win-win.

 

[MOAAH]

What about your own album Bob?
I'm sure I'm not the only one who waited until it was free to DL it?
I still think it's great, BTW.

My situation is not comparable because it's just a hobby for me. I went into the project knowing I would be fortunate to even break even, which I didn't, and that I'd probably give away 800 of the 1,000 CD's that I had pressed because I certainly wasn't going to sell 1,000. So, I knew I was throwing money into the wind from the getgo but wanted to do it anyway. My livelihood in no way relies on music nor am I an accomplished, respected player/artist like Henderson is.

I'm glad you're still enjoying Retrofitted, Rob! See, this is why I did the album; the hopes that others would enjoy it. In that respect I'm very pleased with my "success" because I often run into people that tell me the disc still gets regular rotation in their playlists.

Bob, you're a very humble man, no wonder I can't help but respect you. You may never be another Henderson, but I still say with the right promo and stuff, well you never know. If you're happy with whatever you do for income, well Kudos to you.

 

[MOAAH]

Missed your edit.

Some things never change, LOL.
Not you missing it, but me making it
Rock on,
Rob

 

[kasperjensen]

I personally would like to take this opportunity to state that all the music I own, I have either bought from iTunes or bought the CD from a store. I am also proud to say that I have never bought a single... always the full album. It does wonders for my OCD!
I just really like it... I normally check some of the songs from the band out on YouTube, and then buy the product if I like what I hear.
Its really neat and organised... all the right titles... digital booklets... Titles Of Songs With Capital Letters... correct order... I love it. And I also feel a weird satisfaction knowing that Mars Volta (or whoever) actually (so I would like to think) gets paid for a product that they worked hard to produce.

I will however not pretend that I never have done it illegally.
e.g. I got rehearsal on Monday morning for a new modern cover band (Lady GaGa, The Noisettes, etc...), so I obviously need to have the songs to work them all out. Because I haven't got internet on my computer in my studio, I did some illegal DL'ing, and brought them all down.
So now I have acquired the songs for nothing, and will be using them to gain a few bucks for myself... effectively selling a product that belongs to someone else.
Is this wrong?

If it is... I don't feel that bad about it. I have bought the entirety of my music library... 2800 songs... all bought and paid for. I know this doesn't entitle me to steal a few songs here and there when I need them for work only... but I can live with it.

Now... I am not a rich man, but I don't do bad. I can afford to purchase the music that I want. If however, there was absolutely now way I could warrant spending $7.99 on an album, because I needed that to buy food, and there was good opportunity to obtain an album for free, that I simply couldn't live without... Who is to say that I wouldn't jump at the opportunity?
It is still wrong... I would give my left leg to own a Ferrari F430, but I simply can't afford it at this point in time, but that doesn't grant me the permission to go ahead and steal one.

To stay on that subject, I still feel that this is what it comes down to: I won't steal a Ferrari from a showroom, because I know I would get caught. And that means goin' to Folsome.
But how many people do you know who has been caught and sentenced for a bit of online pirating?

If governments had the resources to actually fight this war, I am sure the issue could be dealt with.
Download illegally, and there is a high chance you get caught and sentenced to 6 months in Federal, and $5.000 in fines... Would you still do it?

 

[Meathead]

If governments had the resources to actually fight this war, I am sure the issue could be dealt with.
Download illegally, and there is a high chance you get caught and sentenced to 6 months in Federal, and $5.000 in fines... Would you still do it?

Looking for a solution?...there should be one eventually that's phased in.
It sure can't happen overnight. We don't have enough jails for it (or we could just use New Jersey) and there would be too many people not showing up for work....the country would collapse.

Most people do not buy their music, it's a fact...I see it all around me. I'm not saying it's right, but if almost everyone is doing it...how is this tackled without giving half the world a $50,000 fine?
The internet is wide open and there is no way I can see to stop it right now...maybe the big operating systems (Windows and Mac) can get fully on board and set off alarms when unpurchased media is discovered on a computer and the file could be immediately deleted.
Well...Mac and Microsoft know that would be the end of people using their operating systems...people would all look for a pirate operating system. To just hope people will do the right thing is obviously not going well.

 

[kasperjensen]

If governments had the resources to actually fight this war, I am sure the issue could be dealt with.
Download illegally, and there is a high chance you get caught and sentenced to 6 months in Federal, and $5.000 in fines... Would you still do it?

Looking for a solution, there should be one eventually that's phased in.
It sure can't happen overnight. We don't have enough jails for it (we could just use New Jersey) and there would be too many people not showing up for work....the country would collapse.

I thought it already did?

It would definitely have to be long term plan... If it was to implemented into our kids heads, that it was no different from holding up the local 7/11... Then I think there would be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Or maybe people will have a different view on music as a product. Maybe it is moving more towards where art is... If you want to see what the Mona Lisa looks like, you simply google it, and start staring.
If you want to see her in real life, then you pay an entrance fee.

Actually... that sounds a lot like what music has become as a product...

 

[Meathead]

Or maybe people will have a different view on music as a product. Maybe it is moving more towards where art is... If you want to see what the Mona Lisa looks like, you simply google it, and start staring.
If you want to see her in real life, then you pay an entrance fee.

Actually... that sounds a lot like what music has become as a product...

I think you hit the nail on the head with the Mona Lisa comparison.

 

[kasperjensen]

Or maybe people will have a different view on music as a product. Maybe it is moving more towards where art is... If you want to see what the Mona Lisa looks like, you simply google it, and start staring.
If you want to see her in real life, then you pay an entrance fee.

Actually... that sounds a lot like what music has become as a product...

I think you hit the nail on the head with the Mona Lisa comparison.

Thanks.
The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me.

I am extremely curious as to know what the industry will look like in 20 years time... I personally think it will move towards art (as in paintings and sculptures).

I am not an expert on classical music... Can someone quickly enlighten me as to how Mozart (or any composer or performer from around that period) made money? From what I understand, it was purely contract work for a Royal Family, and live performances...
Would they receive payment if their music was played by another orchestra?

If so... maybe music is simply moving back towards that way of thinking... Just thinking out loud now...

 

[degenaro]

Or maybe people will have a different view on music as a product. Maybe it is moving more towards where art is... If you want to see what the Mona Lisa looks like, you simply google it, and start staring.
If you want to see her in real life, then you pay an entrance fee.

Actually... that sounds a lot like what music has become as a product...

I think you hit the nail on the head with the Mona Lisa comparison.

Isn't that what subscription services are like? Want to listen to it streamed you get that for your monthly subscription, want to own it? Pay for it.

 

[degenaro]

Or maybe people will have a different view on music as a product. Maybe it is moving more towards where art is... If you want to see what the Mona Lisa looks like, you simply google it, and start staring.
If you want to see her in real life, then you pay an entrance fee.

Actually... that sounds a lot like what music has become as a product...

I think you hit the nail on the head with the Mona Lisa comparison.

Thanks.
The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me.

I am extremely curious as to know what the industry will look like in 20 years time... I personally think it will move towards art (as in paintings and sculptures).

I am not an expert on classical music... Can someone quickly enlighten me as to how Mozart (or any composer or performer from around that period) made money? From what I understand, it was purely contract work for a Royal Family, and live performances...
Would they receive payment if their music was played by another orchestra?

If so... maybe music is simply moving back towards that way of thinking... Just thinking out loud now...

If memory serves...initially it was like being a court jester, being hired by the church, or royals and their decendants, then we had the patrons of art that basically fed those guys for them hanging around and writing.
Then we started to have publishing houses which were the fore runners of the record companies, where instead a piece of music being on vinyl it existed on paper, etc...

 

[kasperjensen]

Or maybe people will have a different view on music as a product. Maybe it is moving more towards where art is... If you want to see what the Mona Lisa looks like, you simply google it, and start staring.
If you want to see her in real life, then you pay an entrance fee.

Actually... that sounds a lot like what music has become as a product...

I think you hit the nail on the head with the Mona Lisa comparison.

Isn't that what subscription services are like? Want to listen to it streamed you get that for your monthly subscription, want to own it? Pay for it.

I suppose they are quite similar in principle...

 

[kasperjensen]

Or maybe people will have a different view on music as a product. Maybe it is moving more towards where art is... If you want to see what the Mona Lisa looks like, you simply google it, and start staring.
If you want to see her in real life, then you pay an entrance fee.

Actually... that sounds a lot like what music has become as a product...

I think you hit the nail on the head with the Mona Lisa comparison.

Thanks.
The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me.

I am extremely curious as to know what the industry will look like in 20 years time... I personally think it will move towards art (as in paintings and sculptures).

I am not an expert on classical music... Can someone quickly enlighten me as to how Mozart (or any composer or performer from around that period) made money? From what I understand, it was purely contract work for a Royal Family, and live performances...
Would they receive payment if their music was played by another orchestra?

If so... maybe music is simply moving back towards that way of thinking... Just thinking out loud now...

If memory serves...initially it was like being a court jester, being hired by the church, or royals and their decendants, then we had the patrons of art that basically fed those guys for them hanging around and writing.
Then we started to have publishing houses which were the fore runners of the record companies, where instead a piece of music being on vinyl it existed on paper, etc...

That begs the question if there were "pirates" sitting in the dungeons of Vienna, ferociously copying out scores to hand out to their mates for free...