I went to the Open Music Media meeting in London last night, and thought you might be interested in a chat I had with Ian Hogarth from Songkick, which more or less summarises the presentation he gave on the night.
Kind of impressed with my new Flip Ultra video camera too – audible sound in a really noisy environment. Having some codec trouble playing the clips back in VLC on the macbook – but I’ve figured out the Quicktime problem I was having…
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18 Comments
Cool video man, tempting to buy this little gadget as I love taking backstage band videos and pretty much anything and everything on my youtube channel.
Andrew,
Great interview. Thanks for sharing this.
Very intersting post.
Always good to get a third party perspective on the industry as a whole and know that it is possible for small fish like myself to get noticed.
Cheers
Thanks for the interview. I hadn’t heard of Songkick before today and I hope they get huge. But I think he flipped you off at 2:37. ;)
Andrew,
The innovation and creative thinking made possible by the Internet never ceases to amaze me. Songkick sounds like an interesting idea. I’ll definitely check them out thanks to your video. Great stuff, mate.;-)
Regards,
Anthony
@Graham – you’re correct, I did flip him off :)
lol In your defense, his questions were keeping you from your beer.
Songkick seems like a cool idea.
Sometimes it’s staggering to hear those statistics, but Ian was also very encouraging so that was pretty cool.
Really interesting interview and thanks for the Scala mention Ian.
Andrew,
Songkick is brilliant Ian! Andrew I’m not sure if this is in response to my email but thanks. This does help me out a bit…
-Hakim
10,000 – 20,000 bands that make enough money to make a living out of it. Interesting stat actually. There must be millions after this peak in a “long tail” type of way.
I wish getting a manager would would be that easy for my band. If only I had a penny for everytime someone gave me that suggestion when I am ranting in the pub on how difficult all this stuff is :-)
On the plus side “this is the internet, if it is good it will be discovered” is something I do obviously believe in still.
Great interview – nice one for posting.
Great interview, Andrew. Thanks. I’m interested in learning more about the analysis Ian did to figure out how much bands have to make in order to earn a living, and how that translates to myspace views. I couldn’t find his email on the Songkick page. Maybe a guest post here? Thanks
I’m interested to know if the Flip Ultra would be good for capturing songs for my blog posts – so after investigating it over here I’ve taken a chance and bought one so will let you know!
I figure I can have a friend video a song at one of my gigs and then upload to youtube and post it on my blog; or I can do one myself in my music room. Either way can’t go wrong for the price. If the quality isn’t GREATgreat I can always upgrade as I grow. . .The hook for me is that the sound quality is good at close range. The sound quality is poor on my current camera and same with my phone. Since I already have a digital camera I don’t my the Flip Ultra not having a stills option (although you can extract stills from the video).
Will come back to let you know how it goes.
Bye for now, Nancy
hi andrew, i see on your twitter page you are heading to NZ at the moment – how long are you down here for and are you doing any seminars or lectures? It would be great to attend one of your engagements if you have anything like that lined up.
Songkick sounds like a brilliant idea and this fellow sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. Make great music and people will spread the word.
I find it interesting that today so many people, usually those who don’t perform, think that the be all and end all for tomorrow’s musicians will be live performances … that opportunities to perform live will be so enhanced due to the tools available on the Net that musicians will be able to ‘make a living’ even if all other traditional sources of income are severely reduced or disappear entirely thanks to technology.
First of all, I would like someone to define ‘making a living’ in monetary terms, and then, I would like to know just how long – in this era of ‘click to delete’ disposable music – artists should be lead to believe they can make this so-called, ‘living..
Nextly, I would like to know just where the 10 to 20,000 artists Andrew mentions are going to play? Where are all of these venues that are going to book these people … and the 10 to 20,000 that will be coming in right behind them. They don’t exist. Come on, there is no room out there for today’s wannabes to live the dream of ‘making a living’ playing shit holes.
I personally know a lot of mid line name brand ‘road warriors’ that have performed in little clubs for years that still have to fight to get booked and get paid. They hate it. Their ex wives hate it because they can’t keep up the alimony payments. They can’t keep bands together because what they get paid – if they get paid – rarely covers the overhead of getting to the gig.
Playing live in awful clubs is only exiting for the first few of years if you are young and believe playing clubs might lead to something else that will get you out of playing clubs.
Let’s be honest, the Net is unlikely to produce many mid line name brand acts and certainly won’t produce ANY arena acts … Once our current group of big name attractions hangs it up … there will be no more… unless hope can be restored that there might be something beyond playing live and just ‘making a living.’
The question musicians should be asking themselves isn’t ‘can I make a living’ doing this — the question is – given today’s realities – can I build a life… can I come out this after 40 years with enough money in the bank to retire, provide health care for myself and my family and leave a few bucks to the kids?
Given everything technology is forcing musicians to give up … I think anyone who is seriously considering a life in music will conclude is that answer to those questions is probably, ‘No.’
Hey, music has had a great run since the ability to make recordings was invented … It had to end sometime … My guess is that time is now… unless consumers begin to understand and encourage musicians and unless musicians can somehow regain that feeling that the hard work required to achieve greatness might provide a little more in the way of financial rewards than just making a living.
Interesting article. And great point Tonsotunez. The music business is not for everybody. You either are great or your just as ‘good as my brother, boyfriend, cousin, girlfriend, sister, uncle, aunt who also do music.’ You can’t just be very good anymore. You have to be special for anyone to care. Just my take on it.